Color Profile Management help please

Stosh

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I am having a problem with color changes between when I edit photos to when I view them on the internet. Mostly it's increased saturation, but contrast is also increased and possibly there are color shifts. The really strange thing is when I "download" the offending picture back to my computer, like magic it looks identical to the image I edited before uploading. I use Photobucket and I thought they were to blame, but if I download the image and it's the same as the image I uploaded, is it even possible for Photobucket to be at fault? Is it Firefox not displaying it correctly?

Some details of my setup:
Windows Vista with all color profiles set at default except for my monitor which has a custom ICC profile done by Spider3 Pro.
Firefox 3.6.13
Post editing first with Canon's Digital Photo Professional, then with Digital Light and Color's Picture Window Pro 5.0. Both programs are set to work and save in sRGB and my Canon 5d m2 is set to sRGB too.

I'd post examples except that doesn't work because whatever I post on the internet is over-saturated and whatever's on my computer is fine. Any ideas?
 
Haven't hear of this before but I would assume some of your information is being lost/changed in the upload process and it is being recovered via your computer in the download process.

I'd be interested to hear from someone with more knowledge.

RjL
 
It is firefox...with one of the recent upgrades to Firefox 3 this happened. Google Firefox Colors or something and you might find it (there is a fix). I saw a thread recently but can't remember if it was on here or a different forum.


Edit: Found it...link below (different forum...may or may not have to register to view).

http://www.nikoncafe.com/vforums/showthread.php?t=291666&highlight=firefox
 
An intriguing problem.

I have multiple suspects. Best bet: Firefox's failure to support icc v4.0 may be your problem -- see this: Adobe Forums: Firefox 3.6 color management incorrect... --To date there is only one fully functional and usable web browser and that's Safari. IE8 and Chrome do nothing, Firefox at least tries and Safari gets it right which of course is meaningless.

However Picture Window Pro may also be the culprit. Digital Light & Color uses what they refer to as Monitor Curves to (according to them) better soft-proof your photos. I don't have hands-on experience here' just what I've heard. Try comparing the Firefox version of one of your JPEG uploads to the same photo displayed in DPP.

Finally, I'm really guessing here, but the problem could be your monitor profile? Maybe Picture Window Pro is using the monitor profile in a way Firefox isn't. Try temporarily disabling the monitor profile in the OS and see what happens.

Joe
 
Thanks for the suggestions. A little more info:

Picture Window Pro allows you to disable color management completely. I've tried this and still have the same problem.

To try to single out the problem, I've also uploaded photos without any further processing by Picture Window Pro. In other words I uploaded JPGs right from Canon's output. Still the same problem.

And when I've downloaded my photos back to my computer that looked too saturated on Photobucket, they look normal in every program - Picture Window, Window's preview, and Canon's editing software.

One other thing - I don't notice the problem on my computer at work, and I use the same version of Firefox and I calibrated that monitor with the exact same Spider Pro.

So I'm leaning towards something is messed up specifically with my home version of Firefox or my home version of monitor calibration. Maybe it's easiest to just remove and reinstall Firefox (and monitor calibration). I'll give that a try tonight.

EDIT: Clanthar, I do have a wide gamut monitor. That link you posted mentioned that might have something to do with it and Firefox. My work monitor is just a normal one and obviously so is my laptop which both don't have the problem. I'll look in to that tonight also.
 
Update:
The first thing I tried was to open the offending picture directly from Firefox. So instead of a web page, it just displayed my local file picture. It was over-saturated.

So now I know for sure Firefox is the problem. What's the solution? It never used to be like this before. What changed? Is Firefox ignoring my monitor profile? Or is it having a hard time displaying to my wide gamut monitor?
 
Then I'm going with Firefox's dragging it's feet and only supporting ICC v2 instead of the current ICC v4. Here's the test then, since Safari supports ICC v4 you need to look at your photo on a wide gamut display running Safari. If that solves the problem then I think Firefox is convicted.

Joe
 
I read about the v2 and v4 issues from previously posted links and lots of searching. I don't even know which version Spyder3Pro does.

Turns out the fix was pretty easy. In Firefox's about:config page I changed gfx.color.management.mode from the default 2 to a 1. A value of 2 only applies color management to tagged pictures. I was processing in sRGB and then purposely stripping the tags, so no profile was coming through (apparently). Changing the value to 1 forced color management on all pics, whether tagged or not.

So if I'm interpreting this correctly, nobody's "stock" Firefox 3.6 is using color management unless a photo is specifically tagged. Can that be right? How have I not noticed a problem on my other machines running the same version? Maybe my monitor's profile is so close to sRGB that I can't tell the difference?
 
I’ve got a similar setup and resolved the problems you’re having, it takes a bit of work but it’s fixable.

First thing is that Firefox doesn’t yet support ICC V4.0 profiles so you have to give it a V2.0 profile to work with, and tell it where that profile is.

I take it you can create ICC monitor profiles with the Spyder3Pro utility, I use V4.0.2 (latest version as of writing this fix). In order to make a V2.0 profile in Spyder3Pro you need to go to:

File>Preferences, then go to the bottom right of the menu, click ‘Advanced Settings’, a new menu pops up, click the ‘ICC Settings’ button on the bottom right and check the 2.0 box. Then click OK all your way back through the settings menus. Now use Spyder3Pro to do a full calibration, when you save your new profile tag it with a V2.0 or something so that you can recognise it later.

In Firefox go into the about:config menu and type ‘gfx’ into the filter box. Set “gfx.color_management.mode” to 1, it looks like you already got this far. Then you need to tell Firefox where your ICC V2.0 calibration is, double click “gfx.color_management.display_profile” and give the FULL file location and name for your V2.0 monitor profile. For my Vista 64 system the string is C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color\(profile name) V2.0.icm

You should be able to find the full file path pretty easily on your system. (profile name) V2.0.icm is the actual fine name, make sure this is your file name, not my example one. Restart Firefox and you should be good to go.

Personally I then go back to Spyder3Pro, change the profile type back to V4.0 and make a new V4.0 profile. I set this as my default monitor profile for windows and any editing software that supports V4.0.
Start Button>Controll Pannel>Color Management>Devices tab
Set your monitor under the Device field, highlight the current V4.0 profile and click ‘Set as Default Profile’ in the bottom right.
Then under Advanced tab
Windows Color System Defaults field
Set your V4.0 profile under ‘Device profile:’
This last step is only really useful if you have a multi monitor setup, set the profile to the one for your primary editing monitor, and try and only use your primary monitor for critical work.

Hope that helps.
 

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