Color space problem....I think

Neiby · Aug 21, 2011

My apologies if this doesn't fit well in this forum. I've searched for an answer to this problem, but must be using the wrong search terms or I'm just unlucky. I think I have some sort of color space problem, but I can't figure it out. I edited and exported a bunch of photos from Lightroom as JPEGs with 100% quality, sRGB color space. These look fine when viewed in a browser but look *horrible* when opened directly in Windows Vista. I thought Windows used sRGB, so maybe this isn't a color space problem, per se.

I've been looking and will continue to look for the answer to this problem, but if anyone knows, please speak up. This is pretty frustrating since these photos are from my first shoot with a real person who volunteered to be my guinea pig for the afternoon. I think they look pretty good in LR and they'll look fine in a browser, but I'd like to solve this mystery about why they look so bad when opened in Windows before I send them to her.

Thanks!
John

IgsEMT · Aug 21, 2011

Few days ago, similar thread came out, I can't find it right now. Look for something along the lines of "uploading or sending pictures"
You'll find you answer there.
good luck

Neiby · Aug 21, 2011

Thanks! I'll try to find it.

clanthar · Aug 22, 2011

Need some more details from you, but it sounds very much like your suspicions are correct -- color space problem.

Are your originals into Lightroom camera JPEGs or RAW files? Is your computer display calibrated? If so how?

Windows Vista does not use sRGB, it uses nothing. sRGB is something and nothing is nothing and something and nothing are not the same thing -- had a couple beers already tonight so that may sound a little funny, but it's right.

Lightroom does not use sRGB. It will export to sRGB, but it does not display your photos in the sRGB color space. Without more info I'll go out on a limb and name this as your problem. Lightroom use the ProPhoto color space while displaying and editing your photos. It doesn't preview your sRGB export and that's a bite in the butt and I suspect you've just been bitten by Lightroom.

Take Care,
Joe

Neiby · Aug 22, 2011

clanthar said:
Need some more details from you, but it sounds very much like your suspicions are correct -- color space problem.

Are your originals into Lightroom camera JPEGs or RAW files? Is your computer display calibrated? If so how?

Windows Vista does not use sRGB, it uses nothing. sRGB is something and nothing is nothing and something and nothing are not the same thing -- had a couple beers already tonight so that may sound a little funny, but it's right.

Lightroom does not use sRGB. It will export to sRGB, but it does not display your photos in the sRGB color space. Without more info I'll go out on a limb and name this as your problem. Lightroom use the ProPhoto color space while displaying and editing your photos. It doesn't preview your sRGB export and that's a bite in the butt and I suspect you've just been bitten by Lightroom.

Take Care,
Joe

I thought Windows used sRGB by default? I saw a Microsoft tech note that said that was the case. The originals are RAW files. I edited them in LR and exported them as JPEG using sRGB color space. They look great in LR, they look great when I view the local file directly using a browser on my PC, and they look great from Flickr after uploading them, but they look truly horrible if I open them directly in Windows. So strange...

IgsEMT · Aug 22, 2011

clanthar said:
Need some more details from you, but it sounds very much like your suspicions are correct -- color space problem.

Are your originals into Lightroom camera JPEGs or RAW files? Is your computer display calibrated? If so how?

Windows Vista does not use sRGB, it uses nothing. sRGB is something and nothing is nothing and something and nothing are not the same thing -- had a couple beers already tonight so that may sound a little funny, but it's right.

Lightroom does not use sRGB. It will export to sRGB, but it does not display your photos in the sRGB color space. Without more info I'll go out on a limb and name this as your problem. Lightroom use the ProPhoto color space while displaying and editing your photos. It doesn't preview your sRGB export and that's a bite in the butt and I suspect you've just been bitten by Lightroom.

Take Care,
Joe

You sure it was only beer?

:lmao:

Bend The Light · Aug 22, 2011

Strange How?

I had this issue and it was to do with the SIZE of the image. Some programs, and some browsers, and facebook, etc., resize your images to fit, and to do so they use some pretty harsh resizing stuff. My pictures looked really grainy and horrid.
I resized them, took them from 5 or 6Mb down to 500Kb or so, and they displayed perfectly well.
I think the larger files don't resize well in some circumstances.

http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/graphics-programs-photo-gallery/242285-image-displays-wrong.html

Neiby · Aug 22, 2011

Bend The Light said:
Strange How?

I had this issue and it was to do with the SIZE of the image. Some programs, and some browsers, and facebook, etc., resize your images to fit, and to do so they use some pretty harsh resizing stuff. My pictures looked really grainy and horrid.
I resized them, took them from 5 or 6Mb down to 500Kb or so, and they displayed perfectly well.
I think the larger files don't resize well in some circumstances.

http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/graphics-programs-photo-gallery/242285-image-displays-wrong.html

That might be it! The images I was looking at were absolutely huge. It could be that they were beyond the capability of the Vista image viewer, so it had to throw away some stuff to get it to display. On the other hand, I did try some other pictures tonight and they came out incorrectly, although in a different way. This time they were way too dark. I had to really brighten them up in LR to get them to display correctly in Vista.

I'm sure this is just user error and I need to learn the nuances of going from RAW to LR to JPEG. I haven't had any problems for two weeks until tonight, though. That's what made it seem so odd to me. I'll keep playing around with different sizes and see if I can find a way to reliably make this work.

Thanks!

Neiby · Aug 22, 2011

Dang, that's not it. It's like there is clipping and lack of bit depth in the image, particularly with regard to luminosity. Instead of smooth gradation and light, I get discrete areas of different luminosity. WTF?? This should be very simple and straightforward. And since this didn't happen until today, I must have done something to cause it today, but I have no idea what it could possibly be. I haven't changed any preferences or settings other than to troubleshoot this problem.

I think I'll give up on it for now and try again tomorrow.

Neiby · Aug 22, 2011

Okay, now I'm REALLY stumped. I tried JPEGs of various sizes and they all had this problem. I switched to exporting using Adobe RGB just to see if anything would change. It didn't. Then I exported a TIF and even it has the same problem! A 100MB TIF is suffering from the very same problem that does not exist in the RAW or in LR. Hmmm....

Neiby · Aug 22, 2011

Oh, I forgot to mention that I just now updated LR to the latest version and that made no difference. Grrr.... I seriously need to get to bed, but this is driving me nuts.

Neiby · Aug 22, 2011

Hmm....this just gets even stranger. I checked several pictures from before today and I exported them as JPEGs with no problem, but a bunch that I took today have the problem.

Neiby · Aug 22, 2011

Upon further review, this may be caused by dumb luck.

In the photos I'm dealing with today, I have some very bright highlights of a specific color. There seems to be an issue when converting highlights in that range from the color space used by LR to any other color space. I'm not sure that's the problem, but I've seen some other people with the exact same symptoms. No solution yet, though, except perhaps to re-shoot the picture and try not to get that same mixture of color and blown highlights.

EDIT: I just tried cutting the exposure way down and even burning the highlights so nothing in the image stood out. Then I converted it to black and white and it still has this problem! Good freaking grief. This is very annoying because I plan on using a similar technique (light painting) in the future and I don't want to keep running into this.

clanthar · Aug 22, 2011

Good morning.

Yes, I'm sure; Windows isn't sRGB by default. The Windows OS will support an ICC profile for your display but otherwise it's not color managed. The Windows Vista Viewer (Windows Photo Gallery) isn't Windows it's a software utility supplied with Windows. It does support embedded ICC profiles and so it should read your files sRGB tag. Windows IE (broswer) does not support embedded photo profiles and so will not read the sRGB tag. It ignores the profile. Many people assume that ignoring the ICC profile is sRGB by default -- it's not. Firefox and Safari on the other hand do support ICC profiles and will correctly display photos using the photo's ICC profile.

Lightroom supports color management however it doesn't allow you to alter it's working color space. When a file is exported, Lightroom will do a color space conversion to the export space i.e. ProPhoto to sRGB. During that conversion the appearance of the photo can change if the two color spaces have different boundaries. With ProPhoto and sRGB this is the case. The ProPhoto space is considerably larger than the sRGB space. Therefore photos do change when exported from Lightroom to sRGB JPEGs. Adobe provides a Lightroom plugin (download from website) that will permit you to preview the conversion.

Flickr leaves embedded ICC profiles intact and is a good hosting service for that reason. Some hosting services remove the ICC profiles.

Windows Photo Gallery and Firefox should both display the same JPEG file identically; they do on my system. IE however may display the photo differently and Lightroom may display the processed RAW file differently.

Joe