What quality can I expect from Internet Explorer?

cedriccicada · Nov 24, 2011

Greetings!

I recently converted a photograph to black and white, and worked with it in Photoshop to get what I felt to be a very good result. But when I uploaded it to the web, it didn't look nearly as good. I tried a few places, including using IE to look at the file on my computer. Here's one of them:

http://www.friendsofcrowellhilaka.org/images/x.jpg

The problem is the trees in the distance, on the left. In the original file as seen in Photoshop, there's plenty of detail in those trees. But when looking at it through IE, there's little detail, and all I see is a gray blob. Is there something I need to do to ensure that I get all the shadow detail I want, or is there some adjustment I have to make to the photograph so that detail won't get lost when IE is used to view it?

Thanks very much!

RobR

Big Mike · Nov 24, 2011

What color space do you have the image in?

Bitter Jeweler · Nov 24, 2011

Cleveland Rocks!

That is all.

cedriccicada · Nov 25, 2011

Big Mike said:
What color space do you have the image in?

Thanks for your reply.

I do not know. How can I find out, and what color space should I have it in?

RobR

ghache · Nov 25, 2011

its time to read on color space and monitor calibration. you CANT blame internet explorer LOL.

Big Mike · Nov 25, 2011

I ask about color space, because that is the usual suspect when images don't appear as expected when viewed on-line.

The color space that is most common is 'sRGB'. That is what IE uses, and Firefox and most/all the other browsers as well. In other words, when the browser sees an image, it expects that image to be in sRGB. If it's not, then it will misinterpret that image, messing up the colors/tones etc.

Other common color spaces for photos would be 'AdobeRGB' or 'ProPhotoRGB'. AdobeRGB is larger (better) than sRGB and ProPhoto is even better than that. But sRGB is so ingrained...most monitors can't even display the range of colors bigger than sRGB. A color space being better, just mean that is has a larger gamut. This is more important when you are exhaustively editing your photos.

So, the key to all of this, is remembering that if you are going to display your photos online...or if you are going to send them to a typical lab for printing, you will want to convert them to sRGB, so that they are not misinterpreted.

So how do you know? In Photoshop, go up to the 'Image' menu and choose 'Mode'. That will show you what color space you are in and what you can covert to. For black & white images, you can choose 'Greyscale' which tosses out the color information. I would think that this would help the images be displayed accurately in a browser, but I'm not 100% sure of that.

cedriccicada · Nov 25, 2011

ghache said:
its time to read on color space and monitor calibration. you CANT blame internet explorer LOL.

Yes, indeed. If I want to be seriously good, I need to be seriously educated.

RobR

cedriccicada · Nov 25, 2011

Many thanks for your explanation, Big Mike. I will play and let you know what happens.

RobR

Futurelight · Nov 25, 2011

Alternatively, if it isn't to do with the color space, you should look at the file type you are saving it as. Although jpg is a good high quality standard, if you save as .gif the image is already set up for the web. The most common and safe file size for photos to display (NOT for download) is a 6x4 inch @ 72dpi .gif. This eliminates photo theft as when it gets downloaded (right-click - save image as) the downloaded image is too low quality to do anything with and, if printed, will be blurred through-out.

cedriccicada · Nov 25, 2011

Big Mike's suggestion about the color space turned out to be correct. I found that the image mode was "Grayscale". I changed it from 8 bits to 16 bits and to RGB mode. The result was what I expected it to be:

http://www.friendsofcrowellhilaka.org/images/fallen_tree_2.jpg

Thanks again for all your help!

RobR

Big Mike · Nov 25, 2011

FYI....you can change it to 16 bits...but when you save it as a JPEG, it's back to 8bit. JPEG is only capable of 8 bit AFAIK.

Also, I've loaded your first and most recent photos into two separate tabs on my browser...and going back and forth between them, I don't see a lick of difference.

cedriccicada · Nov 25, 2011

Interesting. For me, the first one I uploaded has much lighter dark areas, and is overall too light for my liking. The second one matches what I see in Photoshop. The darks are much darker and richer, and have much more detail.

RobR