Why does this happen on FLICKR?

[burstintoflame81]

Click the thumbnail, I am not sure why the thumbnail is screwed. I just took a screen shot. Left is Flickr and right is the photo opened in CS4 and it looks the same viewed with Windows, Bridge, or ACR. Why does this change occur?



It does the same thing on Photo bucket.

 

[fokker]

What exactly is the change you are talking about?

 

[burstintoflame81]

The color. The saturation is gone. Look at the reds in the trees and on the ground. The greens in the leaves. Its all washed out.

I have been tinkering with it since posting this message and have found that if I downsize the image and "Save for Web" in CS4, the file that it gives me looks decent when uploaded. So I am going to try it with a few more and see if it works with the next few.

 

[pharmakon]

Maybe something in the compression settings? or color mode Adobe RGB vs sRGB. Just a guess.

 

[UUilliam]

your colour mode, In photoshop make sure sRGB is selected (or when shooting with your camera)
The web uses SRGB
LAB is for print and so is CMYK (I am about 90% sure LAB is for print)

 

[KmH]

your colour mode, In photoshop make sure sRGB is selected (or when shooting with your camera)
The web uses SRGB
LAB is for print and so is CMYK (I am about 90% sure LAB is for print)

CMYK is for offset-press printing, not photographic prints.
LAB is also not for photographic prints.

But otherwise, William is probably right that it's because of the color space of your image.

Before you leave Photoshop: click Edit > Convert to Profile and make sure the Destination Space is set to sRGB.

 

[burstintoflame81]

Well my workspace is set in sRGB, and when I save I attach the ICC profile. I do shoot in AdobeRGB which I need to change to sRGB in my camera, but I always change it when opening in CS4. If it is in sRGB workspace and being saved with ICC profile sRGB, should I still convert it so that the actual file is changed and not just having an ICC attached to it? ( not sure if it would work that way or not. ) Perhaps the websites cannot read the ICC?

 

[ErectedGryphon]

Well my workspace is set in sRGB, and when I save I attach the ICC profile. I do shoot in AdobeRGB which I need to change to sRGB in my camera, but I always change it when opening in CS4. If it is in sRGB workspace and being saved with ICC profile sRGB, should I still convert it so that the actual file is changed and not just having an ICC attached to it? ( not sure if it would work that way or not. ) Perhaps the websites cannot read the ICC?

I would guess you have the answer, I doubt the website even looks at the ICC.

 

[musicaleCA]

Well my workspace is set in sRGB, and when I save I attach the ICC profile. I do shoot in AdobeRGB which I need to change to sRGB in my camera, but I always change it when opening in CS4. If it is in sRGB workspace and being saved with ICC profile sRGB, should I still convert it so that the actual file is changed and not just having an ICC attached to it? ( not sure if it would work that way or not. ) Perhaps the websites cannot read the ICC?

Your working colour space is the colour space of your monitor. For all intents and purposes, unless you have a wide-gamut monitor and know what the heck you're doing, this should always be sRGB. It's what Photoshop uses to display colours accurately on your monitor.

If you always shoot in AdobeRGB, but convert the profile right away, there's not much point in using it.

Whether or not the website reads the ICC profile of the image doesn't matter, unless the website converts it, and Flickr won't do that. It's your browser that either colour manages or doesn't. Firefox 3.0 can colour manage, but you have to enable it via a custom setting. That means that when the image has an ICC profile of a different colour space than sRGB, it will render it correctly (in sRGB, for your monitor). However, this is largely a moot point, because sRGB is the accepted standard for all web development, simply because it's universal. If an image doesn't have an ICC profile, it's assumed to be in sRGB.

 

[burstintoflame81]

Perhaps that is the problem. I am on my laptop right now, but will have to try to convert later. I got the images to work, but had to use the "Convert for Web" feature which I am assuming that it compresses them in sRGB or something. However, when I upload to Walgreens website my prints come out terrible, and I noticed that the change occurs actually on the website not the printing process, because when I view the album I can see its changed already. So perhaps this is the same issue causing that.

Should I be printing in 300dpi? and then smaller for web?

 

[musicaleCA]

DPI has no relevance until you go to print. It is relative depending on print size and intended viewing distance. A 4x6" print viewed from arm's length should be around 300dpi, yes, but a 40x50" viewed from quite a ways back could easily be printed at 150dpi and still look good with good printing techniques (continuous tone printing being among them).

Colour spaces are not a form of compression; you don't compress AdobeRGB into sRGB. You convert it.