sRGB and
Adobe RGB are colorspaces, which are interpreted to define the range of colors that a device will display. sRGB is a smaller subset of possible colors than Adobe RGB. The problem I've been having with my photos on
Flickr is that, although I was taking them in sRGB, I was editing them and uploading them in Adobe RGB. Unfortunately, Flickr strips the color profile information and assumes sRGB, altering how the colors in my photos appear online versus what I intended to display. This results in comments like, "This photo would be great if it were more saturated," which is very frustrating when I know that the original image I produced is more saturated, but Flickr isn't displaying it properly. The fix is to convert the photo from Adobe RGB to sRGB in Photoshop before uploading because Photoshop does a better job of interpreting the colors than Flickr does. Although the color is still not exactly what I intended because sRGB doesn't have the range of colors that Adobe RGB has, my photo is now a lot closer to what I intended because Photoshop does a better job of interpolating the colors between the colorspaces.
Below is an example of the same photograph being saved in the two different colorspaces and uploaded to Flickr. Although the first is not a bad image, one can see that it is less intense and looks more brown than the second image, which looks brighter and redder. The results are a bit counterintuitive because sRGB is a subset of Adobe RGB. However, because of the way Flickr handles uploads, it is best to save photos in sRGB before uploading to Flickr.
Adobe RGB
sRGB
The
staff of Flickr has posted that they plan to stop stripping the color profiles from JPEGs, but this has not been implemented, yet, and there is no ETA. This is probably low on their priority list because it will increase data storage requirements if they stop stripping color profiles.
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16 comments:
Brilliant.. thanks for this.. I have experienced the same problem, often saturation can make or break a photo!
After wrestling with this problem for a long time, I finally discovered that different view settings in Photoshop CS1 radically alter how you see an image - if you want to see how your image will look when saved for web, go to View>Proof Setup and select Monitor RGB.
I"m having the same problem as you have since I'm using mac and photoshop, not the gimp anymore... But if I look at my stream in safari there's no problem for me at all... does that mean the problem comes from Firefox and not flickr ?
I've been struggling with this for sometime and although choosing the sRGB profile *helped* restore some of the saturation, what actually ended up retaining it all together was exporting the photo (whether it was edited in Lightroom, Apeture, iPhoto, or what) from Photoshop.
This works for me. I'm not sure if it will help others but now my photos look identical in both Safari and Firefox.
Open your photo in Photoshop, go to Edit > Convert to Profile and choose "Color LCD". This is the profile for my MacBook Pro's LCD. If you aren't using a MBP, select the color profile your display is using.
Then export using Save For Web and make sure that convert to sRGB is NOT selected.
Good luck.
-Mason
Mason,
That will work if you're using a MacBook, but it won't work for most. 90% of the computers out there are PCs and sRGB is the standard for the web. The photos will look great on your monitor, but it will not be optimized for the vast majority of users.
Janine
Janine,
I wish I would've heeded your advise sooner. You're right, I just realized that what I was doing wasn't really improving the images for anyone but me (and some other MBP users).
I've since started embedded sRGB upon exporting.
Thank you,
Mason
Thanks, this helped a lot!!
This is great. I've been trying to figure out this problem for a while now. My flickr friends never had the color problems like me. Maybe they just don't care about the colors like I do
This is for both Janine and Mason. I use a MBP. I noticed that if I upload with sRGB its better but not totally there. Does this mean that it's still uploaded correct and its just an Apple Computers thing? And how do I get it to look right to me and still everyone on the web?
Much Love,
Anita
niters,
There is no one perfect solution. Color spaces are specific to the media they are displayed in. Your monitor is a different media than a different model monitor. sRBG is the standard for the web because it is a restricted color space that most monitors can display. You probably have colors in your original image that aren't included or don't translate well to sRGB. Your best option is to save multiple versions of the image designed for each media that you're interested in displaying your image in. For example, save to sRGB for general web upload and save to Adobe RGB or your monitor's color space for using the image as your desktop background. For printing, you might skip RGB all together and use CMYK. Decide what you want to use your image for, then save it using a color profile that is designed for that purpose.
THANK YOU!!! After putting in so much work refining picture in Ps it was so frustrating to upload them for other eyes and find that they didn't even retain saturation. It's nice to know that I'm not going crazy!
Indeed thank you. I just joined Flickr on a pro account and finally using it for good. I right noticed that problem and your blog came in really handy to help me fix this loss of saturation.
Converting to sRGB certainly made a big difference but doesn't solve everything. Some of the shots still need to be further corrected with Picknick, which is a little time consuming. I hope FLickr will stop dropping the colour profile soon
Love your self portrait at the top of the blog.
Thank you! You've solved my mystery. I've been inadvertently saving in AdobeRGB using Lightroom and my colors were just being desaturated on flickr. Saving them in sRGB did the trick!
Hi all
Flickr dropping colour profiles is only half the problem. Even if a picture has a profile attached to it, most browsers don't pick it up but just assume it's sRGP. Safari is one of the few that does use colour profiles.
thanks -- this was a huge help! check out some of the color results...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/whervish
Janine,
You've just solved the colour problem for me and stopped me going mental figuring it out, thanks for posting this!
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