Photoshop and Browsers have different colors (again)

[deconb]

Hi guys, I KNOW this has been gone over and over, I've read several threads here and other places and something is STILL not clicking.

The problem is that when I edit in photoshop, I can't get my colors to be the same in firefox or ie, or even close enough. ACR says they're sRGB. I even make a point of converting to sRGB before I save from a 'raw' or PSD to a jpg.

So hopefully my question is a little different, and I apologize for rehashing this, I wouldn't do it if I thought I had another outlet.

What I REALLY want, is to see in photoshop what I'm going to see in firefox. 90% of what I do ends up on firefox. So if firefox is ignoring some profile (still confused what this is), how can I make photoshop ALSO ignore that profile.

I hope this makes sense and I hope somebody can offer some help, thanks for reading, I've been banging my head against this for a few days now.

[Damo77]

90% of what I do ends up on firefox.

I don't see how you figure that. Sure, maybe you use Firefox on your computer, and I know it's gaining popularity all over the world, but it certainly isn't used by 90% of web surfers!

[Damo77]

Sorry, that wasn't really an answer, was it?

Look, there's no real answer to this one. It would be a good start for all of us if one of two things happened:

1) Everybody in the world used Safari (not gonna happen); or
2) Every other browser becomes colour-managed (almost certainly will happen eventually, but not for a little while, I guess)

But even then, there's NO WAY we can get everyone in the world to calibrate their monitors - not even with Adobe Gamma, let alone a device like an Eye-One. That's just absurd.

You just have to accept it - as soon as your images go on the web, they're at the mercy of whatever dodgy monitor they're viewed on. The best you can do is calibrate your own monitor, work in sRGB, then shrug your shoulders and forget about it.

[deconb]

90% of what I do is viewed with a web browser.. most of that is ff or ie, both of which have the same issue.

I understand our monitors are all different etc, I would be happy if I could edit in photoshop and it would look like it's going to in MY browser.

So as a little test, I created a 72x72px image, filled it with 00ff00, converted to rgb, everything is still 00ff00, I save it as a jpg, lvl 12, open it in firefox and I *think* I can see the difference. When I screen capture that an then use the color picker again, the color is now 00ff01, is that a jpg compression thing or is that colorspace?

I know that seems like a small difference, but I still think I can see it. Heh, maybe it's just my mind playing tricks on me now.

So again, what I'm looking for is just to get photoshop to behave the way firefox (or ie) would.

[Damo77]

Interesting, I'd say it's a jpeg compression thing.

Well, you can turn off colour management in Photoshop, but that's very bad practice. Remember, the "s" in sRGB stands for "standard" - it's an approximation of the average colours that all monitors show. Much wiser people than you and I have established these standards, and, to a greater or lesser degree, all monitor manufacturers attempt to comply with them. sRGB is your best bet.

[deconb]

I do have my working space set to sRGB, but what is firefox displaying?

[Damo77]

Firefox is displaying whatever clumsy colour your monitor has been manufactured to display. Hopefully, it's in the ballpark of sRGB, but it won't be exact, obviously.

[deconb]

ohhhh kay. That makes a lot more sense, I was picking up from everything I read that it was displaying sRGB, I was probably wrong in picking that up :)

So I appreciate your help and patience btw, very polite of you :)

So it seems that if I set my colorspace to monitor in photoshop, it should be the same as what I see in firefox. It doesn't however.

I guess I just have to give up and resign myself to the fact that images in firefox are never going to look as good as they do in PS. Disappointing.

[Damo77]

Ha ha! If you think that's disappointing, don't have a look at your images on a friend's computer!

[gcogger]

Damien is absolutely correct - it's really not worth spending time getting Photoshop and your monitor to look the same, since it will look different to everyone else.

Another reason not to do this is that monitors change over time, as they age. You could edit an image to look good now but it will then look different in 6 months or a year. The only way to avoid this is to keep calibrating your monitor, and to view the images in a colour managed application (a browser ignores your monitor profile).

If you still want to make the images look the same in Photoshop as they do in your browser, you can tell Photoshop to proof the colours to your monitor profile. It's somewhere under the 'View' menu I think (proof setup?). I don't have access to Photoshop just now, so can't be sure. I really wouldn't recommend this, though...

[René Damkot]

Yep. You cannot expect a non color managed application to display colors correctly.
You can soft proof for *your* monitor, by going View > Proof > Monitor RGB. (Have a look at post #40 (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showpost.php?p=3274234&postcount=40) in the link from my sig)
It's still a guess how it will look on anybody else's monitor though...

[PixelMagic]

NEVER EVER set your Photoshop color space to Monitor.

The fact that this option is shown is simply a convenience so the Photoshop user knows that he's working with a calibrated monitor. (With a calibrated monitor you see the monitor's make and model; with an uncalibrated monitor it just says sRGB or such).


If you're so bothered by the difference between a color-aware application (Photoshop) and a non-color aware application (Firefox) you should install the Firefox 3 beta because it is now color-aware. That means that when the color management option is enabled and your images have an sRGB color profile embedded, they should look the same TO YOU in Photoshop and Firefox. Doesn't mean that others will see the images as you do; especially if their monitors are not calibrated.

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html


ohhhh kay. That makes a lot more sense, I was picking up from everything I read that it was displaying sRGB, I was probably wrong in picking that up :)

So I appreciate your help and patience btw, very polite of you :)

So it seems that if I set my colorspace to monitor in photoshop, it should be the same as what I see in firefox. It doesn't however.

I guess I just have to give up and resign myself to the fact that images in firefox are never going to look as good as they do in PS. Disappointing.

[René Damkot]

So it seems that if I set my colorspace to monitor in photoshop, it should be the same as what I see in firefox. It doesn't however.

If you set PS color prefs to 'Monitor Color', you essentially turn off color management, so yes, PS and FF should look identical.
(Not sure what happens to images with a color profile though, since I've never used it)

I would very much not recommend it however. :p