RAW export color problem (long)

Hello,

I hope this is the right forum for posting this--I have a very frustrating color problem that only seems to happen when I export from Canon RAW, so I thought this would be an appropriate place.

I'm using a Canon Digital Rebel, and I recently started experimenting with shooting in RAW rather than JPG. The photos look great, and I love the level of color correcting I'm able to do with them. The problem, though, comes when I export to JPG.

I use iPhoto (on the Mac) as my photo organizing software. When I export a photo to a JPG and put it up on my website, it looks great on my Mac. But when I look at it on a Windows web browser, it looks terrible--the colors are muted and flat.

Here's the weird thing, though. I've tried two different Windows web browsers(Firefox and IE), and the colors in these photos look blah in both of them. But if I save the file to my hard drive and open it up in "Windows Picture and Fax Viewer", the colors look correct, the way they looked on my Mac. Even weirder, if I take a screenshot (CTRL-Print Screen), crop out the picture, and save it back as a JPG, it shows the correct colors even in a web browser. So the color information is in there, and Windows is capable of displaying it, it's just that the browsers are displaying it wrong.

Here's an example:
http://www.whosefaulty​vision.com …s/leaves_side_b​y_side.bmp
These are both screenshots taken from the same file, on the same computer. The only difference is that the screenshot on the left comes from the file opened in "Windows Picture and Fax Viewer", and the screenshot on the right comes from the file opened in a web browser.

As far as I can tell, this doesn't happen with pictures I shot in JPG, or pictures I scanned in from film--only pictures I shot in RAW. Oh, and I tried exporting to PNG instead of JPG, and got the same problem. I also tried using Photoshop rather than iPhoto to export the pictures, and it didn't help.

Please help! It's probably obvious that I'm new to RAW, but I really want to keep using it. But I also want my photos to look good to Windows users, and right now, I'd be embarrassed to show them.

Thanks!

Windows browsers are not color managed so make sure when you Save as a JPEG you convert the image to sRGB. IT sounds like when you save and view on Windows Picture and Fax viewer that you are somehow converting the document to the correct color space as Picture and Fax viewer is also not color managed.

In2Photos wrote in post #2400376
Windows browsers are not color managed so make sure when you Save as a JPEG you convert the image to sRGB. IT sounds like when you save and view on Windows Picture and Fax viewer that you are somehow converting the document to the correct color space as Picture and Fax viewer is also not color managed.

I'm sure many are already aware of this, but the important word in Mike's reply is "Convert" to sRGB. If an image is in any other color space such as Adobe RGB or any other wide gamut color space, do not "Assign" sRGB, as the individual color values are not sRGB and this will cause muted, desaturated colors on Windows browsers. Make sure to "Convert" to sRGB.

Thank you both! It works! I've been beating my head against this for days, and you come along and solve it in a few minutes...wow.

Now, iPhoto doesn't have a direct "Export in sRGB" option, so I have to go through Photoshop for every picture I want to put online, but that's a small price to pay for colors that look decent in Windows.

Thanks again!

Check the iPhoto config, maybe you can configure it for sRgb.

This problem comes up almost every day, so anyone who spends any time reading forum threads usually knows about it. Stick around and read a bit, you're sure to learn something

tim wrote in post #2401057
Stick around and read a bit, you're sure to learn something

You know, I think I will.

Hey guys, I am new here and had a question similar to this. I am exporting .dng out of lightroom to jpg. Would the solution here be the same for me? The pictures look good in Photoshop, elements and in lightroom, but when I look at them in ACDsee Pro or fax viewer they look dull.

What colorspace?
A non color managed appliction (such as fax viewer) wil display an sRGB file rather well. A file in a larger color space (AdobeRGB, ProphotoRGB) will look 'dull'.
Have a read in the link from my sig...