I recently posted an article on how to calibrate a monitor, but completely forgot to mention about using color-managed applications. Whenever you deal with different color profiles on your pictures, you should always use color-managed applications. Otherwise, some of the pictures could appear abnormal and the colors could be way off.
One of the most basic applications that we would expect to have integrated color-management is our Internet browser that we use everyday. Surprisingly, many of the most popular browsers such as Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and Opera simply ignore color profiles embedded into pictures. Therefore, for ultimate photo-viewing experience, you should always try to use a color-managed browser. The best and the most popular color-managed browser is Mozilla Firefox. It is my favorite browser and I use it primarily to surf the web.
Mac users do not have to deal with this, because the Apple Safari browser already has full support for color profiles.
How can you tell if your browser is color-managed?
Take a look at both of the below images on your browser. If they look identical as far as colors are concerned, then your browser is color-managed. If the second image below appears to have a dark blue/magenta sky with yellowish sand, then your browser is not color-managed.
If you see any differences between the above pictures, you should change your browser!
About Nasim Mansurov
I am puzzled. I am using Firefox but those images are different in colour. The skies are the same, but the land area is different, with the land area being paler in colour, including the mountain area.
Kerry,
What version of Firefox are you using? Make sure that your version is at least 3.5. Also, what monitor do you have?
If the colors are just slightly different, it is not an issue. But if it is very noticeable, then something might be wrong with your browser and/or monitor settings.
Please let me know.
Hi Nasim
Many thanks for responding. I have the latest version of Firefox – I always update as soon as one is available. I have a Dell 1909W. It isn’t drastically noticeable just slightly lighter on the bottom image. I tried moving it up the screen to see if the colours altered – I thought perhaps it might be the monitor but the colours didn’t change. In the bottom image I get more detail in the mountains.
Kerry, according to TFT Central, your monitor is “TN Film”, which means that it is not a good monitor for photography – the color reproduction is not good on TN monitors. That’s probably why you are seeing different images.
I have plenty of PCs at my work and I tried using Firefox on 3-4 of them (not calibrated) and all of them display both images identically.
One thing you should try, is resetting your monitor brightness/contrast levels to factory default. Also, what happens when you view the above images in Internet Explorer? Do you see the same problem or do the images look substantially different?
Hi Nasim
Thanks for your further advice. I have just checked the image using Internet Explorer and the difference is amazing: you would think they were two different images the colours are so different.
I have also reset to the factory settings but I still get the difference with firefox I can only assume it is down to the monitor being a TN monitor. Unfortunately I only recently bought this one and I wasn’t aware at the time about the different types of monitor and what was best for photography. We live and learn and once again I have learnt a lesson the hard way. :-( Thanks for the time and effort you are putting into these really informative articles.
Kerry, you are most welcome!
I was hoping that it wasn’t the monitor, but it seems like it is your monitor that is having issues with color reproduction in this case :(
Hello Nasim,
I found out your website while going over a post from Matt Kloskowski where you left a comment recently (some sunrise special spot). Anyway going over this article I noticed that using macos x and Google Chrome (rel. 5.0.375.28 dev) both images have the same colors. Not sure about linux/windows Chrome versions but with mac you’ll be safe.
Regards and congratulations for the fine blog site, went directly to my list of sites to review often.
Thank you Rodrigo, appreciate your feedback!
Yes, one more person reported that Chrome on MacOS is color managed :) I will update the article to reflect this, since it is now fully confirmed.
This is great, useful info, Nasim! How did I not know this? :-) I’ll be passing your link on to my favorite online art community (onlinevisualartists.com).
Thanks for sharing!
Posted your links, here – http://onlinevisualartists.com/forum/index.php?topic=3384.new#new
Unfortunately, I cannot view the above URL because it requires registration. But thank you for posting it, I really appreciate it!
Wendy, thank you very much for posting the link!
This is great article!
I have just checked all available Mac OS Browsers and was amazed of the result.
Checked with 24″ iMac.
Safari 4.0.5 – Yes / Safari 5 – Yes (no doubt!)
Firefox 3.0.19 – No / Firefox 3.6.6 – Yes!
Chrome 5.0.375.99 – Yes
Opera – Unfortunately no support from Opera even with the latest update – 10.60
Would love if someone post browser test for Internet Explorer (Windows)
Thanks once again for the post!
Jessica, thank you for sharing these, it is great to see that most browsers support color management on Macs!
The latest version of IE (8.0.7600) on Windows 7 does not support color profiles…
On my Mac running 10.5.8, both Safari 4.0.2 and Firefox 3.6.8 pass the “no difference between images” test (here and elsewhere), yet display the images very differently between them, much more saturation on Firefox. However, compared to color managed images in Photoshop, Safaris is correct, Firefox is way off! It may be that Firefox has a problem dealing with my wide-gamut monitor that Safari manages properly. Another nuance. Thanks for making this available.
Rick, you are most welcome! It is interesting that you have such a difference in Firefox. I’m also using a wide-gamut monitor and Firefox 3.6.8 is showing both the same.
Nasim
So I replicated the test at work, where I have an older Apple Cinema (normal gamut) monitor. All of the images are identical, on both Firefox and Safari. Same computer.
So Firefox somehow fails when it is faced with my HP wide gamut monitor at home but works with your wide gamut monitor! Very odd, but good to learn.
Rick
Rick, is your monitor calibrated at home?
Both monitors are hardware calibrated.
Rick
That is strange…I guess Firefox has a problem with wide gamut monitor profiles then. Good to know, thanks for the info! :)
I first read this post on my iPhone and the photos look different. I was surprised since I the iPhone uses Safari. Hmmm!
Hello,
I just love the way you have said it all in this article.
Keep up in the good work.
There is one issue that I still have unsettled. My problem is that I have lost color settings
both for my micro-soft and the browsers. Currently am using google chrome after Mozilla fire fox 4,
and internet explorer stopped displaying the background colors of all the websites I visit. All what I see is a white background with no colors effect. My Microsoft office is also affected and only displays a grey background what do I do?
Regards