Saturation loss after uploading

[pegelli]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

@Anbaric The photos in post #1 were part of an email exchange between Alberti and myself and may have lost their EXIF and color profile in the email exchange.

All other photo's I posted after that look grey/veiled (post #32, 39) have full EXIF and color profile (before upload on my computer and clicking through the LUF lightbox)

Same for all posts that came after and don't show grey/veiled appearance (post #52 and further) have full EXIF and color profile before upload and after clicking through LUF lightbox.

All the photo's that show in the posts on LUF don't have EXIF and/or a color profile, but when I upload to LUF via Firefox they look grey/veiled while if I upload to LUF via Coogle Chrome they look OK. 

So I don't think the grey/veiled appearance is caused by the EXIF/color profile stripping to show a smaller version in the post but is caused by something different that happens when using Firefox and not when using Chrome when I upload the photo to LUF.

Edited September 12, 2021 by pegelli

[Alberti]

The instagram ‘ad’ picture, in the second is not correct anymore, due obvious ro my mistreating the upload. The first one is my intent. Happy now. 

I looked at the website that Jaap pointed to, and from my iPad both top and bottom of each gamut look identical, in the ‘Browser Color Management Test’ .

• On the iMac, with Safari there is great difference.
• With new setting in Firefox that I installed, just like the iPad, there is no perceptual difference (but the color meter sees as negligible difference).

Albaric, I just use LR 6.14; select the handling options in the output for export and that’s it.. I can’t do anything else; I shy away from PS and C1 the latter having so many options that one goes crazy

Edited September 12, 2021 by Alberti

[Advertisement]

The Leica Q3 is available for pre-order at B&H Photo Video and Adorama

[Anbaric]

1 hour ago, pegelli said:

@Anbaric The photos in post #1 were part of an email exchange between Alberti and myself and may have lost their EXIF and color profile in the email exchange.

All other photo's I posted after that look grey/veiled (post #32, 39) have full EXIF and color profile (before upload on my computer and clicking through the LUF lightbox)

Same for all posts that came after and don't show grey/veiled appearance (post #52 and further) have full EXIF and color profile before upload and after clicking through LUF lightbox.

All the photo's that show in the posts on LUF don't have EXIF and/or a color profile, but when I upload to LUF via Firefox they look grey/veiled while if I upload to LUF via Coogle Chrome they look OK. 

So I don't think the grey/veiled appearance is caused by the EXIF/color profile stripping to show a smaller version in the post but is caused by something different that happens when using Firefox and not when using Chrome when I upload the photo to LUF.

Looking at post #32, I think the Adobe RGB lightbox version has the correct profile, but the sRGB lightbox version is really still in Adobe RGB space but has been incorrectly assigned an sRGB profile, rather than converted to sRGB. I've tried (incorrectly) assigning an sRGB profile to the Adobe RGB version in PS and it ends up with muted colours, just like the 'sRGB' version. And I've tried assigning an Adobe RGB profile to the 'sRGB' version and it brightens the colours, looking just like the Adobe RGB version, when viewed in a colour-managed application like PS.

I think that very often when you see an image looking too muted that has started out as Adobe RGB, it is still in the Adobe RGB space but is being interpreted incorrectly, either because its profile has been stripped, or because the application that is viewing it is not colour-managed, or because it has been given an sRGB profile without converting the colours. In Photoshop, this is what happens when you 'Assign to Profile' rather than 'Convert Profile', and use the wrong profile.

Edited September 12, 2021 by Anbaric

[jaapv]

We should consider that the primary image on the forum is intended as a preview or large thumbnail so we should not apply stringent quality criteria. The resolution/sharpness is not optimal either. One should always click through.  

[Alberti]

Pegelli said:

Quote

and may have lost their EXIF and color profile in the email exchange.

I checked your raw Sony ARW file and the XML was even correctly loaded in my LR showing the settings you had choosen; also the jpg EXIF was there when recieved.

[Anbaric]

1 minute ago, jaapv said:

We should consider that the primary image on the forum is intended as a preview or large thumbnail so we should not apply stringent quality criteria. The resolution/sharpness is not optimal either. One should always click through.  

Sure! But I think if everyone converts (not assigns) their images to sRGB, then the preview should pretty much match the original. One of the problems here is that the preview image has no profile, so it will always be treated as if it were sRGB even if the browser is colour-managed. That's not so bad if the original is sRGB. But if the original uploaded image is Adobe RGB, there'll be a colour shift between the original and the preview, with the preview losing saturation, or whatever the technical term is.

[pegelli]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

@AnbaricThat's a very interesting observation. I'm 100 % sure the file before upload is showing how I want it and has a sRGB profile, it only becomes muted (some kind of weird color profile swap) after upload via Firefox but when I do it via Chrome all is OK. Puzzling, very puzzling.........

Look at the difference of post #32 (the "sRGB" labelled image) uploaded via Firefox and post # 52 (the "Exported from Lightroom as sRGB" labelled image) uploaded via Chrome. It's essentially the same file but I only added the white letters "Exported from Lightroom as" and resaved. So either my computer or LUF behaves differently between Firefox and Chrome and I suspect it's my computer, because from another computer uploading to LUF via Firefox went without colour loss.

I'm really at a loss what can cause such a problem 🤔

[Anbaric]

Here's an experiment - I've taken the 'sRGB' image from post #32, assigned an Adobe RGB profile, then converted it to sRGB in Photoshop and uploaded it with Firefox:

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

vs Smugmug link:

Edited September 12, 2021 by Anbaric

[pegelli]

17 minutes ago, Alberti said:

Pegelli said:

I checked your raw Sony ARW file and the XML was even correctly loaded in my LR showing the settings you had choosen; also the jpg EXIF was there when recieved.

When I received them back from you in the email you sent me the EXIF and color profile were gone. I also saw them in Microsoft Outlook as "embedded" photo's in the text and not as attachments. Don't know if that's caused by your email program or mine but I don't think it matters any more give the additional discoveries that were made in this thread!

[pegelli]

7 minutes ago, Anbaric said:

Here's an experiment - I've taken the 'sRGB' image from post #32, assigned an Adobe RGB profile, then converted it to sRGB in Photoshop and uploaded it with Firefox:

 

Thanks Anbaric, looks indeed that the colour loss/grey veil is gone so your theory on a wrongly assigned profile seems correct. So somehow in the upload process my sRGB file is converted to AdobeRGB but still keeps the wrong sRGP profile attached leading to the wrong ligtbox view, but this only happens when I upload via Firefox on my computer. Chrome on any computer or Firefox on another computer this problem does not occur.

Edited September 12, 2021 by pegelli

[Anbaric]

I can see a difference in saturation between the 're-conversion' and the Smugmug version even in Lightbox mode (maybe my profiles are a bit different to yours), but it's not nearly as drastic as before.

Edited September 12, 2021 by Anbaric

[jaapv]

1 hour ago, Anbaric said:

Sure! But I think if everyone converts (not assigns) their images to sRGB, then the preview should pretty much match the original. One of the problems here is that the preview image has no profile, so it will always be treated as if it were sRGB even if the browser is colour-managed. That's not so bad if the original is sRGB. But if the original uploaded image is Adobe RGB, there'll be a colour shift between the original and the preview, with the preview losing saturation, or whatever the technical term is.

If the file is sRGB but has lost its profile or is flagged as another space you can recover it by assigning the correct colour space. 

[jaapv]

1 hour ago, Anbaric said:

Here's an experiment - I've taken the 'sRGB' image from post #32, assigned an Adobe RGB profile, then converted it to sRGB in Photoshop and uploaded it with Firefox:

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

vs Smugmug link:

Smugmug is still better. 

[Anbaric]

42 minutes ago, jaapv said:

If the file is sRGB but has lost its profile or is flagged as another space you can recover it by assigning the correct colour space. 

Yes, I've assigned what I think is the correct profile to the image above (in this case Adobe RGB), then I've converted (not assigned) the image to sRGB for web viewing.

34 minutes ago, jaapv said:

Smugmug is still better. 

Yes, and I'm not sure why. The version uploaded here that is correctly flagged as Adobe RGB isn't as saturated as the Smugmug version either, even when viewed in colour-managed Photoshop, where it is very close to my 're-conversion'. The Smugmug version is correctly flagged as sRGB, so it must have been properly converted rather than just having a profile assigned if the image started as Adobe RGB. The increased saturation may reflect the conversion settings.

[pegelli]

Thanks for all the help so far. I think I know now how to avoid the problem (use Chrome to upload) but I'm still in the dark what causes the saturation loss when I upload from Firefox and not when I upload from Chrome. Until I figure it out, or maybe it magically corrects itsef at a future update from Firefox, I'll just don't use this method.

Edited September 13, 2021 by pegelli

[mbphotox]

Wanna see a really bad example?!

Forum Software:

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

Same file (sRGB exported from Lightroom) uploaded via abload.de (using Firefox)

 

I know, this is an extreme example (with the red channel clipping even due to the insane dynamic range of that scene)...

 

I've been struggling with this issue for years now. Never uploaded to this forum directly, always used abload, because the Forum Software completely wrecks my files.
I don't udnerstand why, because they do have a colour profile embedded and the free image hosting service of abload has never failed me in 10+ years now.

[pegelli]

9 minutes ago, mbphotox said:

Wanna see a really bad example?!

---- snip -----

I've been struggling with this issue for years now. Never uploaded to this forum directly, always used abload, because the Forum Software completely wrecks my files.

I don't udnerstand why, because they do have a colour profile embedded and the free image hosting service of abload has never failed me in 10+ years now.

Glad to know I'm not alone

I assume you "bad" example via the forum software was uploaded using Firefox?

Have you tried to upload the same file via Chrome (this solved the problem for me) or on a different computer.

[mbphotox]

Yes, I've been using Firefox for over 15 years now...

I actually don't use Chrome, so I haven't tried that option yet.

I'd rather figure out why Firefox struggles with this.

[wda]

11 hours ago, mbphotox said:

Yes, I've been using Firefox for over 15 years now...

I actually don't use Chrome, so I haven't tried that option yet.

I'd rather figure out why Firefox struggles with this.

I also use Firefox and have just checked my settings, which are shown here:    

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

Note that the default setting is as shown, thus preserving embedded colour profiles attached to the picture file. I am not sure whether this applies only to backgrounds, but my pictures attached to emails seem natural and as shot.

[Advertisement]

Hallo,

Look here: Interesting Leica gear

[pegelli]

Thanks @wda, I think those colour settings only influence how the text and background of websites is shown and as far as I can see it doesn't impact images.

But it needs to be somewhere else in the Firefox setting when uploading images to certain websites, Firefox to SmugMug/Flickr goes OK, Firefox to LUF doesn't from this computer (saturation is lost), but from my laptop via Firefox everything seems OK without colour loss.

One day I'm going to put both computers side-by-side and look at all the different settings but that will take time because there are so many variables when you open "about:config", and since I found a solution using Chrome for image uploads to LUF it dropped to a much lower spot on my priority list.

Edited September 22, 2021 by pegelli