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Firefox 3.5, perhaps finally something for us


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I just stumbled (StumbleUpon: Personalized Recommendations to Help You Discover the Best of the Web, go check, it's fun) on an article about upcoming new Firefox browser 3.5. Usually that's just for the geeks, but this one could be for us ..

 

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Different cameras, monitors, and capture devices grab and set colors in different ways. On the web, most colors look the same, though, because they're filtered and optimized for quick viewing in every browser. Firefox 3.5 introduces dynamic color profiles for each picture, meaning that whatever the graphic designer or photographer saw when they were doing their work, you'll see it on their web page.

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I'll keep you posted.

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The current version of Firefox already has color management, but it has to manually switched on via setting gfx.color_management.enabled to true (by about:config in the the location bar). This makes all colors - tagged images, untagged images, other page elements color managed. However, this slows down page loads a bit.

 

3.5 makes two changes (a) it provides a setting where ONLY tagged images (not other page contents) are color managed, which is a lot faster than color managing everything and (B) makes this setting the default.

 

See here for more: color correction for images in Firefox 3.5 at hacks.mozilla.org

 

Sandy

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I've had this switch on in earlier versions of Firefox for some time. But does it really help though? If you're posting images then you have to assume that the viewer isn't using Firefox or Safari. Until Microsoft adds colour management to IE there seems little point in posting in anything other than SRGB.

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Sandy: Thanks for the additional info. Let's keep our eyes open and share as soon as available!

 

Steve: about IE. Yep, that will still be a "problem". But at least we're starting somewhere.

 

Bill: hang in there!

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By regularly "talking up" and viewing opinions on this improvement we may encourage more and more IE, and other, users to 'come up to speed'. It all takes time. Failing which, the "enlighted few" can still enjoy better viewing as a choice.

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If only it that were that easy :)

 

Even if people had color management in the browser they'd still be trying to profile and calibrate mostly awful-looking high-gloss monitors and laptop screens. All of which makes it kinda pointless to read the profile...

 

But A for effort. I guess the right way to do this with critical shots is to include an sRGB profile after you've converted.

 

People still won't see what you do, but it can't hurt (except that the profile can, in some cases, bloat the size of the JPEG enormously!)

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If only it that were that easy :)

 

I guess the right way to do this with critical shots is to include an sRGB profile after you've converted.

 

I'll have to read up about that, but that would work, wouldn't it?

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I just stumbled (StumbleUpon: Personalized Recommendations to Help You Discover the Best of the Web, go check, it's fun) on an article about upcoming new Firefox browser 3.5. Usually that's just for the geeks, but this one could be for us ..

 

quote

Different cameras, monitors, and capture devices grab and set colors in different ways. On the web, most colors look the same, though, because they're filtered and optimized for quick viewing in every browser. Firefox 3.5 introduces dynamic color profiles for each picture, meaning that whatever the graphic designer or photographer saw when they were doing their work, you'll see it on their web page.

unquote

 

I'll keep you posted.

 

Surely 2 issues still remain. Firstly, most monitors will not reproduce the full colour range of colour spaces like Pro Photo RGB and even Adobe RGB 1998 and of second - apart from 'enthusiasts' and 'professionals' no one calibrates their monitor anyway.

 

Where it could work well though is between 'suppliers' and 'corporate clients'.

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I'll have to read up about that, but that would work, wouldn't it?

 

In a world increasing populated by wide gamut monitors, you really have to.

 

The "hidden impact" of the Firefox 3.5 changes is going to be that on a system that's even somewhat calibrated (e.g., has at least the manufacturer's default profile installed, even if it hasn't been hardware calibrated) untagged images are just going to look horrible next to tagged images. At least previously, everything looked equally horrible(!).

 

Sandy

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In a world increasing populated by wide gamut monitors, you really have to.

 

The "hidden impact" of the Firefox 3.5 changes is going to be that on a system that's even somewhat calibrated (e.g., has at least the manufacturer's default profile installed, even if it hasn't been hardware calibrated) untagged images are just going to look horrible next to tagged images. At least previously, everything looked equally horrible(!).

 

Sandy

 

Yes, if you have a wide gamut monitor, you need to run Firefox with the color management on even if all of the images are sRGB tagged or untagged. Otherwise they'll appear way too saturated. Untagged images will default to sRGB which is pretty likely to be correct.

 

I have noticed some oddities. On Photoshelter.com, the web galleries will show up properly color managed, but when I look at a slide show they'll be over saturated (not color managed) on my wide gamut monitor. This may be a Flash issue.

 

By the way, there is a Firefox add on that allows the color management to easily be turned on and off via a menu item.

 

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6891

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I have noticed some oddities. On Photoshelter.com, the web galleries will show up properly color managed, but when I look at a slide show they'll be over saturated (not color managed) on my wide gamut monitor. This may be a Flash issue.

 

Yes, Flash is an enormous issue for color management. Historically, Flash hasn't been color managed at all. Recent version are "semi" color managed, but it's a real problem for web designers - tying to combine images, CSS colors and Flash is close to mission impossible.

 

Sandy

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Yes, Flash is an enormous issue for color management. Historically, Flash hasn't been color managed at all. Recent version are "semi" color managed, but it's a real problem for web designers - tying to combine images, CSS colors and Flash is close to mission impossible.

 

Sandy

 

 

Yes I see. But I don't understand why Firefox can't assume that Flash presentations are sRGB and display them via my wide gamut profile. Maybe Flash bypasses this.

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Yes I see. But I don't understand why Firefox can't assume that Flash presentations are sRGB and display them via my wide gamut profile. Maybe Flash bypasses this.

 

That's generally where 3.5 is going - or trying to go. Although Firefox has no real control over what color Flash displays in; as Flash is a plug-in, it does what it wants.

 

The issue is, let's say you are building a corporate website, and marketing is really particular about the corporate color scheme. How do you match the color in an image, in a Flash box, as well as in HTML? Right now, well, unless you make some heroic assumptions, you don't.....and you can get three different shades of the corporate colors on one page. Which to the marketing folks is worse than a single "wrong" shade, no matter how badly out of calibration that shade might be.

 

Sandy

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I'll have to read up about that, but that would work, wouldn't it?

 

Yes--it would work--with all the caveats I mentioned and the ones that Alan and Sandy talked about :)

 

What's really weird with Firefox is that my EIZO appears as an "sRGB" monitor to its color management tests, since the LUT is stored in the monitor and not in the profile :)

 

Of course, the system is colour managed...and Firefox honours the profiles and if I load, say, an aRGB or ProPhoto file into the browser it appears correctly, but on the page with CSS etc... the colour management apparently doesn't work ;)

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