Firefox for windows! (Why photographers should be using it)
 

Contrary to popular belief, Safari is not the only browser to support ICC colour profiles........;) ;)

I’ve discovered that Firefox can be set up to enable colour management profiles. To do this, in the address bar type

about:config

You will be presented with a long list of preferences. You need to add a new preference called “gfx.color_management.enabled”

To add this new preference, right-click anywhere and choose New, then select the type of preference as

Boolean

You will be prompted for the preference name, enter the text

gfx.color_management.enabled

and set the initial value to

True

Close Firefox and then reopen, your browser will now use any colour profiles embedded in images that are displayed.

To reset a preference to its default value or to remove an added preference, right-click on the preference and select Reset. If you added the entry via about:config, the preference will no longer be listed after restarting the program.

My heart leapt when I saw this; unfortunately on mac (OS10.3.9), I get as far as the long list of preferences, but can find no way of adding a new one.

Anyone (like Stephen or Andy) tried this on mac?

Is the right click short for an instruction that can be achieved some other way?

Would love never to see safari again, but at present only option for pics

Sorry, Chris.

I am a staunch Safari user, it just works! No messing around changing this and that simply colours displayed as they should. ;)

Chris,

A fuller description of how to edit config can be found here:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Editing_configuration
Note, it describes "context click", I have no idea how to do this on a Mac, it may make sense to you.

Alternatively, you could just use this add-on
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6891
That way, there's no messing around changing this and that...... ;)

Thank you Duncan

Have tried both ways but it didn't like me messing with the preference list (control click) and has now locked me out of it; and as add-on will only work on V3, which I don't think will work on my system.

There is always Safari ;)

Duncan

Thanks for this Firefox tip, I'm not sure I get the desire for a browser that supports icc profiles?.

OK I understand profiles and colour spaces and I work in Adobe RGB in Photoshop, but before posting any images on the net I always convert to sRGB and so should everyone else. Why? Because if not, the vast majority of viewers will not be using browsers that can read icc profiles and will not therefore see your image as you intend. This <<<link>>> shows the proportions of users with which types of browser - & I bet less than 1% of Firefox users know about Duncan's tip - so ~96% of internet users will not be able to read icc profiles.

Images posted in Adobe RGB colour space will tend to look flat and lacking contrast when viewed without an icc profile. The attached printer test files have had the profiles stripped out of them so you guys using browsers that can read profiles can see how your beautiful profiled images will appear to the majority of the world. sRGB is the web 'standard' and if you use the Photoshop "save for web" option, the default settings convert your images to this - I had to turn the defaults off so you can see the difference ;). If however you are using the usual "save" command you should remember to convert before saving to make sure your images look how you intend.

ICC profiles
 

Thanks for such a clear explanation. Including a direct comparison of the two printer test files without the embedded ICC profiles really helps.

Also found the link to browsers very interesting.

Dave

cheers Clive, some usefull stuff refering to the webage.
cool tip Dunc but looking at them stats, maybe not rqd yet!
J

I suspect that most people with visual awareness and certainly photographers will make up very large sections of the small percentages having better computers and decent screens.

Although your attachments behave as you predict (on mac anyway, will wire up the mouldering PC and try that later), my own actual photos, saved with 'adobe RGB' do not. Firefox on mac is the only place where they look flat. On PC/XP my pics look normal & identical in Safari & Firefox.

There is also the fact that on one's own computer, if you do not have all programmes set to use the same colour space, the same image will appear different according to in which prog a particular stage of editing is taking place. This is nothing to do with printing, where it is the printer colour profile that needs to be matched to printer and, ideally image. Fortunately NX 'soft proof' function works well for that.

just testing on PC: maybe colour of my pics not quite as bright on Firefox as on Safari, but nowhere as pronounced an effect as on your test attachments Clive. Perhaps its the coftware conversion from no colour profile to sRGB that is the trouble, not conversion from Adobe RGB to s RGB?

That's a bold (and I suspect misleading) assumption but anyway its not about better computers & decent screens - it about which browser you use. Fact 86% of users are using Internet Explorer. Maybe the more savvy users are those using Firefox but even then - Fact only 11% of people are using Firefox & I suspect only a very very small proportion of them know about Duncan's tip. Therefore unless you post images that have been converted to sRGB they will not look how you intend to the majority of users.

Of course your own pics look right on you Mac in Safari - it can read the icc profile, and I would expect them to look flat on Firefox on your Mac (unless you've applied Duncan's tip) - because Firefox as standard cant read the profile - thats the point :rolleyes:

I would expect them to look right on Safari on your PC as it will read the profile. I would not expect them to look the same in Firefox on the PC without the mod. There are a couple of possible explanations:

1. Have you calibrated the PC monitor with something like a Huey, or Spyder? If not it may not be accurately displaying the full range of tones
2. What sort of image are you using for the comparison? Highly saturated darker colours are more likely to show the difference. If the image is, say, a landsacpe with a fairly even tonal range the difference will be far less noticable.

Not true. If you are using programmes capable of reading icc profiles and working in different colours spaces, then the program will display the colours correctly on screen irrespective of the working colour space.

Try this. the attached test file is the one that I downloaded (its just been resized) in Colourmatch RGB space WITH an embedded icc profile. NB if you are using a browser that doest read profile it will appear more saturate than either of the two I posted yesterday. Download it and then open it in you editing programme with the programme working space set to , say Adobe RGB. In Photoshop you get a profile mismatch warning and the option to either use the embedded profile, or convert to the working space. Which ever you do, the image looks the same ON SCREEN. The change goes on behind the screens & Photoshop then interprets it and present the colours accurately.

We agree on this :D

I have not converted to "no colour profile" - one image is in Adobe RGB colour space, the other is in sRGB colour space. What I have done is just stripped out the icc profile that tells Photoshop, Safari etc which colour space is being used. Therefore they don't know - just like Internet Explorer or unmodified Firefox and the display the images "as is" so to speak

For more info on colour management, colour spaces & profiles I see Duncan has just started a thread <<<HERE>>> :D

I've got some links that I'll toddle over & add

As a test, I've download a couple of your more saturated images from your gallery, and then opened them in Photoshop - WOW - the colours really pop, but when I viewed them in Firefox on the forum they just looked so so :(

I've taken the liberty of reposting them, minus icc profile which is how most users will see them, as you originally posed them in Adobe RGB, well technically Nikon Adobe RGB 4.0.0.3000, and then converted to sRGB so people can see them how you see them

Hope this helps but I strongly recommend everyone posts images converted to sRBG & then it doesn't matter what browser people view them with - they'll look great :D :D :D

This has got a bit complicated!
All on mac:
With your last edition of 'digital dog' image, I can get 5 diferent renderings of which only 2 are the same viz downloaded and viewed in Capture NX and PSE4, all others including it on Safari are pretty desaturated in comparison and well to the blue on the lady's jumper
With your editions of mine, even viewed on Safari the better (RH) one is still not as good as the original viewed on Safari, which in turn is identical to it viewed in NX, PSE or GraphicConverter, my mac equivalent of Bridge, Lightroom or whatever.
On PC:
I used the Poppy as one of the tests and, in Firefox 2 without add-on, had to look quite hard to notice the difference from it as viewed on Safari. It is a cheap 17" flat screen with absolutely no calibration or anything, wouldn't have the faintest idea how to on XP.

I think I am going to stick to posting with the Adobe/Nikon RGB and hope everyone on WPF at least takes Duncan's advice and either use Safari or adds the Add-on to their Firefox 3. I imagine most pbase subscribers will also be that savvy.

I don't think WPF postings are accessible through search engines. If people searching from their ****ty office PC with IE look in following a search, they will have to get what they do; at least if they swipe it, it will look OK in PSE:) . I despair of office attitudes to computers; one of my last placements was in an office where they gave you 2 x 17" screens, being cheaper than 1 x 21", in another I refused to use their monitor as it was so far out of XY alignment (for CAD work); at publishers where my daughter works they are still using mac OS9 (pre 2000):eek: :eek:

AdobeRGB vs sRGB in different browsers
 

Just to see if Clive's comparison is fair, I saved Chris's poppy image off the web, then opened it in CS3 and then saved the image in the two color spaces.

I have both IE and Firefox on my PC and do see a big difference between the two images. The AdobeRGB color space is definitely flat in comparison. As far as I tell, my sRGB copy is very close to Clive's.

Its not complicated - THE WEB STANDARD IS sRGB
Don't take my word for it - Google it, have a look at these references, what ever :confused:

http://www.w3.org/Graphics/Color/sRGB.html

http://www.color.org/sRGB.xalter

http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/color_spaces.htm - see towards the bottom of the page

http://www.pantone.de/Pages/Pantone/...?pg=19456&ca=2

http://pan.tristimulus.co.uk:8200/kb...-24.9935742969 see number 3

I could go on - there are loads of them

At the end of the day, if you are happy with (I suspect) the majority of people viewing
your images thinking that they are flat and washed out - post in Adobe RGB - otherwise
I strongly recommend that everyone should convert to sRGB before posting.... but everyone
has to make their own choice.

If you want to live in a world run by Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard and their likes Clive, that is your choice. I say thank heavens there have always been minority enthusiasts with the imagination, skills and determination not to be bullied or wiped out by them.

The camera manufacturers make the camera capable of capturing the widest available range of colour that technology allows, roughly 'Adobe RGB'. As photography enthusiasts we can edit what the camera brings home to optimise our personal use of it.

Why then dumb it down a bit when all that is necessary for viewers to do is download, free, either Safari or Firefox 3 and a few add-ons to use for viewing photos. This in no way forces them to use these browsers for anything else. I only use Safari for this purpose, for most others I regard it as both inferior and a trouble-causer.

Eventually other browsers will come to regard faithfulness to colour profiles as essential, just as Microsoft, after nearly a decade of evasion and obstruction (during which Apple, Commodore and Atari pioneered it), came round to intelligent use of Graphic User Interface.

And there I was trying to sort out a cheap high speed flash trigger for Lello's, thread then along came this. Subtle ploy by Duncan & Clive to slow me down :D .

Browser wise I am using Opera on a pc, and going back to Clives post #7 then the differences in Opera are very obvious. Take the one from post #12 then that is even more vibrant than sRGB from post #7.

So how does anyone see my images. I have done a screen grab of my last gallery pic in NX and CS. So I have two different things - Colour Profile and Colour Mode.

Basic editing of a raw is done and saved as 16 bit Tiff in Colour Profile : Nikon sRGB 4.0.0.3001 in NX.
In CS I then spot, resize, sharpen and change bit depth from 16bit to 8bit before saving for posting.
When viewed from the forum gallery in Opera they look fine so I assumed all OK but may now well be wrong as far as others go.

So if I'm doing something wrong please say. Bit of a numpty here, so all advice greatfully taken on board. eg how colour profile is stripped out if that is necessary.

Don

I don't think it is a matter of right or wrong. Stephen in a parallel post first pointed out that Safari had a built-in facility for picking up the colour profile of an image; Duncan starting this thread added that Firefox 3 with addon 6891 does likewise.

If you care to download one of these and use it for viewing this or similar galleries, you will get the picture with 100% of the colour that the poster intended.

For your own pics, not sure what 'spot' is, but the rest can all be done within NX and you only end up with (a) the NEF file as edited (b) a web version .jpg, say 1024 max width and/or 768 max ht and use the quality percentage in edit>size/resolution to keep file size below 300kb.

If spot is de-spot, ie remove odd blemish, that can usually also be done using NX1.3 appropriate brush selection and pipetting adjacent colour (sometimes with linked enhancement adding some grain or noise to blend). In NX 2 there is a 'healing brush' tool and more keyboard short-cuts.

As Chris says, if you apply colour management to your browser, it allows you to see the range of colours contained within any profiles embedded in the image. This is ONLY true if the monitor you are using is capable of displaying the range of colours presented. This is where Clive is coming from, as most monitors can only display a small sub-set of the colours capable of being captured, the sRGB standard was developed to squeeze the full range down to a range that could be viewed consistently on most monitors.

Given these limitations, I see no reason not to enable colour management within Firefox as you aren't losing anything if the colour space of the image being viewed is set to sRGB anyway. As Clive says, this is the standard for web images and the space that should be used if preparing images for web use.

In response to a pm received. Over the last 31 days,
WPF visitors browsers were
54% Internet Explorer
34% Firefox
9% Safari
2% Opera

On Birdforum
68% Internet Explorer
25% Firefox
5% Safari
1% Opera

Make of it what you will

cheers,
Andy

You seem to have led us in a bit of a circle haven't you Duncan? Anyway I have returned to the PC and looked at my Poppy with no colour profile, sRGB and original Adobe/Nikon RGB on Firefox 2, Safari & PSE2 in parallel and for good measure brought my mac alongside both the PC and the actual poppy.

I then upgraded the Firefox to 3 'candidate' or beta and got the addon for the PC.

The Poppy is pretty happy with the computer version which in descending order of quality goes: PSE & FF3 Adobe/Nikon RGB equal (and with mac Safari or PSE), then Safari on the PC, then sRGB a bit down in colour accuracy everywhere, then with no colour profile, which is pretty rough.

Now the PC is pretty average, Dell Dimension 2400 + XP home, I think about 4 years old which my son-in-law passed on for my wife to learn on when the monitor went. I added a 'generic' DGM 17" monitor costing £99 (glad I didn't spend more as she has not touched it in 3 months). So I wonder how bad a monitor has to get not to be able to make use of Adobe RGB.

Meanwhile not just the Poppy, but the whole of WPF looks order-of -magnitude better. So I have to agree that for really poor browsers on seriously poor monitors sRGB makes sense. But I remain recalcitrant as to using it. This despite Andy's statistics, which are disappointing, though less despairing than the lot Clive produced.

As far as I am concerned the message to be projected among photographers is do, do use Firefox 3 with addon - and if after seeing THAT, there is no difference from what you saw before, maybe its time to change the monitor. We mostly carry £1000 of photographic kit about, so what is the problem with processing it on a passable computer. If empoyees of seriously mean employers don't see the pics as nicely (if they can disarm the bars to using internet at all), well, its one more reason for feeling sorry for them.

Warning: Firefox 3 for PCs
 

For over two decades most software companies have cautioned that beta versions are for developers. Mozilla issues the same warning. However, three days ago I decided to install Firefox 3 so that I see how add-on 6891 works. While this add-on performs nicely with images in AdobeRGB, my life has been miserable since:

1) Firefox 3 has been very unstable on my computer.
2) All my add-ons from Firefox 2 were grayed out.
3) Within a day I received warnings that none of my versions to protect my computer against spyware, etc. work in Firefox 3. I have now reinstalled Firefox 2.

All this may be unique to me, but the old advice, beta releases are for developers still holds.

Dave

Firefox 3 is now out in an official, released non-beta form. Download from
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

Duncan

Firefox 3 has been out for 1 week and 18 Million people downloaded it!

In Firefox 3 the original add on has now been upgraded and is called 'Color management 0.4'. From Firefox main menu>tools>add-ons>get add-ons takes you to the download site, then search. It now also needs 'preferences' set (via a browse) for desired colour profile and 'enable' button.

Firefox Configuration
 

Thanks for info. The "about:config" method has worked well, enhanced our browsing of photographs no end. Thanks.

Regards Phil.

i couldnt agree more, firefox is the best browser, as it has the most extensions to customize it. IE is the worst!