Do you convert your images to sRGB before posting them online?

[Andreq]

it has been said sRGB color space is to be used for Web display. however, I notice that it doesn't matter whether images are posted in sRGB or RGB -- they both look the same on screen.

anyone care to share your "style" of working as far as color space is concerned? thanks for any useful sharing.

 

[ExplorerZ]

it has been said sRGB color space is to be used for Web display. however, I notice that it doesn't matter whether images are posted in sRGB or RGB -- they both look the same on screen.

anyone care to share your "style" of working as far as color space is concerned? thanks for any useful sharing.

what browser are you using? iirc if you are using safari, you are safe, but can't say the same for ff and ie... difference can be very obvious for some images especially colorful images

 

[Andreq]

Hi, i'm using FF and IE. Don't seem to detect any difference leh...

But on photoshop itself, the diff is very obvious. with adobe RGB, colors look more accurate and vibrant. After conversion to sRGB, they suck... become less saturated and bland.

 

[ExplorerZ]

Hi, i'm using FF and IE. Don't seem to detect any difference leh...

But on photoshop itself, the diff is very obvious. with adobe RGB, colors look more accurate and vibrant. After conversion to sRGB, they suck... become less saturated and bland.

:think: it is suppose to be the other way round, srgb are known to give puncher color than argb... :sweat:

 

[viewwing]

oh dear now i'm confused... i thought ARGB suppose to be the "better" one with more range... :bigeyes:

 

[calebk]

:think: it is suppose to be the other way round, srgb are known to give puncher color than argb... :sweat:

Are you sure?

Adobe RGB has a wider gamut of colours than sRGB.

However, majority of the world's displays run on sRGB, so if you're posting your image on the web, converting it to sRGB would give colours that are recognised by universal web browsers.

It is when you put an ARGB image online that the colours suddenly become muted.

 

[Andreq]

ExplorerZ, not correct, ARGB more punchier than sRGB colors.

But I find it so confusing. If i convert my images to sRGB on photoshop, it becomes desaturated. If it is true that when I leave them in ARGB and put them up online the colors become more muted, why should I then bother to convert them from aRGB to sRGB in the first place? Since they will be desaturated anyway both ways?

But from what I see, I can't quite tell the diff on the web... maybe it's got to do with the browser i'm using...

I love ARGB colors when seen on my monitor....

 

[calebk]

Because sRGB is the universal RGB gamut for web display, while ARGB is for prints.

You cannot have the gamut of ARGB on web display because not everybody's web browser and monitor supports the gamut of ARGB.

 

[Andreq]

Yah, I don't expect to show ARGB colors on web display.

What I meant is, colors outside of the ARGB gamut will be clipped on the web anyway right? So why should we manually convert the images from the original ARGB to sRGB? Why not let the colors get clipped automatically?

Isn't the step of converting ARGB to sRGB in Photoshop an extra?

Pls correct me if my concept is not right here...

 

[LittleWolf]

it has been said sRGB color space is to be used for Web display. however, I notice that it doesn't matter whether images are posted in sRGB or RGB -- they both look the same on screen.

anyone care to share your "style" of working as far as color space is concerned? thanks for any useful sharing.

Just to add some dose of reality to the debate: sRGB is a specific example of an RGB colour space, so sRGB is simultaneously also RGB. JPEG compressed images (which is what you typically encounter on the web) do not use an RGB colour space, they use YCC (or Y for monochrome images). While the YCC colour space is derived from an RGB colour space, the standard JFIF ("JPEG") colour space is NOT sRGB, but based on television standards. The JFIF format also doesn't have a standardised way of adding colour profiles, and an application that ignores an attached profile is just as "correct" as one that uses it.

JPEG-compressed Exif files provide better support here. But all too frequently the files you see are a hodge-podge of JFIF and Exif, with the result that they conform to neither the JFIF nor the Exif standard (and I've seen such files created by photoshop). How software such as web browsers interpret such files is unspecified and amounts to guesswork.

On the other hand, if you display your images on an off-white background a la Clubsnap or have coloured elements next to it, human colour perception will adapt and the entire colour management effort is a farce anyway.

 

[theRBK]

oh boy... here goes...

colour conversion depends on the conversion intent that you choose... the most commonly used in photoshop for photo colour conversion is "perceptual" and "relative colorimetric"...

taking the example to be aRGB to sRGB:

in perceptual, the entire colourspace of aRGB is squeezed into sRGB... as a result, the wider range of colour in aRGB is squeezed and this increase in colour contrast might result in puncher colours (contrast between colours) as represented in the image in question... the colours are not any more "real" or "brighter", they just seem that way because of this squeezing...

in relative colorimetric, the colourspace of aRGB is "overlayed" into sRGB, and those colours that are outside the possiblities of sRGB are squeezed into the sRGB gamut... only those beyond the sRGB gamut are squeezed, as opposed to perceptual, where the entire gamut is squeezed... there is thus the possibility that the colours beyond the edges of the sRGB gamut will be squeezed and be represented as similar to colours already in the image but which in aRGB might actually be different colours... thus, images could become less saturated in those areas after conversion to sRGB...

perceptual would be useful if the range of colour in an image is more important than absolute colour accuracy... relative colorimetric would be useful if the accuract of colour is more important, and we can live with, and possibly there is little, sqeezing of the colours at the edge of the gamut... you can choose the intent by going to "color setting", and at the "conversion options" area choose the one you want... try both out if an image is not satisfactory and see which one works better for an image...

so why should we clip the colours of aRGB before we post on the web? so we can make the decision of which type of conversion to use to maximise the potential of the image...

 

[Clown]

over 70% (i think) of the world uses browsers that use sRGB as their default colorspace and doesnt have the codings to read other colorspaces. and more than 60% of them doesnt have properly calibrated screens.

so if you're trying to let people see your picture with the closest colors that you see on your screen, save the file as sRGB.

 

[varf]

see http://www.gballard.net/psd/srgbforwww.html for a quick demo on how AdobeRGB-, sRGB- and AppleRGB-tagged JPEGs appear in your browser.

 

[LittleWolf]

see http://www.gballard.net/psd/srgbforwww.html for a quick demo on how AdobeRGB-, sRGB- and AppleRGB-tagged JPEGs appear in your browser.

A random check on one "tagged" image file shows that it has a JFIF 1.02 header, but contains an Exif APP1 tag (which violates the JFIF 1.02 specification). In other words, this file (and presumably others) are neither valid JFIF nor valid Exif files. That browsers display them at all instead of generating an error message shows just how error-tolerant they are. There is no "correct" way of displaying these image files, because the files themselves are incorrect.