Question about file format and posting on line

[Lady Lark]

Hi this is probably a stupid question but I have been having trouble with it. Here is my probem: I will have a photo that looks great on my laptop but if I post it online to like facebook or something the color is off. Not much How do I fix that? Is it a size issue or file format? So far the only editting program I really know is Lightroom since Im still trying to figure out Photoshop.

[Mike Buckley]

The likely culprit is the color space. When you save the file to be displayed on the Internet, embed the sRGB color space in the file.

[Manfred M]

Just a bit of an explanation on what is likely happening (as Mike has already explained). Let me give you a highly simplified version of what is likely happening.

The internet is a bit like the "wild west"; not a lot of rules and standards out there. It is used in developed countries and developing countries, so the "standards", so far as they exist are driven by the "lowest common denominator", and in colour work this means the rather ancient sRGb colour space; which is something that HP and Microsoft came up with in 1996, based on the technology of the time. I can't quite remember the numbers but it sRGB can display somewhere around 1/4 to 1/3 of the colours humans can see.

Time moves on and one colour space that is currently in common use is ProPhoto, and it can display pretty well almost all colours humans can see. Adobe has chosen this colour space as the default working colour space for Lightroom. An image that uses the ProPhoto (and some other higher gamut) colour space will look "muddy" when displayed when displayed using sRGB (i.e. the internet). So the thing to do when outputting your files for posting on the net is to convert them to sRGB and the colours SHOULD look right.

The problem is that not all internet browsers are colour managed which means they mangle your colours, even if you have converted to sRGB. Firefox is definitely a colour managed browser; and neither Internet Explorer and Google Chrome were not (I don't know if this functionality has been added in more recent upgrades). I'm sure some of the members will know.

So if you want to see the colours looking "right", then convert to sRGB when you output your jpegs and use Firefox to view them.

[davidedric]

You may wish you hadn't asked

Chrome is now colour managed for Windows and Mac.

But, tablets and phones (whether Android or iOS) are not, so how your images look on those devices can be a bit of a lottery. As the guys have said, though, stick to sRGB and all will be well.

Let us know how our get on.

Dave

[Lady Lark]

Thank you so much. It has been driving me nuts trying to figure out what was wrong.

[Mike Buckley]

It has been driving me nuts trying to figure out what was wrong.

Perhaps the most important thing you learned is how relatively quickly and thoroughly questions are answered here at CiC. Next time, don't wait until aggravation sets in; ask right away when something seems puzzling to you.

[Lady Lark]

Perhaps the most important thing you learned is how relatively quickly and thoroughly questions are answered here at CiC. Next time, don't wait until aggravation sets in; ask right away when something seems puzzling to you.

Yeah Im wishing I had come across this site a long time ago but I stubbled across just the other day. So happy I did. Thanks everyone!