{"id":254,"date":"2006-10-03T17:45:30","date_gmt":"2006-10-03T08:45:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/photo-tech\/color-spaces-page3"},"modified":"2006-10-03T13:36:20","modified_gmt":"2006-10-03T04:36:20","slug":"color-spaces-page3","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/photo-tech\/color-spaces-page3","title":{"rendered":"Digital-Image Color Spaces, Page 3: History of Color Mis-Management"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n<style type='text\/css'>\na.btn    { background-color: #555; border: solid 1px #888; padding: 2px 5px }\nspan.now { background-color: #533; border: solid 1px #888; padding: 2px 5px; font-weight: bold }\n<\/style>\n<div style='display: block; background-color: #444; padding: 7px; border: solid 2px gray'>\n<b>Article:<\/b>\n<a class='btn' href='\/blog\/photo-tech\/color-spaces-page0\/'>Table of Contents<\/a> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <b>Page:<\/b>\n<a title='Introduction' class='btn' href='\/blog\/photo-tech\/color-spaces-page1\/'>1<\/a> &middot;\n<a title='Test Images' class='btn' href='\/blog\/photo-tech\/color-spaces-page2\/'>2<\/a> &middot;\n<span class='now'>3<\/span> &middot;\n<a title='Color Mangement'           class='btn' href='\/blog\/photo-tech\/color-spaces-page4\/'>4<\/a> &middot;\n<a title='Chromaticity Diagrams'     class='btn' href='\/blog\/photo-tech\/color-spaces-page5\/'>5<\/a> &middot;\n<a title='Design Tradeoffs'          class='btn' href='\/blog\/photo-tech\/color-spaces-page6\/'>6<\/a> &middot;\n<a title='Recommendations and Links' class='btn' href='\/blog\/photo-tech\/color-spaces-page7\/'>7<\/a>\n<small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This is the third page of a seven-page article<\/small>\n<\/div>\n\n<p><a name='NotSoCommon'><b>Okay, sRGB is not Really <i>That<\/i> Common<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n\n<p>\n\nIn numerous ways on the <a\nhref='\/blog\/photo-tech\/color-spaces-page1\/'>first\npage<\/a> of this article, I indicated how popular the sRGB color space is,\nand how most devices and applications don't use anything else. What I\nreally should have said is that many devices and applications don't pay\n<b>any<\/b> attention to color spaces &mdash; sRGB or otherwise &mdash; and\njust let the graphics card and monitor do what they want with the color\ndata.\n\n<\/p><p>\n\nWhat any one person's graphics card and monitor will do with raw color data\nis anyone's guess &mdash; it depends on how the two were built, how old\nthey're getting, how the user has adjusted the\ncolor\/tint\/brightness\/contrast settings, etc. Everyone's system is\ndifferent.\n\n<\/p><p>\n\nAs different as everyone's system might be, overall there's an average, and\nthat, it turns out, is how sRGB was designed. sRGB was designed to mimic\nthe average colormetrically unaware Windows PC. Thus, at least in the\nWindows world, the phrase &#8220;is totally ignorant of color spaces&#8221;\nmeans, on average, sort of close to &#8220;strict adherence to the sRGB\nstandard.&#8221;\n\n<\/p>\n<p><a name='OldDays'><b>In The Old Days<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n\n<p>\n\nIn the old days, image color data more or less represented the voltage that\nshould be fed into the cathode ray gun (in a <b>C<\/b>athode <b>R<\/b>ay\n<b>T<\/b>ube &mdash; CRT &mdash; a standard monitor) to cause it to create\nthe proper color on the screen. Software processing the image didn't modify\nthis data, but rather shipped it off directly to the graphics card. The\ngraphics card turned the raw numbers into raw voltages, and sent it off to\nthe monitor. The monitor did what it wanted with the signal.<\/p>\n\n<p> This is a perfectly acceptable color-encoding method <b>if<\/b> everyone\nhas graphics cards and monitors that behave in exactly the same way. Of\ncourse, that's not the case. Heck, even a pair of identical monitors next\nto each other at the computer store show different colors.<\/p>\n\n<p>Thus, in the old days, the colors you got from your system were highly\ndependent on your specific graphics card, monitor, and how you'd adjusted\nthe monitor's settings.<\/p>\n\n<p>Color printers use completely different color spaces &mdash;\nsubtractive-color <a href='http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/CYMK'\nclass='quiet'>CYMK<\/a> spaces rather than the additive-color <a\nhref='http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/RGB' class='quiet'>RGB<\/a> spaces that\nmonitors use &mdash; so they had to do their best to convert from what were\nessentially monitor voltage levels to whatever they needed. As with\nmonitors, color was hit and miss.<\/p>\n\n<p><a name='Now'><b>That Was Then...<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n\n<p>That mess of a situation was the old days. Applications were what I\nwould call &#8220;<b>Color Unaware<\/b>.&#8221; Over the years, specific\napplications might have been made color aware &mdash; products from Apple\nand Adobe often led the way among mass-market companies. Still, the general\npopulation of PC software was slow to move to color-aware image handling,\nand one can surmise that this owes itself to Microsoft not taking a\nleadership role in pushing color-aware software.<\/p>\n\n<p><b>The Advent of sRGB<\/b><\/p>\n<p>\n\nAs a first step toward moving the world of common PCs into a color-managed\nreality, 10 years ago (1996), Microsoft and HP created the sRGB color\nspace. In short, this color space codified as <a\nhref='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/Graphics\/Color\/sRGB' class='quiet'>a standard<\/a>\nthe color behavior of an average home Windows PC.\n\n<\/p><p>\n\nIt created a starting point around which software and devices could take a\nsmall step toward full color management. It said, basically, that if an\napplication or device got color data that didn't have a color profile\nassociated with it, it should treat it in this very specific sRGB way,\nrather than the device-specific probably-pretty-close-to-average way that\nit would have done so in the past.\n\n<\/p><p>\n\nTo be clear, the advent of sRGB didn't mean that suddenly every image on\nthe fledgling web or stored on old floppies at home were suddenly\nsRGB-compliant. Old images, like old monitors, were still a hodgepodge of\nwhatever they were. But with sRGB, digital cameras and scanners and\nsoftware had a standard color space that they could create images in and\nstill know that those images would probably look &#8220;okay&#8221; on old\nnon-color-aware systems (because, again, the sRGB color space was designed\nwith an average Joe's Windows computer in mind, to mimic what hardware had\nalready tended to do). The design of sRGB reflects Microsoft's oft-repeated\nbusiness strategy of &#8220;grandfathering&#8221; the former status-quo when designing\nnew products.\n\n<\/p><p>\n\nIt was a step. A baby step. It would have been nicer had Microsoft pushed\nfor full color management, but in any case, this is what was done in 1996.\nIn one sense, it was excellent timing, as it came at the cusp of explosions\nin two areas of popular culture: digital cameras, and the World Wide Web.\n\n<\/p><p>\n\nOne problem with the design of sRGB is the <b>least-common-denominator<\/b>\naspect of it. Monitors can reproduce only relatively small subset of\ncolors, so using a monitor-related color space as a system-wide standard\nhurts pretty much everything that's not a monitor. That means that a\ndigital camera has to throw away color information as it squeezes the wider\nrange of colors it can record into an sRGB jpeg. It also means that\nprinters that might be able to handle a wider range of colors won't even be\ngiven the chance.\n\n<\/p><p>\n\nAnd frankly, when I say that sRGB hurts everything that's not a monitor, I\nshould say everything that's not an <i>average consumer circa-1996<\/i>\nmonitor. Monitor technology has advanced remarkably in the last 10 years,\nbut holding on to sRGB as a global standard limits what the average person\nsees of those advances.\n\n<\/p><p>\n\nUsing the &#8220;sound space&#8221; mentioned on the <a\nhref='\/blog\/photo-tech\/color-spaces-page1\/'\nclass='quiet'>first page<\/a> as a somewhat exaggerated example, it's as if\nthe low sound quality standard of the 8-track-tape was applied to all sound\ndevices (including FM radio, home stereo, etc.) and even later applied to\nmodern-day compact discs and music players.\n\n<\/p><p>\n\nTo be clear, the existence of sRGB in no way prevents the use of other,\nbetter color profiles where appropriate. But, unfortunately, while sRGB was\nsupposed to be only a stepping stone, it has become entrenched.\n\n<\/p>\n\n<p><b><a name='Today'>Current Status<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n\n<p>\n\nToday, most digital cameras create pictures with sRGB-encoded data, without\nembedding a color profile. The lack of an included color profile is a\nsymptom of just how entrenched and seen-as-permanent sRGB is in the minds\nof the consumer-products industry. The lack of an included color profile\nsays &#8220;don't bother moving to fully color-managed systems; let's stick\nwith 8-track quality sound&#8221; (so to speak). It's really a shame.\n\n<\/p><p>\n\nHigher-end pro\/prosumer cameras, at least, can usually create images with\nbetter color spaces. The DCF standard allows for Adobe RGB to be specified\nby reference, without the need for a color profile (although as I mentioned\non the previous page, as far as I know, no browser actually understands\nthese &#8220;by reference&#8221; profile-less specifications).\n\n\n<\/p><p>\n\nSo, for better or for worse, the <i>vast majority<\/i> of images you're\nlikely to run into on the World Wide Web (for example) have sRGB color\ndata, but no embedded color profile. This means that all browsers &mdash;\nall software but advanced image-processing applications &mdash; handle them\nwithout any color management, which means that the colors are, on average,\nlikely to be sort of not too heinously off. Maybe. At best.\n\n<\/p>\n\n<p><b>Colormetric Classes of Software Applications<\/b><\/p>\n\n<p>Today, there are four colormetrically-distinct classes of application,\nlisted here with my easy-to-remember label, from worst to best:<\/p>\n\n<style type='text\/css'>\ntd.cs { padding-top: 15px }\n.update { border: dotted 1px gray; padding: 5px 20px; margin: 10px 2px }\n<\/style>\n<table>\n<tr valign='baseline'><td class='cs'><b><a name='ColorStupid'>Color&nbsp;Stupid<\/a><\/b><\/td>\n\n<td class='cs'>What might have been called &#8220;Color Unaware&#8221; in\nthe old days gets a more pejorative term today. A Color-Stupid application\nis still like the caveman days and does no color management, leaving the\nlook of images up to whatever your graphics card and monitor happen to do\nwith them. There is no way to ensure proper colors with a Color-Stupid\napplication. IE (prior to IE9) is color stupid.\n\n<\/td><\/tr>\n\n<tr valign='baseline'><td class='cs'><b><a name='ColorFoolish'>Color&nbsp;Foolish<\/a><\/b><\/td>\n\n<td class='cs'>A Color-Foolish application is one that's smart enough to\nunderstand embedded color profiles in images that have them, but does not\nperform color management on unprofiled images. (Remember, 99.99% of the\nimages on the web have sRGB data but no embedded profile, so if you're a\nweb browser and know how to apply profiles, why not apply the sRGB profile\nto unprofiled images?)\n\n<p>\n\nI should really list Color Foolish as the worst of the four classes, since\nit involves a specific decision to be dumb. (My initial name was\n&#8220;Color Moronic,&#8221; but that didn't have as nice a ring to it.)\nWeb browswers that are claimed to be &#8220;color managed&#8221; like Safari\nand Firefox are Color Foolish.\n\n<\/p><\/td><\/tr>\n\n<tr valign='baseline'><td class='cs'><b><a name='ColorStubborn'>Color&nbsp;Stubborn<\/a><\/b>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/td>\n\n<td class='cs'>A Color-Stubborn application is one that refuses to move\npast sRGB as a first step, blindly treating all image data as if it were\nsRGB, completely ignoring embedded color profiles. This happens to work out\nwell for most images on the web, but becomes part of the\n&#8220;entrenchment problem.&#8221;<\/td><\/tr>\n\n<tr valign='baseline'><td class='cs'><b><a name='ColorSmart'>Color&nbsp;Smart<\/a><\/b><\/td>\n\n<td class='cs'>A Color-Smart application recognizes embedded color profiles, and\ntreats unprofiled images as if they were sRGB (or, perhaps another color\nspace it allows you to specify). This is the way it's supposed to be, but\nColor Smart applications are rare. For example, I know of only <i>one<\/i>\nColor Smart web browser, for any OS, ever. This is another shocking tidbit\nwe'll get to soon. <\/td><\/tr>\n\n<\/table>\n\n<p>High-end image editors like Adobe Photoshop, for Windows or Mac, have been Color Smart for a long time.<\/p>\n\n<p><b>Windows<\/b><\/p>\n\n<p>The vast majority of software for Windows is Color Stupid. Notable\nexceptions are photo-processing software like Photoshop and Lightroom, and\nmodern non-Microsoft browsers (Safari and Firefox). <\/p>\n\n<p>\n\nEven Microsoft's supposedly-advanced <i>Internet Explorer<\/i> is\nnot color managed.\nThis is particularly shameful for Microsoft, considering that it\nand HP created the <a href='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/Graphics\/Color\/sRGB'>sRGB\nstandard<\/a> a <b>decade ago<\/b>, in which the recognition of embedded\ncolor profiles is explicitly recommended.<\/p>\n\n<p><b>[Update: March 16, 2010:<\/b> IE9, out today <a href='http:\/\/ie.microsoft.com\/testdrive\/'>as a testdrive beta<\/a>, has graduated\nfrom Color Stupid to Color Foolish.<b>]<\/b><\/p>\n\n<p>Perhaps even worse, it seems that Internet Explorer 4 provided <a class='quiet'\nhref='http:\/\/support.microsoft.com\/kb\/182484'>ways to indicate the color\nspace in which an image should be rendered<\/a>, which is a fairly\ncolormetrically advanced concept. It's not the right concept because it\nshould just honor the color-space information in the image itself, but it's\ndiscouraging to see Microsoft backpedal on color management in this way;\nI've not been able to find references to color management in any later\nversion of IE.<\/p>\n\n<p>I had hope when Google's Chrome came out, but it's Color Stupid, too.<\/p>\n\n<p><b><a name='AppleFoolish'>&#8220;Color Foolish&#8221; should be called &#8220;Apple Foolish&#8221;<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n\n<p>The vast majority of software for OSX is Color Foolish or Color Stupid.<\/p>\n\n<p>Apple software, and third-party software that uses Apple's image\ntoolkits, are color managed. They recognize and respond to color profiles\nembedded in images. This is very, very good.<\/p>\n\n<p>If an image is unprofiled (has no embedded profile), the best you can do\nis guess how to interpret the color data. Well, considering that just about\nevery digital camera in use today by default produces images with sRGB\ndata, and sRGB is the color space for the <i>vast majority<\/i> of images\nout on the web or on your hard drive &mdash; well, a guess of sRGB would be\na smart guess. Yet, Apple's color-management software does not guess sRGB,\nbut rather, guesses &#8220;the color data in this image was designed to\nwork specifically for whatever monitor you happen to be using at the\nmoment&#8221; (which is, in effect, the same as no management).\n\n<\/p><p>\n\nThe sheer ineptness of this decision can not be overemphasized. There is\nalmost no chance that there are <i>any<\/i> images in existence\n<i>anywhere<\/i> that were written with your particular monitor in mind,\nother than perhaps those you've created yourself with a color-stupid image\neditor. Thus, Apple's decision effectively guarantees the wrong colors.\n(Remember, in the case of a web browser, we're talking about the 99.9% of\nimages out there that are unprofiled.)\n\n<\/p><p>\n\nI've struggled to come up with an analogy that suitably reflects the\nunfortunate magnitude of this decision, and the best I can come up with is\nthis: imagine that there's someone who can speak every language in the\nworld, and you send him to a mall in the middle of bread-and-butter America\nto interview people. If he comes across someone who happens to have their\npassport with them, he's to converse with them in their native language.\nBut if someone doesn't have a passport with them, you instruct him to\nconverse in a minor dialect of Hindi.\n\n<\/p>\n\n<p>Make no mistake, this is a specific, conscious decision on Apple's part.\nThere used to be an easy way you could override the default used for\nunprofiled images (so you could tell it to use sRGB), but Apple actually\nremoved this feature in recent versions of their color-management\nsoftware.<\/p>\n\n<div class='update'>\n<p><b>Update (Oct 22, 2006)<\/b> &mdash; Apple engineer Dave Hyatt <a\nhref='http:\/\/webkit.org\/blog\/?p=73'>comments on the social\/technical issues\ninvolved<\/a> with using sRGB as the default color space for images. There\nare apparently social problems created by using sRGB as the default color\nspace whose solutions are technically difficult. The root of the problem is\nthat Macromedia Flash is not color managed, and web designers that which to\nuse Flash also like to use images with colors that meld perfectly with the\nflash colors. Thus, images need to also be not color managed &mdash; at\nleast images that have no explicit profile.\n\n<\/p><p>\n\nSo, the sum of it is because some miniscule percent of web designers would\nfind subtle color differences between their Flash and unprofiled images,\nApple has chosen to cripple Safari color management.\n\n<\/p><p>\n\n\nClearly, I don't agree with the conclusions that Dave comes to, but at\nleast it's good to know that there are more than religious reasons behind\nit. (A previous version of this article was much more searing towards Apple\nfor what I felt was a blindingly stupid colormetric decision. I still think\nthe decision is wrong, but thanks to Dave's response I can at least\nunderstand what's behind it.)\n\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n<div class='update'> <p><b>Update (Feb 14, 2007)<\/b> &mdash; it seems that\nthe &#8220;miniscule percent&#8221; that I refer to in the Oct 22 update\nabove is actually pretty big, according to this <a\nhref=\"http:\/\/blogs.smugmug.com\/onethumb\/2007\/02\/14\/this-is-your-mac-on-drugs\/#comment-36372\">comment\nleft by Dave<\/a> on an OSX-related color management <a\nhref='http:\/\/blogs.smugmug.com\/onethumb\/2007\/02\/14\/this-is-your-mac-on-drugs\/'>blog\npost by SmugMug president Chris MacAskill<\/a>. (My mini claim to fame:\nalthough Chris doesn't mention me or this writeup &mdash; sniff-sniff,\nboo-hoo &mdash; I'm pretty sure that this writeup and some associated\ncomments I made on a forum at Digital Photography Review were the genesis\nof his recent interest in the issue.)\n\n<\/p><p>\n\nMore thoughts on how to actually solve the practical issues on the Mac are here:\n<a href='\/blog\/2007-02-17\/384'>More on Digital Color Spaces: a Reply to Chris MacAskill<\/a>.\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n<p><b>Web Browsers for OSX<\/b><\/p>\n\n<p>Unfortunately, most &#8220;big name&#8221; browsers for the <b>Mac<\/b>\nare Color Stupid &mdash; they do no color management at all, guaranteeing\nthat every single image is shown with randomly wrong colors. These include\n<b>Firefox<\/b>, <b>Opera<\/b>, <b>Mozilla<\/b>, and <b>Camino<\/b> (although again, Firefox 3 can be made Color Foolish, as described above).<\/p>\n\n<p>Most Mac browsers that aren't Color Stupid are Color Foolish &mdash; color managed, but default to no effectively management &mdash; including Apple's\n<b>Safari<\/b>,\n<b><a href='http:\/\/www.omnigroup.com\/applications\/omniweb\/'>OmniWeb<\/a><\/b>,\n<b><a href=\"http:\/\/www.icab.de\/\">iCab<\/a><\/b>,\n<b><a href='http:\/\/sunrisebrowser.com\/'>Sunrise Browser<\/a><\/b>,\n<b><a href='http:\/\/shiira.jp\/download\/en.php'>Shiira<\/a><\/b>,\n<b><a href='http:\/\/scourge.swifthost.net\/scourge-webbrowser\/'>Scourge<\/a><\/b>,\n<b><a href='http:\/\/www.macupdate.com\/info.php\/id\/18972'>surfDude<\/a><\/b>,\n<b><a href='http:\/\/www.coladia.com\/postino\/'>Postino<\/a><\/b>, and even\n<b><a href='http:\/\/www.real.com\/'>RealPlayer<\/a><\/b>. (RealPlayer for Windows is still not at all color managed.)<\/p>\n\n<p><b>The Only Color-Smart Browser, Ever<\/b><\/p>\n\n<p>It's truly ironic that the only Color-Smart Browser that's ever existed,\nas far as I know, is the now defunct <i>Microsoft Internet Explorer for the\nMac<\/i>. It was color managed (if you turned on the option; oddly, it was\nnot color managed by default) and it used sRGB for unprofiled images.\nUnfortunately, it was IE, so was woefully lame in every other respect. I\nhear that it doesn't even run on modern Macs. (Update: it does. I have it\nrunning on my Intel-based MacBook right now.)<\/p>\n\n<hr\/>\n\n<p><a name='Moral'><big><b>Moral of the Story<\/b><\/big><\/a><\/p>\n\n<p>The moral of this story so far is this:<\/p>\n\n<div style='margin: 20px 60px; border: solid #FF8080 3px; padding: 2px 20px\n15px 20px'> <p>Regardless what color space you use for your images out of\nthe camera or in your own image-editing and image-printing software, when\npreparing an image <b>for presentation on the web<\/b>, be sure to\n<b>convert it to sRGB<\/b> if it's not already there, and be sure to\n<b>embed a color profile<\/b>.\n\n<\/p><p>\n\nThe profile allows color-managed browsers to display colors properly, while\nthe conversion to sRGB is the best you can hope to do for the others.\n\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n<p><a name='Sad'><b>Sad State of Affairs<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n\n<p>It's a sad state of affairs. I often peek at the metadata of other\npeople's online photos (with my <a\nhref=\"\/blog\/2006-02-20\/152\">Online Image-Data Viewer<\/a>),\nand it seems that a lot of people with pro and semi-pro cameras set them to\nsave in different color spaces, such as AdobeRGB, and present them on the\nweb that way (and without even an embedded profile). The problem is not\nthat they use a different color space to begin with, but that they use\nsomething other than sRGB for the versions they present online; they're\nensuring that pretty much everyone will see the wrong colors.\n\n<\/p><p>\n\nOne of the most egregious offenders was me. When I got my <a\nhref='\/blog\/2006-01-10\/130'>Nikon D200<\/a>, I'd heard that\n&#8220;AdobeRGB is better than the default sRGB,&#8221; so I ignorantly\nswitched the camera settings to use the AdobeRGB color space when creating\nimages. My ignorance was not in switching, but in not knowing the\nramifications to the switch.\n\n<\/p><p>\n\nBy the time I understood the issue, I had already put many of my images\nonto the web. Sigh. At least I'd done so with an embedded color profile....\nusually. I didn't understand the issues, so who knows how many didn't have\nan embedded profile? I just didn't know. (I've since gone back and\nconverted the ones I could find to sRGB; I must go back again to ensure\nthat the sRGB color profile is actually included.)\n\n<\/p><p>\n\nIt's a common refrain on photography forums: &#8220;My image's colors look\nwashed out on the web.&#8221; Invariably, this is because their camera was\nset to use the Adobe RGB color space, and they blindly put the images on\nthe web. However, it's only because they also viewed the images with a\nColor Smart application like Photoshop that they later noticed the\nwashed-out effects viewing in the browser.\n\n<\/p>\n\n<p><a name='MiniRant-PS'><b>Mini-Rant About Photoshop's &#8220;Save for the Web&#8221;<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n\n<p>Note: the section that follows applied to Photoshop CS3 and prior. Photoshop CS4 has a &#8220;Convert to sRGB&#8221;\ncheckbox!<\/p>\n\n<p style='color:#888'>\n\nI'll take a moment at this point in the discussion to rant about Adobe\nPhotoshop's &#8220;Save for the Web&#8221; feature, which allows you to\nconveniently tweak image-compression settings and immediately see the\nimage-size vs. quality tradeoff being made. It also strips out all the\nmetadata from the image, including the thumbnail that most cameras embed in\nthe metadata, so that the resulting image is as small as possible. This is\nall good.\n\n<\/p><p style='color:#888'>\n\nWhat is <b>inexcusable<\/b> is that this feature does not convert the color\nspace to sRGB, or even offer the option. This is like a camping\n&#8220;water-purification kit&#8221; that cleans out mud but doesn't\nactually purify the water. If it's already microbe-free you'll be fine, but\nif not, you'll be silently poisoned.\n\n<\/p><p style='color:#888'>\n\nEqually bad, it doesn't default to embedding a color profile. The reality\nof the current Web is that profiles are needed, even with sRGB.\n\n<\/p><p style='color:#888'>\n\nI have a very high opinion of Adobe, but this <strike>is<\/strike>was just moronic.\n\n<\/p>\n\n<p><a name='MiniRant-Exif'><b>Mini-Rant About Camera Standards (EXIF and DCM)<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n\n<p>It's wonderful that the camera makers have standardized much of how\ncamera-created images are saved in a file, from the metadata like the\ntime\/date of the picture, to embedded copyright information, to file-naming\nconventions, etc. It allows third-party products (printers, photo-kiosks,\netc.) to work with images directly from the camera, and it certainly\nsimplifies things for the writer of image-handling applications (like web\nbrowsers, photo editors, etc.)\n\n<\/p><p>\n\nThe problem is that the creators of these EXIF and DCM standards (<a\nhref='http:\/\/www.jeita.or.jp\/english'>JEITA<\/a>) have been incredibly\nshort-sighted on some issues. For example, the standard allows for encoding\nthe time\/date that an image was taken, but not for encoding the timezone\nassociated with that time\/date. Thus, if you have a bunch of photos taken\nfrom around the world, you can't sort chronologically. I asked a standard's\ncommittee member about this, to which he replied &#8220;Why would you want to\nencode the timezone?&#8221;. Unfathomable.\n\n<\/p><p>\n\nThey also do not allow for embedding color profiles. They essentially\nrequire sRGB (a color space that embraces the limitations of circa 1996\nmonitors!) as the only color space officially supported. The DCF Version 2\n(circa 2003) seems to allow for the use of Adobe RGB by encoding\n&#8220;R03&#8221; in the Exif &#8220;InteroperabilityIndex&#8221; field,\nbut this is but a small step. (Adobe Photoshop responds to this field, but\ndoes any normal consumer software?)\n\n<\/p>\n\n<p><a name='Others'><b>It's Not Just Me<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n\n<p>I shouldn't feel too bad about not having gotten the color-profile stuff\nright, because even photo-hosting sites designed for pro photographers\ndon't get it right. <a href='http:\/\/pbase.com'>PBase<\/a> strips an embedded color profile\nwhen creating the various non-original-sized versions of uploaded photos\n(thumbnails, medium, large, etc.). This guarantees incorrect colors. And\nthese sites are geared toward pro photographers! I asked them about it,\nbut they didn't seem to care, and said that they had no plans to fix it.\n\n<\/p><p>\n\nPhoto-hosting sites <a href='http:\/\/smugmug.com'>Smugmug<\/a> and <a\nhref='http:\/\/www.zenfolio.com\/'>zenfolio<\/a> both convert incoming photos\nto sRGB if not already there, which is the best they can do for the world\nof Color Stupid browsers. That's excellent, I think, but it would be nice\nif they were to also embed a color profile, to allow color-managed browsers\nto show proper colors.\n\n<\/p><p>\n\nThe most popular photo-sharing site, <a\nhref='http:\/\/flickr.com\/'>Flickr<\/a> at least preserves any embedded color\nprofile in the smaller-sized versions it makes. Unfortunately, they, too,\ndon't convert thumbnails to sRGB, nor embed a color profile for sRGB-tagged\nimages not having a profile.\n\n<\/p><p>\n\nSome do get it. All the pictures on <a\nhref='http:\/\/www.robgalbraith.com\/'>Rob Galbraith's site<\/a> are sRGB with\nan embedded profiles.\n\n<\/p>\n\n<p><b>Continued on the Next Page<\/b><\/p>\n<p>\n<\/p><p>\n\nWe now move from color mis-management the next page: <a href='\/blog\/photo-tech\/color-spaces-page4\/'>Page 4: Color Management<\/a>.\n\n<\/p><p>\n\nHowever, if you'd like to skip further technical stuff, feel free to skip directly to\n<a href='\/blog\/photo-tech\/color-spaces-page7\/'>Page 7: Recommendations and Links<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><b>Okay, sRGB is not Really That Common<\/b><\/p> <p> In numerous ways on the first page of this article, I indicated how popular the sRGB color space is, and how most devices and applications don't use anything else. What I really should have said is that many devices and applications don't pay <b>any<\/b> attention to color spaces -- sRGB or otherwise -- and just let the graphics card and monitor do what they want with the color data. <\/p><p> What any one person's graphics card and monitor will do with raw color data is anyone's guess -- it depends on how [...]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":251,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/254"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/254\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}