Photos look very pale on web / other screens after color calibrating my monitor?

[mhope]

Hi all,

sorry for the amateurish question, but I could not find the answer even after reading about color calibration and profiles. So:


I have calibrated my monitor (Dell 2405FPW) with a Spyder calibrator.

I use the calibrated .icc profile when exporting my photos from Lightroom. The jpegs look fine (same colors as I see in Lightroom) when I open them on my computer with any image viewer.

(When I export the photos with the deafult (I think sRGB) color profile, then the jpegs looks very over-saturated and reddish since the calibration.)

Now, when I upload the jpegs to picasa or facebook and watch them in a browser, OR I open them on another computer/screen, they look very pale and a bit yellowish. The sRGB-exported jpeg looks fine.

Is this normal? I thought that with the calibration I will gain more precise colors, but I did not expect that my color space will be off this much compared to any other screens / web color space. What do I win this way with calibrating my screen at all?

(I guess if I printed my photos with a professional service then I had to use sRGB or even the printer's own color profile... so there again it doesn't seem to make sense that I calibrated my screen.)

Thanks for any explanations,

Marton

 

[Jim Cockfield]

I'm a little confused by what you're seeing.

But, you should export images from Lightroom using the default sRGB Color space (which is actually using an sRGB IEC61966-2.1 profile).

If you're not sure that's what you're ending up with, check your images with an EXIF viewer that can give you more info about the color space being used.

For example, try this online EXIF viewer that uses Phil Harvey's ExifTool libraries on the back end:

http://regex.info/exif.cgi


Then, when using color managed applications, your photos should render correctly on your system. That's because your color managed apps should be taking advantage of your monitor's calibrated .icc profile to remap the values your display needs (and I assume you've already told Windows to use your calibrated profile as the default).

Ditto for how they render on a different system using a color managed app if their system is not too far off from being calibrated.

But, when using non color managed applications, you'll probably see over saturated colors on your display.

That's because your display appears to be a PVA panel type with a wide color gamut. Note the color chart at the bottom left of this page (you can click on it and see how wide the color gamut your monitor supports is):

http://www.prad.de/en/monitore/review-dell-2405fpw-part8.html


With that type of display, it's normal to see over saturated colors (especially reds and greens) if you're not using a color managed application to view those images with. That's because the applications are not trying to remap the color values from the embedded [standard] sRGB profile to your monitor's calibrated profile. Here's one short article on the subject:

http://www.imagescience.com.au/kb/questions/168/Using+Wide+Gamut+Monitors


It's just one of the drawbacks to a wide gamut display (seeing over saturated colors unless viewing the images within a color managed application, because apps that are not color managed won't be using your calibrated profile)


Others viewing the same images on a standard gamut display should see them rendered OK (not overly saturated like you'll tend to see on your display when viewing them in apps that are not color managed), as long as you export them using the standard sRGB .icc profile used by Lightroom (which should be IEC61966-2.1).