Different colors in different image viewers?

[Shangri La]

The image on the right is what I see in Capture One Pro 9 raw editing mode. The left is what's seen in Fast Stone viewer after the raw file is exported using sRGB IEC61966-2.1 ICC profile. The exported file is more saturated and red, and I've never seen this behavior before. I tried setting my monitor to sRGB/aRGB mode and the difference remains the same. Can anyone please help with this? Thanks.

 

[Mark K W]

The image on the right is what I see in Capture One Pro 9 raw editing mode. The left is what's seen in Fast Stone viewer after the raw file is exported using sRGB IEC61966-2.1 ICC profile. The exported file is more saturated and red, and I've never seen this behavior before. I tried setting my monitor to sRGB/aRGB mode and the difference remains the same. Can anyone please help with this? Thanks.

I'd guess the main difference is because of your monitor profile which C1Pro is using and which FastStone is not.

As far as I have understood FastStone is not color-managed, it is only color-space aware - i.e. whilst it can interpret the RGB data and ICC profile in the file correctly it does not have or use a color-management module to write those values to the display via the profile. Without going off and checking I am presuming C1Pro is however properly full color-managed.

Then as to whether your monitor profile is correct to compensate for your monitor's actual response, that is a separate issue, and the only way there is to cal and profile to build one. It is possible the profile is corrupt or not loading correctly (or being incorrectly selected in some way) so you could also try a reboot and check on which profile is being loaded by Win if you did not already do so.

[ There could also be a difference because (I presume) C1Pro is working in a wide-gamut space. I believe C1Pro has a soft-proofing option so you can check there with it set to sRGB as the destination space. ]

--

Mark W.
http://500px.com/Mark_Wycherley

 

[JohnWheeler]

Hi Shangri La

Try the instructions in this link to make sure that Color Management is turned on. Since you are using a wide gamut monitor, sRGB images will look overly saturated if the image data is sent directly to the montor without color management. Hope this helps:

http://ccm.net/faq/20748-faststone-image-viewer-enable-the-color-management-system

 

[Mark K W]

Hi Shangri La

Try the instructions in this link to make sure that Color Management is turned on. Since you are using a wide gamut monitor, sRGB images will look overly saturated if the image data is sent directly to the montor without color management. Hope this helps:

http://ccm.net/faq/20748-faststone-image-viewer-enable-the-color-management-system

 

[JohnWheeler]

I do not use FastStone either and unless FastStone has updated to something better in the last two years I think you are right about not using monitor profiles.

There was a post on DP Review a couple years ago: http://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3511750

They indicate that the monitor would need to be in sRGB mode as at that point the data was sent directly to the monitor. A poor workaround would be to have the image saved in aRGB which would be close to the monitor profile yet this can create issues for other viewers that are not color managed such as a number of web browsers.

Best answer, only use viewers that are totally color managed (shame on FastStone)

 

[Shangri La]

Thank you guys for the comments; really appreciate it. I turned on my PC today and looked again, both C1Pro and FastStone are displaying the same colors - the more saturated version! I quickly checked with other viewers: Windows 7 photo viewer displays the de-saturated colors and Picasa shows saturated.

My monitor is calibrated using NEC SpectraView II + Spyder 5 Pro, and I made sure the calibrated profile was loaded both yesterday and today. I check FastStone CMS and yes it was off by default and I now have it turned on. I assume "off" means FastStone assumes all images are in sRGB (which my exported image is) and "on" means FastStone will be able to interpret sRGB and aRGB files?

This is weird. It appears as if my C1Pro didn't have the correct color profile (or whatever the proper term is) loaded yesterday. I don't remember seeing this behavior before (unless using wrong export color space in C1Pro), and the only change I made recently was to update SpectraView II to the latest version and re-calibrated the monitor.

I'd guess the main difference is because of your monitor profile which C1Pro is using and which FastStone is not.

As far as I have understood FastStone is not color-managed, it is only color-space aware - i.e. whilst it can interpret the RGB data and ICC profile in the file correctly it does not have or use a color-management module to write those values to the display via the profile. Without going off and checking I am presuming C1Pro is however properly full color-managed.

Then as to whether your monitor profile is correct to compensate for your monitor's actual response, that is a separate issue, and the only way there is to cal and profile to build one. It is possible the profile is corrupt or not loading correctly (or being incorrectly selected in some way) so you could also try a reboot and check on which profile is being loaded by Win if you did not already do so.

[ There could also be a difference because (I presume) C1Pro is working in a wide-gamut space. I believe C1Pro has a soft-proofing option so you can check there with it set to sRGB as the destination space. ]

--

Mark W.
http://500px.com/Mark_Wycherley

May I ask what color management is? And by the way, the images in your 500px profile are really, really nice : )

 

[Mark K W]

Thank you guys for the comments; really appreciate it. I turned on my PC today and looked again, both C1Pro and FastStone are displaying the same colors - the more saturated version! I quickly checked with other viewers: Windows 7 photo viewer displays the de-saturated colors and Picasa shows saturated.

My monitor is calibrated using NEC SpectraView II + Spyder 5 Pro, and I made sure the calibrated profile was loaded both yesterday and today. I check FastStone CMS and yes it was off by default and I now have it turned on. I assume "off" means FastStone assumes all images are in sRGB (which my exported image is) and "on" means FastStone will be able to interpret sRGB and aRGB files?

This is weird. It appears as if my C1Pro didn't have the correct color profile (or whatever the proper term is) loaded yesterday. I don't remember seeing this behavior before, and the only change I made recently was to update SpectraView II to the latest version and re-calibrated the monitor.

I'd guess the main difference is because of your monitor profile which C1Pro is using and which FastStone is not.

As far as I have understood FastStone is not color-managed, it is only color-space aware - i.e. whilst it can interpret the RGB data and ICC profile in the file correctly it does not have or use a color-management module to write those values to the display via the profile. Without going off and checking I am presuming C1Pro is however properly full color-managed.

Then as to whether your monitor profile is correct to compensate for your monitor's actual response, that is a separate issue, and the only way there is to cal and profile to build one. It is possible the profile is corrupt or not loading correctly (or being incorrectly selected in some way) so you could also try a reboot and check on which profile is being loaded by Win if you did not already do so.

[ There could also be a difference because (I presume) C1Pro is working in a wide-gamut space. I believe C1Pro has a soft-proofing option so you can check there with it set to sRGB as the destination space. ]

--

Mark W.
http://500px.com/Mark_Wycherley

May I ask what color management is? And by the way, the images in your 500px profile are really, really nice : )

Thanks for the complement ref the images.

Color management is a common expression (you can Google it) - and in a nutshell means the technology and systems used such that all devices or media display the colors they can in a consistent way. The reality is that each device actually has its own responses and breadth of colors it can produce. For example one monitor's "purple" may not be the same as another's "purple", or indeed as per a defined reference "purple". A particular monitor may not be able to show as rich a red as another. Same between a monitor and a printer loaded with a certain type of paper and ink. In all examples, there will be a variance in color unless it is known and then compensated away somehow.

Color-management (which in its essence is a software RGB value-translation process) is what does that compensation by balancing the actual RGB levels sent to each device to ensure that there is that visual consistency in what is produced. To do this each device must be calibrated and characterised such that it has a known response profile that can be used to translate the RGB values it needs or produces. The document itself (photo in our case) then must also be defined in terms of what the contained RGB values represent, hence a reference document color-space (like the common sRGB, aRGB, ProPhotoRGB) is also needed.

The actual underlying science and technology is somewhat more detailed and complex, but this is the essence of it.

Perhaps start here:

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/color-management1.htm

and there are then multiple articles out there (just picking some, including for C1):

https://www.xrite.com/documents/literature/en/L11-176_Guide_to_CM_en.pdf

http://help.phaseone.com/en/CO8/Output/File-formats/Colors-in-Capture-One.aspx

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/7270088913/color-management-a-walkthrough

Andrew Rodney aka Digital Dog, an expert on the topic, often frequents this forum, and he provides links to his own articles and videos (but if he's around I'll leave him as to which!).

--
Mark W.
http://500px.com/Mark_Wycherley

 

[sankos]

[...] both C1Pro and FastStone are displaying the same colors - the more saturated version! I quickly checked with other viewers: Windows 7 photo viewer displays the de-saturated colors and Picasa shows saturated.

If you set up C1 correctly your raw photo should look the same in C1 as the output jpeg/tiff in your Win7 photo viewer (and Picasa too, but you need to go to Preferences and switch on the colour management option there). Like Mark has said before, the FastStone viewer doesn't respect your wide-gamut monitor profile so you can't use it to compare colours with your raw converter.

In C1 Pro make sure you go to View / Proof Profile menu and select the "Selected Recipe" option. Then go to your Output tab and highlight one of your recipes -- if your recipe outputs an sRGB file then that's what is soft-proofed by C1 in its viewer. Note however that C1 properly displays raw files only and you might see some colour / tonal shits if you view your output jpegs/tiffs in C1.

My monitor is calibrated using NEC SpectraView II + Spyder 5 Pro, and I made sure the calibrated profile was loaded both yesterday and today.

Also make sure that your monitor profile is v.2, not v.4.

--
Marcin
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sankos/

 

[Shangri La]

Thanks for the complement ref the images.

Color management is a common expression (you can Google it) - and in a nutshell means the technology and systems used such that all devices or media display the colors they can in a consistent way. The reality is that each device actually has its own responses and breadth of colors it can produce. For example one monitor's "purple" may not be the same as another's "purple", or indeed as per a defined reference "purple". A particular monitor may not be able to show as rich a red as another. Same between a monitor and a printer loaded with a certain type of paper and ink. In all examples, there will be a variance in color unless it is known and then compensated away somehow.

Color-management (which in its essence is a software RGB value-translation process) is what does that compensation by balancing the actual RGB levels sent to each device to ensure that there is that visual consistency in what is produced. To do this each device must be calibrated and characterised such that it has a known response profile that can be used to translate the RGB values it needs or produces. The document itself (photo in our case) then must also be defined in terms of what the contained RGB values represent, hence a reference document color-space (like the common sRGB, aRGB, ProPhotoRGB) is also needed.

The actual underlying science and technology is somewhat more detailed and complex, but this is the essence of it.

Perhaps start here:

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/color-management1.htm

and there are then multiple articles out there (just picking some, including for C1):

https://www.xrite.com/documents/literature/en/L11-176_Guide_to_CM_en.pdf

http://help.phaseone.com/en/CO8/Output/File-formats/Colors-in-Capture-One.aspx

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/7270088913/color-management-a-walkthrough

Andrew Rodney aka Digital Dog, an expert on the topic, often frequents this forum, and he provides links to his own articles and videos (but if he's around I'll leave him as to which!).

 

[Shangri La]

[...] both C1Pro and FastStone are displaying the same colors - the more saturated version! I quickly checked with other viewers: Windows 7 photo viewer displays the de-saturated colors and Picasa shows saturated.

If you set up C1 correctly your raw photo should look the same in C1 as the output jpeg/tiff in your Win7 photo viewer (and Picasa too, but you need to go to Preferences and switch on the colour management option there). Like Mark has said before, the FastStone viewer doesn't respect your wide-gamut monitor profile so you can't use it to compare colours with your raw converter.

In C1 Pro make sure you go to View / Proof Profile menu and select the "Selected Recipe" option. Then go to your Output tab and highlight one of your recipes -- if your recipe outputs an sRGB file then that's what is soft-proofed by C1 in its viewer. Note however that C1 properly displays raw files only and you might see some colour / tonal shits if you view your output jpegs/tiffs in C1.

My monitor is calibrated using NEC SpectraView II + Spyder 5 Pro, and I made sure the calibrated profile was loaded both yesterday and today.

Also make sure that your monitor profile is v.2, not v.4.

--
Marcin
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sankos/

This has to be the strangest thing I've ever seen. I opened C1Pro again and now it's displaying desaturated color again like the 1st time.

So a recap of what I'm seeing:

- FastStone/Picasa/Windows 7 file explorer build-in image preview are displaying the exported sRGB jpg image in slightly more saturated colors. (FastStone has Color Management System enabled, which I think shouldn't make a difference on sRGB images).

- Windows 7 photo gallery/photo viewer show the desaturated colors, which I'm not too concerned about - this is windows built-in image viewer after all.

- And here comes the problem of all problems: C1Pro editing mode sometimes displays desaturated colors, and sometimes displays saturated colors.

In C1Pro I do have View / Proof Profile as "Selected Recipe", which is sRGB IEC61966-2.1 ICC profile. I begin to think FastStone/Picasa are showing the correct colors - the more saturated colors, as you can see in the original post, is not unnatural at all. I suspect C1Pro is not rendering the correct colors sometimes, maybe an issue with version 9, which I recently upgraded to. But it's too significant of an issue to not be caught.

| Also make sure that your monitor profile is v.2, not v.4.

Can you elaborate where I can find the monitor profile version info? I didnt find in my SpectraViewII. The monitor is an NEC PA272W. Thank you.

 

[Mark K W]

[...] both C1Pro and FastStone are displaying the same colors - the more saturated version! I quickly checked with other viewers: Windows 7 photo viewer displays the de-saturated colors and Picasa shows saturated.

If you set up C1 correctly your raw photo should look the same in C1 as the output jpeg/tiff in your Win7 photo viewer (and Picasa too, but you need to go to Preferences and switch on the colour management option there). Like Mark has said before, the FastStone viewer doesn't respect your wide-gamut monitor profile so you can't use it to compare colours with your raw converter.

In C1 Pro make sure you go to View / Proof Profile menu and select the "Selected Recipe" option. Then go to your Output tab and highlight one of your recipes -- if your recipe outputs an sRGB file then that's what is soft-proofed by C1 in its viewer. Note however that C1 properly displays raw files only and you might see some colour / tonal shits if you view your output jpegs/tiffs in C1.

My monitor is calibrated using NEC SpectraView II + Spyder 5 Pro, and I made sure the calibrated profile was loaded both yesterday and today.

Also make sure that your monitor profile is v.2, not v.4.

 

[Shangri La]

A more accurate description of the "saturated/desaturated" colors: the "saturated" colors are like viewing the raw image in a full color space raw editor on a wide gamut monitor. The "desaturated" is like viewing the image on an sRGB monitor.

And the problem is I'm seeing desaturated colors on a wide gamut monitor in C1Pro.

 

[Shangri La]

[...] both C1Pro and FastStone are displaying the same colors - the more saturated version! I quickly checked with other viewers: Windows 7 photo viewer displays the de-saturated colors and Picasa shows saturated.

If you set up C1 correctly your raw photo should look the same in C1 as the output jpeg/tiff in your Win7 photo viewer (and Picasa too, but you need to go to Preferences and switch on the colour management option there). Like Mark has said before, the FastStone viewer doesn't respect your wide-gamut monitor profile so you can't use it to compare colours with your raw converter.

In C1 Pro make sure you go to View / Proof Profile menu and select the "Selected Recipe" option. Then go to your Output tab and highlight one of your recipes -- if your recipe outputs an sRGB file then that's what is soft-proofed by C1 in its viewer. Note however that C1 properly displays raw files only and you might see some colour / tonal shits if you view your output jpegs/tiffs in C1.

My monitor is calibrated using NEC SpectraView II + Spyder 5 Pro, and I made sure the calibrated profile was loaded both yesterday and today.

Also make sure that your monitor profile is v.2, not v.4.

 

[Mark K W]

[...] both C1Pro and FastStone are displaying the same colors - the more saturated version! I quickly checked with other viewers: Windows 7 photo viewer displays the de-saturated colors and Picasa shows saturated.

If you set up C1 correctly your raw photo should look the same in C1 as the output jpeg/tiff in your Win7 photo viewer (and Picasa too, but you need to go to Preferences and switch on the colour management option there). Like Mark has said before, the FastStone viewer doesn't respect your wide-gamut monitor profile so you can't use it to compare colours with your raw converter.

In C1 Pro make sure you go to View / Proof Profile menu and select the "Selected Recipe" option. Then go to your Output tab and highlight one of your recipes -- if your recipe outputs an sRGB file then that's what is soft-proofed by C1 in its viewer. Note however that C1 properly displays raw files only and you might see some colour / tonal shits if you view your output jpegs/tiffs in C1.

My monitor is calibrated using NEC SpectraView II + Spyder 5 Pro, and I made sure the calibrated profile was loaded both yesterday and today.

Also make sure that your monitor profile is v.2, not v.4.

 

[sankos]

- Windows 7 photo gallery/photo viewer show the desaturated colors, which I'm not too concerned about - this is windows built-in image viewer after all.

Yes, it is built in, but it is better in this case than FastStone because it respects the monitor profile if you set everything up in your Windows CMS.

- And here comes the problem of all problems: C1Pro editing mode sometimes displays desaturated colors, and sometimes displays saturated colors.

This has to be something with your monitor profile not being loaded to the graphics card. Do you have a profile loader running in the background, as you should, so that when the system is woken up it doesn't lose the monitor profile and default back to sRGB? The Datacolor software for the Spyder installs it automatically but I don't know if SpectraView has that. You could try calibrating and profiling your monitor with dispcalgui and argyll and then have the dispcalGUI profile loader watch your monitor profile. Otherwise you'll have to go to your system colour management settings and point it to your custom-made monitor profile each time the CMS loses track of it (e.g. after hibernation).

Can you elaborate where I can find the monitor profile version info? I didnt find in my SpectraViewII. The monitor is an NEC PA272W. Thank you.

I'm afraid I don't know SpectraView. I used to use the Spyder software and there was a setting there in the Preferences where you could choose either v.2 or v.4 for your profile. Don't bother with this at this point, though, because you should first look into the profile loading issue. Once you get this sorted out and the issue persists you can investigate that.

 

[Shangri La]

I would set your monitor into native (wide/default) gamut - use the local menu settings for that. Then calibrate and profile it once more. Make a careful note of the (filename of) calibration profile that is produced. Then re-boot and check what you see color-wise in C1Pro again for the raw edit. You should not change the monitor local mode (to sRGB or whatever) without then also recalibrating/profiling it. The profile and monitor setting have to be in tandem - that way color-managed apps should (will!!) display the right colors.

If you know the name of the monitor profile, then if you see the colors have changed somehow between one run of an application and the next, then look in Windows each to see which profile is loaded (the way to do that is in the links i gave you). See if you note anything odd going on with that profile selection/load by Windows. Maybe just check what the loaded profile is after re-boot. Make sure even the one loaded at boot is the correct one you have built.

If this misbehaving did start with a new SpectraView application version, it may be some conflict in the profile loader of that vs. Win7 and/or your graphics drivers or something??? Can you roll back to the previous version of SpectraView??

One thing for our info to also just check... I presume your system is a single monitor desktop? i.e. it is not a laptop with the NEC as an externally connected monitor??

 

[Shangri La]

- Windows 7 photo gallery/photo viewer show the desaturated colors, which I'm not too concerned about - this is windows built-in image viewer after all.

Yes, it is built in, but it is better in this case than FastStone because it respects the monitor profile if you set everything up in your Windows CMS.

- And here comes the problem of all problems: C1Pro editing mode sometimes displays desaturated colors, and sometimes displays saturated colors.

This has to be something with your monitor profile not being loaded to the graphics card. Do you have a profile loader running in the background, as you should, so that when the system is woken up it doesn't lose the monitor profile and default back to sRGB? The Datacolor software for the Spyder installs it automatically but I don't know if SpectraView has that. You could try calibrating and profiling your monitor with dispcalgui and argyll and then have the dispcalGUI profile loader watch your monitor profile. Otherwise you'll have to go to your system colour management settings and point it to your custom-made monitor profile each time the CMS loses track of it (e.g. after hibernation).

Can you elaborate where I can find the monitor profile version info? I didnt find in my SpectraViewII. The monitor is an NEC PA272W. Thank you.

I'm afraid I don't know SpectraView. I used to use the Spyder software and there was a setting there in the Preferences where you could choose either v.2 or v.4 for your profile. Don't bother with this at this point, though, because you should first look into the profile loading issue. Once you get this sorted out and the issue persists you can investigate that.

 

[Shangri La]

Well, I tried something else. I opened the same raw editing in C1Pro 8 and 9 separately, and both showed desaturated colors. So that eliminates the C1Pro version difference possibility... perhaps C1 Pro is indeed displaying the correct colors?

 

[Mark K W]

I would set your monitor into native (wide/default) gamut - use the local menu settings for that. Then calibrate and profile it once more. Make a careful note of the (filename of) calibration profile that is produced. Then re-boot and check what you see color-wise in C1Pro again for the raw edit. You should not change the monitor local mode (to sRGB or whatever) without then also recalibrating/profiling it. The profile and monitor setting have to be in tandem - that way color-managed apps should (will!!) display the right colors.

If you know the name of the monitor profile, then if you see the colors have changed somehow between one run of an application and the next, then look in Windows each to see which profile is loaded (the way to do that is in the links i gave you). See if you note anything odd going on with that profile selection/load by Windows. Maybe just check what the loaded profile is after re-boot. Make sure even the one loaded at boot is the correct one you have built.

If this misbehaving did start with a new SpectraView application version, it may be some conflict in the profile loader of that vs. Win7 and/or your graphics drivers or something??? Can you roll back to the previous version of SpectraView??

One thing for our info to also just check... I presume your system is a single monitor desktop? i.e. it is not a laptop with the NEC as an externally connected monitor??

 

[sankos]

Regarding Windows image viewer's rendering, the windows explorer's image preview shows the saturated colors but the photo/gallery viewers show washed-out colors, so I feel windows is doing something not consistent there.

Windows explorer, desktop, most movie viewers, Internet Explorer and the Edge browser are all non-colour-managed so on a wide-gamut monitor they look overly saturated. The Windows photo viewer (*not* the Photos app that you can find in Win8 and Win10) is colour-managed so what you're seeing there is "more true" than in the non-colour-managed applications.

So maybe you got so used to seeing oversaturation in other places in Windows (BTW, you have to use Firefox on a wide-gamut monitor in Windows, everything else is oversaturated) that what you call washed-out is in fact the norm? Just guessing because the setup you've described sounds OK so that's the only conclusion I'm left with.

How about opening your sRGB, C1-created jpeg in Firefox (with this add-on set up) -- if the colours and tones are similar to C1 than that's what you should go by and adjust your processing to the level of saturation that is aesthetically pleasing to you, i.e. boost the saturation in your C1 workflow.