What's going on here?

[TobyMac]

I just edited the below Image and saved was happy with everything and sent it to my phone. When I viewed it on my phone the Image has a weird, greenish blue cast to it, which as far as I can tell it doesn't have when viewed on my computer. If it does have a cast on your computers please let me know because that would mean something is wrong with my screen.
I did however use lightroom for the first time to really edit this image so I may have missed something there.

European Roller Nr5 by Tobias Weber, on Flickr

[chauncey]

Aah...your asking us to judge colors based on an internet image in whatever browser we happen
to be using that may/may not be color managed on a monitor that may/may not be color managed.
All that because you're not satisfied with the image colors that pop up on your phone?
I would ask if that phone is color managed.

The colors look fine to me but...I haven't a clue what the colors are supposed to be.

PS...it is a nice looking image!

[TobyMac]

Hi Chauncy, I totally understand what you mean, but the cast is so bad you would know if you saw it, I decided just to ask because it is the first time I am having this kind of a problem. I was just going on, maybe someone has had a similar problem. However if someone with your experience can't see anything wrong I take it the Image looks fine because I know you would tell me if it were way too blue

[DanK]

Tobias,

Is your monitor color-calibrated?

I don't know what the image is supposed to look like, and not knowing what your setup is, there is no guarantee that you will see anything I send you the way I do. So, I have to describe it.

On my calibrated monitor, your image looks the same in both Firefox and Photoshop CC. The color in the lower part of the wings I would describe as a light teal--kind of a bluish-green. The feathers higher up are a somewhat orange-tinted light brown. I'm sure there is a word for that.

I just googled that species, and the colors in the images I found are very different. The lower feathers are almost baby blue, not teal, and the top feathers are even more orange. If your monitor is not color-calibrated, you may be editing the photo so it looks correct in your editing software but not anywhere else.

On my iPhone, the colors are different from your image, but much closer to yours than the others I found. The teal is somewhat similar. It's hard to see precisely, but it may be a bit greener. However, the brown areas have lost all hint of orange. This makes me think that whatever software the image is going through on the iPhone isn't color-managed. I haven't tested other apps on the iPhone, but I will at some point, given this. However, this appears not to be your main problem.

Dan

[davidedric]

I've also done a bit of googling, and there seems to be a lot of colour varation in the species. I have found one or two with coloration similar to Tobias's, including one from Kruger, so it could be geography, but equally well maturity or sexual dimorphism, I really don't think we can judge.

OTOH, the overall appearance does seem odd and "unnatural" to me, but I couldn't put my finger on just what.

Dave

[Nicks Pics]

I see slightly warm lighting in your image, though I wouldn't say there is a noticeable and undesirable color cast to it. I would take that phone and browse some pro online galleries, and if all the images you have that color cast, it's probably your phone!

[TobyMac]

Thanks all

Dan how you described it is exactly how it looks. This was at sunset so it does have a bit of a warm colour to it but you described it pretty much exactly how I would have described it if I saw this bird in person.
Ok now the other strange thing is that it's only this image, all the others that I have on my phone, edited the same way, look the same, so it can't be the screen and I asked a friend and on his phone it looks the same, with a weird colour to it.
Maybe ill try a re-edit it, step by step and save it again and see if I still get the same result, maybe its just a weird Photoshop/Lightroom glitch.

[TobyMac]

@Dave, there are couple of colour variants in different geographical regions. I think there is also a variant that migrates.
As to what's "unnatural" I may have oversharpened the image a little by accident, might this be it?

[Geoff F]

Which colour system are you using on your equipment?

For example, if you shoot and edit in Adobe RGB that won't show correctly on equipment which uses Standard RGB or another format.

sRGB is generally stable but even that can vary between operating systems. I have occasionally had colour shifts when saving from Tiff to Jpeg.

[Manfred M]

Tobias - first of all your phone screen is not primarily designed for accurate colour reproduction (battery life and being touch sensitive are the primary considerations), so I would not even think of using it to judge a colour image.

However, I do see an issue. When I look at the metadata associated with your image file on Flickr; it shows you are using the ProPhoto colour space (which is what I use as well). However, colour managed internet browsers are sRGB only, so you are definitely going to get colour quality issues, and your image is going to look "muddy" versus what your computer screen shows.

Before posting, you need to covert the ProPhoto image to an sRGB image; in Photoshop use the <Edit> <Convert to Profile> and select an sRGB colour space. That should help to some extent.

The other issue, of course is that unless your computer screen in calibrated and profiled, you won't know how accurate your colours actually are. Even then, you have no control over how other people are viewing your image. Mozilla's FireFox browser in colour managed, but I'm not sure on the colour management implementation on other browsers.

So, if you prepare this image on a profiled and calibrated computer screen, convert it to sRGB and post it, someone (like me) who uses a profiled and calibrated screen with a colour managed browser; should be seeing something quite close to what you are. What other people are doing; is anyone's guess.

I'm not sure if there is much of a difference; but I've done an sRGB conversion on the file I downloaded from Flickr:

Original:



sRGB:



Frankly, I don't see any difference between the two, but that could also be related to how Flickr manages the images.

[Krawuntzel]

First: the picture does look absolutely fine on my monitor (and BTW is a good take) not having any blue-green cast.
Second: In Firefox it looks good and balanced; in Internet Explorer not bad, but slightly duller.
Third: I did "put" this jpeg-picture through my raw converter applying different color spaces to it:
Adobe Pro RGB: looks like in my Firefox
Adobe RGB: duller and like with no sun on the bird
CIE RGB: heavy green-blue cast
sRGB: dull but not so much as in Adobe RGB
Maybe this "test" might help. So IMHO there must be a problem with the color spaces you used.
Erwin

[rpcrowe]

Is your phone screen colour corrected? It seems like since everyone and his brother is using smartphones for photo work that there should be some way to colour correct the various screens used to view the photos...

[davidedric]

Manfred, I see a massive difference between the two. The corrected image looks right, the original didn't. I still can't put my finger on it, but Tobias's images just said to me "wrong". Maybe it's just many years of looking at birds.

Dave

[chauncey]

It's relatively easy to check colors between ProPhoto and sRGB by using the color sampler tool.

As a side note...is there any way to quantify levels of saturation of a particular color?

[Manfred M]

Manfred, I see a massive difference between the two. The corrected image looks right, the original didn't. I still can't put my finger on it, but Tobias's images just said to me "wrong". Maybe it's just many years of looking at birds.

Dave

I'm afraid you shouldn't be able to.

The way I test for differences between two seemingly "identical" images is by putting the two images into Photoshop; aligning them and then turning on the subtract or difference blending mode on the top layer. Any differences are usually quite apparent.

When I do this with these two images; I get a plain black screen; i.e. no difference between the two images. This makes me suspect that Flickr has processed the original image in the same way as the second one, regardless of the fact that the metadata claims that the original image uses the ProPhoto colour space...

[davidedric]

I'm afraid you shouldn't be able to.

Interesting, because I certain can. I have just checked with my lovely wife, and she agrees.

I am viewing images on a definitely not colour managed tablet. It really isn't marginal: I have no idea what is going on.

Dave

[TobyMac]

Thanks again guys.

I tried the colour profiles and I still don't see a difference. But what really gets me is that all the other images I edited in the exact same way look the same on phone and pc. I know the phones screens aren't as good and I really only use it to share my photos on Instagram but i would still like them to be good.

So when I have time today I will re-edit this image from the RAW file as exactly as the first time as I can. If the cast goes away I will assume it was some problem with photoshop or Lightroom.

As I said originally this was the first time I combined using Lightroom and then Photoshop to edit this image, could I have accidentally created a colour space when going from Lightroom to Photoshop? All I did was the basic editing in develop and then in the "edit" menu I hit edit in photoshop and then used edit Lightroom file I think it was.

[davidedric]

The "edit in" command has the option to specify a colour space. You might want to check what yours defaults to.

Dave

[TobyMac]

Ok so I changed the settings that Dave just suggested and re-edited, although I think I may have picked a different RAW image, but anyways...and the cast is gone, so I think Dave your colour space setting suggestion fixed the problem.

Here is the re-edit.

European Roller 5 small by Tobias Weber, on Flickr

[Manfred M]

Tobias:

1. Lightroom defaults to the ProPhoto colour space (you can change that in the options in Lightroom), so if you open your file with that software and move the file over to Photoshop, that's what you will be working in. This means that you must manually change it to sRGB if you are posting your files to the internet. Check the colour space using the EXIF data in Flickr; that will definitely tell you which colour space the image is in.

2. Phones are not colour managed, so you have no way of changing anything with the way the phone displays colours.