Safari

[Steaphany]

Based on some comments here, especially on it's color management capabilities, I decided to give Safari a try. I downloaded and installed Safari 4 Public Beta (528.16).

Well, I have not seen any difference from how Firefox displays images.

One obvious difference is that Safari does pass the ICC Version 4 test where, by default, Firefox does not. To enable color management in Firefox 3, just type about:config into the address bar. Scroll down to the setting for gfx.color_management.enabled, left click to select the setting and right click to pull up a pop up where you can click on Toggle to switch from the default of false to true, then restart Fire Fox.

I have a several color test images that I use to evaluate image presentation that I downloaded from Northlight Images. I called up the same test images on Safari and Firefox and toggled between full screen windows. I saw no color differences. The over all tint, brightness, and saturation was a complete match.

I also have X-Rite color checker images that I shot to evaluate my SD14 and again, toggling between Safari and Firefox demonstrated an exact match.

From the comments I've read, I was expecting something a bit more dramatic, which may be the case if there is no color management settings in place for Windows. I.e. Control Panel => Display => Settings => Advanced => Color Management should list at least one color profile for your monitor.

As an FYI, I regularly review my monitor color setting by running Adobe Gamma, which was last run on April 29th. My color vision is good and, apart from needing glasses to read, I have no vision impairments.

Did I miss something or was my monitor and Firefox already set up correctly ?

[Colin Southern]

Well, I have not seen any difference from how Firefox displays images.

Hi Steaphany,

In short ...

If the image your viewing is tagged sRGB then you won't see any difference. If the image your viewing is tagged Adobe RGB then levels will display correctly, but unless you're viewing on an exotic monitor capable of displaying the full Adobe RGB gamut, then the extra colours that you MAY see will be purely a function of how much your monitor can exceed the sRGB gamut, which for most monitors is very little.

In a nutshell, colour management on a browser does very little for a properly calibrated (seperate from profiled) monitor when viewing a sRGB image. When viewing a Adobe RGB image all it's basically doing is converting it to sRGB levels & gamut for proper display.

As an FYI, I regularly review my monitor color setting by running Adobe Gamma, which was last run on April 29th. My color vision is good and, apart from needing glasses to read, I have no vision impairments.

Adobe Gamma is normally turned off and buried 6 feet deep when you're running custom monitor profiles or you can end up with a double-conversion (not a good thing!).

Does this help?

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Steaphany,

I'm only just beginning to get my head round all this stuff.

I looked at the IIC profile 4 page (from your link) to confirm all is working fine, it looked OK.

I had, a couple of months ago, downloaded the FF add-on for colour management, so I checked via about:config, which confirmed it was set true already.

So then I pasted the ICC4 page link into IE and was horrified by what I saw.
Note to self, don't ever use IE to view pictures again (as I used to at work ).

Thanks for making it so simple to check.

Regarding Safari vs FF, if people have installed and set up FF colour management correctly as we have, then I think we can say FF is fine, but I suspect a lot of people use it with the 'vanilla' settings and it is them (those?) that will benefit from Safari. I guess it depends how comfortable people are 'going under the hood' to fiddle to get it right, with Safari, which I don't use BTW, so no vested interest there, it works straight out of the box for those that prefer a simpler life.

Once both are set correctly, then it is heartening that there are no detectable differences, surely that's how it should be.

I am very grateful to you for the links in the above post, I'll be exploring them some more later.

Thanks,

[crisscross]

That lot may well be the case on PC, but on mac unfortunately FF 'color management' still doesn't seem to work. The settings in that gruesome config table must be auto-managed and wrong, even tho the specific ones you mention Steaphany are OK.

BTW it should not be necessary to use the config method if you have Color Management add-on, which did work until a couple of months back and that is independent of computer, OS and FF versions. (mac)

The following image is of screen dumps in each case with Safari LH, Firefox RH, top pair from PC via PSE2 with Adobe 1998 implemented, middle pair from PC with no colour profile management and bottom pair from Mac. None of them are the same as original image!!!!, but at least they are clearly different and Safari showing an edge in colour saturation and I would say the top and bottom left within acceptable limits. The actual appearance on the PC was way over to magenta in all cases, but that is probably a poor screen. The actual web appearance on screen on the mac is identical to the screen dump.

Not quite sure what this shows except that there are differences, Safari seems the better browser and it is worth ensuring a certain standard of monitor.

NB the image will no doubt appear differerent again on your monitor, but the fact that there are differences should be clear. I suggest viewing it in a colour managed PP prog with adobe 1998 selected if it is not auto