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Over saturation on retina 5K

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I recently purchased a new iMac 27" Retina 5K to replace my old iMac. I immediately noticed sRGB images looked over-saturated on all browsers except, Safari. Obviously, the wider color gamut on the new iMac is responsible. However, since the images look great on Safari, I was wondering if Firefox is working on a solution for this issue.

Helpful Remarks: Images look great in PS CS4, PS CS6, Canon Digital Photo and ColorSync, just not on Firefox or Goolge Chrome. I found that if I convert an image's profile to Adobe. Please advise. Thank you.

I recently purchased a new iMac 27" Retina 5K to replace my old iMac. I immediately noticed sRGB images looked over-saturated on all browsers except, Safari. Obviously, the wider color gamut on the new iMac is responsible. However, since the images look great on Safari, I was wondering if Firefox is working on a solution for this issue. Helpful Remarks: Images look great in PS CS4, PS CS6, Canon Digital Photo and ColorSync, just not on Firefox or Goolge Chrome. I found that if I convert an image's profile to Adobe. Please advise. Thank you.

All Replies (3)

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You could try adjusting Firefox's color management settings. This is an old write-up, but I haven't heard about any changes since then:

By default, Firefox will try to color manage tagged images (JPEGs and PNGs). You can review and experiment with the following preferences to see whether one of them is causing the problem:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button promising to be careful.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste gfx.c and pause while the list is filtered

gfx.color_management.mode - governs application of color management to images

0 = off 1 = on for ALL images 2 = on for TAGGED images (default)

I can't recall whether you need to quit/restart Firefox before this change, or changes to the below preferences, takes effect.

gfx.color_management.display_profile - if you have created a custom monitor profile and Firefox is not using it, you can enter the path to it here.

gfx.color_management.enablev4 - double-click to toggle to true if your custom monitor profile is an ICC v4 profile

gfx.color_management.rendering_intent - whether Firefox honors or overrides the intent flag in the ICC profile, by default, overrides to Perceptual

For details, see: https://developer.mozilla.org/Firefox/Releases/3.5/ICC_color_correction_in_Firefox

Can you find a combination of settings that gives you the colors you expect?

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Thanks for your suggestion. However, adjusting my browser settings are pointless. As a photographer, what is important to me is that everyone else sees the same thing I see on my screen and on the internet. If the images were processed as sRGB and the majority of screens utilize the sRGB profile, the images will appear as intended. However, the new iMac Retina 5K has a much wider color gamut. So images that look normal to everyone else will look oversaturated to anyone viewing them on a HD Retina 5K screen when using a browser. The images look fine on the Retina 5K as long as they are being viewed with imaging software with an sRGB workspace or with an Apple viewer or Safari. As more and more people begin to use high definition viewing screens, Firefox and Chrome will have to address this issue. Safari browser is an Apple product. The same images that look oversaturated on Firefox and Google look just as they were intended to look on Safari. If it can be done on Safari, there's no reason why it cannot be done on Firefox or Chrome.

NOTE: I did notice that if the image had the Adobe RGB1998 embedded, using the Retina 5K it looked okay on Chrome but the same on Firefox. However, if I were to do this to all my images, then they would not look correct to everyone who is not using a Retina 5K screen.

As far as we've come, it's a pity the industry as a whole, both computers and internet, can't commit to more compatibility across the board.

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I did a little research on this and it's inconclusive because I don't know a lot about graphics.

(1) A project called "quantum render" is in the works to help with a range of color management issues, and may be enabled for test versions later this year. This should help with the issue. However, it may not come to a regular release until maybe 2018.

(2) I saw a suggestion to set gfx.color_management.rendering_intent to 3 (absolute colorimetric) to retain the intended saturation of sRGB images on wide gamut monitors.

I understand your point that others won't necessarily know to do this, but please test it. It's important to know whether someone looking for that workaround would find it effective and since you have the hardware to prove/disprove it, I would appreciate your feedback.

(A) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button promising to be careful.

(B) In the search box above the list, type or paste gfx.c and pause while the list is filtered

(C) Double-click the gfx.color_management.rendering_intent and change it from 0 to 3 then click OK.

For details on the values for this preference, see: https://developer.mozilla.org/Firefox/Releases/3.5/ICC_color_correction_in_Firefox#Specifying_a_default_rendering_intent

This may require a quit/restart of Firefox before it takes effect.

Questions:

  • Does that help with sRGB images?
  • Does that cause problems for non-sRGB images?