Rapidweaver 6 still NOT COMPATIBLE with ICC profiles?

Classic
1

“Photo Album” and many other addons were not compatible with ICC profiles (sRGB, AdobeRGB and so on). Not only. If a picture had the right sRGB profile, with some plugins the profile was not only deleted (this would not be a serious matter if the original was sRGB), but converted in a wrong way and saved without profile!

I remember all the times I wrote, in the old forum, about this very bad issue in Rapidweaver5. I hoped that Rapidweaver6 had corrected this defect.

NO

It’s still the same nightmare :frowning:

I have hundreds of pictures, all in sRGB ICC profile. If I put a picture in a Rapidweaver “Photo Album” page, it is converted to the monitor color profile, and then this profile is NOT embedded in the file.

In this way, the display is totally wrong with both AdobeRGB and sRGB. Especially if the monitor on which you work with RapidWeaver is a wide-gamut (~AdobeRGB). The image that is seen on a web page made with RapidWeaver becomes faded, with dull colors, not the original ones.

The only way to fix it is:

  • re open with Photoshop all the pictures exported by Rapidweaver
  • assign the monitor profile
  • convert to sRGB
  • save again
  • send to the web site with an FTP software

But the next time I make a change the pictures are saved again in the wrong way.
Both the thumbnails and hires pictures of the Gallery or Album.

A NIGHTMARE.

PLEASE FIX THIS NONSENSE!
Leave the pictures with the original ICC profiles without conversion!

Here is the original sRGB picture (left) together with the wrong one saved by Rapidweaver “Photo Album” that converted it to my monitor profile and saved without it (right).

trJSU0n.jpg1458×815 279 KB

Below is the same picture with the monitor profile assigned, to match the original colors, but still unusable in the web.

MqhByCY.jpg1458×976 313 KB

Only those who use Rapidweaver with a standard sRGB monitor will not notice the defect, because (fortunately for them) their pictures will be saved in their sRGB monitor profile, or a monitor profile very close to sRGB.

Here is the file used for my test: http://www.sprezzatura.it/TEST_RGB/TEST_sRGB.jpg

PLEASE, waiting for a fix, let me know if there is a plugin or other addon similar to Photo Album (http://i.imgur.com/s9lul64.jpg) that leaves the images with their original embedded profile intact.

2

With Photostream Stack, you are able to display a nice grid of photos
(including light box) which you have uploaded before to a FTP folder. With this,
you have full control of the full screen photos (as also for the thumbnails, as
you are able to upload them separately if you want). And you do not have to
change your website with RW when uploading new photos, as you can do this with a
FTP application by yourself.
http://instacks.com/photostreamstack/

3

Isn’t color management on the web a lost cause?

Profiles are stripped – guess – to make images load as fast as possible. With all those different monitors around… most cheap, never calibrated, some old, some older… > it seems like a lost cause.

I’m in the graphic line of business. Not a photographer.

I hear all kind of comments when we sent proof electronic… ‘this isn’t the right color, it’s green on my screen. It should be same color as our logo… blue.’ ‘Why have you changed our color from red to orange?’ I don’t understand… when I looked at the image on my iPad, it looked okay…’ I could go on… Our answer is always the same – it’s your monitor that shows you the wrong color?

The professionals we also have as clients… knows all this. The require a printed calibrated proof.

Why add profiles to images for the web when 99% of all monitors shows you the wrong colors anyhow?

Why not set up a Photoshop Action that optimizes the images… adds little extra color… before the images are added to RapidWeaver. To make them look as good as possible… which they probably doesn’t anyhow on every screen.

1 Like
4

@Trystero – Stripping the ICC profile from photos is supposed to “optimize” for smaller size of an image file. For some – that means nothing. Some may be even glad, that their files are smaller. But photographers and graphic designers hate that practice because they strive to get as much quality from their images as possible and they are willing to ignore slightly bigger file size. I am one of that latter lot…

Frankly, I am very disappointed that the software makers take upon themselves to decide for us that size matters more than quality. This should be left for us to decide – in the form of a Preference in an application.

So, I am joining Trystero in an appeal to RMS and add-on makers to respect profiles embedded in photos. And at least give us a choice.

5

@defligra – Why would it be a lost cause? It may become a lost cause if we don’t do anything about it.

And where did you find out that 99% of all monitors are NOT calibrated? Besides, even if 99.99% were not calibrated, the rest of them should have a chance to show true colors. Internet is not some kind of a dictatorship. It is a democratic idea that’s built it.

So, once again, we should be able to decide on our own whether or not to strip color profiles from our own photos.

6

Stripping the profiles is OK, as i wrote in my message, ONLY if the sRGB pictures remain intact.
This works only for sRGB pictures, stripping the profiles in AdobeRGB pictures produces wrong looking colors in the web.

But the issue I described is another.
Rapidweaver Photo Album CHANGES the pictures.
It CONVERTS sRGB in the monitor profile, and then saves the pictures without the right profile.
There is a different monitor profile for every user in the world. :worried:

In this way no one in the web can know which one was the original profile.
And all the web users see wrong colors.
Even in MY monitor the pictures appear wrong because Rapidweaver changed the colors, not only stripped the profile of sRGB pictures, and the browsers apply sRGB when there is no embedded profile.

7

@Trystero – One way to circumvent this situation is to convert your photos to the generic sRGB profile before you export them from Photoshop. They won’t look as good on wide-gamut monitors as they would with AdobeRGB or ProPhotoRGB profile, but at least their colors will – somewhat – resemble the original, when they will be stripped of the ICC profile on their way to the Internet.

But, if it is in fact true that RW Photo Album converts the embedded profile to the monitor profile, that is indeed a complete nonsense and the worst practice I can think of. At least it should leave the generic sRGB profile intact.

8

I always convert all my pictures to sRGB for the web.
With or without embedded profile. Without is OK because the recent browsers apply sRGB when the profile is not embedded or tagged.

Only in one case I used also AdobeRGB, it was to show the differences of the colors in a photographic forum: http://www.sprezzatura.it/TEST_RGB/
With a wide-gamut monitor and a browser compatible with ICC profiles the AdobeRGB pictures (right) appear more vivid and colorful than sRGB (left)
But this is a simple HTML page. Probably it would have been impossible to create it with RapidWeaver keeping the original files. :confused:

In the meanwhile I am trying to remake with Weaverpix the pages I was working on.
It RESPECTS the pictures, it do not convert them to the monitor profiles
It do not strips the profiles.
But I liked the simple look of the standard Raidweaver Photo Album inside Dashboard Theme.
http://i.imgur.com/aWOH6mS.jpg

9

@instacks
Warehousing will be difficult if I have to warehousing also all the thumbnails for the gallery pages.
In the same web site there is Gallery Stack. http://instacks.com/gallerystack/
It seems perfect for me. I downloaded a picture (page0-1005-full.jpg) from the demo page and it has the sRGB profile embedded when I open it in Photoshop.
Can you confirm that Gallery Stack do not changes/converts the pictures?

Now I have to take a decision: Weaverpix (I own it) or Gallery Stack (I have to buy it)?

10

I confirm that I do not change pictures in Gallery Stack, as this stack just takes the output from the RW Photo Album and reuses it.

11

@instacks
Thank you. I will take a look at all the demo pages of Gallery Stack to see if it is really ok for me.

12

@Trystero I have been colour managed since ColorSync arrived in the the mid-nineties, my screens have the widest gamut possible - and I have no problems with the way that RapidWeaver and its many plugins handle my images. Colour is passed through RW without change.

As others have said, all files should be saved for the web in sRGB - Adobe RGB is an early noughties fad that has little relevance for editing images (the gamut is too small) or reproduction (only photographers fully understand colour management )

:wink:

13

@NickWB
I started working in graphics with a MacPlus in the year… I think it was 1987. I used FreeHand in the black & white monitor and I created the colors with the help of a big book with the CMYK plates. I still have Photoshop 1.5 in a 3.5 diskette.
Now I’m in front of a new MacPro and a profiled LaCie 324 monitor, and I work with Photoshop, Lightroom, Cinema 4D, to create pictures for the catalogues of ceramic tiles.
I know what is ColorSync.
I know how to save pictures for the web.
I save always in sRGB for the web.
And finally I AM a photographer (analog starting from 1978, digital from 2006).

I ask you to try with Rapidweaver “Photo Album”.
Put some sRGB pictures with vivid colors in the EDIT window, save the project and export the web site.
Then open the pictures in the files folder, their names are “page0-1000-full.jpg”, “page0-1001-full.jpg”, “page0-1002-full.jpg”… see them in a browser web page and compare them to the original ones.
Or open them in Photoshop and tell me what happens.
Photoshop asks for a profile, which one do you chose? sRGB as the original?
Try and compare with the original picture.

Here is the original sRGB picture (Maxwellcrayon_sRGB.jpg):

Maxwellcrayon_sRGB.jpg800×440 78.9 KB

Here is the picture saved by Rapidweaver Photo Album (page1-1001-full.jpg):

page1-1001-full.jpg800×440 82.6 KB

Do you think the colors are the same?

Again.

Here is the original sRGB picture (fruitswoman_sRGB.jpg):

fruitswoman.jpg642×794 161 KB

Here is the picture saved by Rapidweaver Photo Album (page1-1003-full.jpg):

page1-1003-full.jpg642×794 172 KB

Do you think the colors are the same?

P.S. I see that the pictures in this page are NOT the originals, they were imported in this site with other names. What a mess. Here are the links to the ORIGINALS:

MaxwellCrayons original http://www.sprezzatura.it/TEST_RGB/Maxwellcrayon_sRGB.jpg
MaxwellCrayons saved by Photo Album http://www.sprezzatura.it/TEST_RGB/page1-1001-full.jpg

Woman with fruits original http://www.sprezzatura.it/TEST_RGB/fruitswoman_sRGB.jpg
Woman with fruits saved by Photo Album http://www.sprezzatura.it/TEST_RGB/page1-1003-full.jpg

The only way to restore the original colors is applying MY monitor profile:
http://www.sprezzatura.it/TEST_RGB/LaCie324_5500k_luglio_2015.icc

14

@NickWB I was nodding along in agreement with your first paragraph, although I would not be surprised if what @Trystero reports is true. I just don’t experience issues like his because I primarily warehouse images, and only use Stacks, which has long since stopped necessary file conversions.

The colors in the post abovet are obviously not the same, but it is hard to compare without seeing them in their original online state, not resaved again. If there is no profile, and the photo started in sRGB, but matches your monitor profile or another profile when you assign one (not convert to one), then the silly conversion is being done on export and it is an ugly bug.

Back to Nick’s post, though, you are correct, that web bound images should always be saved as sRGB beforehand, and at that point, saving with or without a profile is no longer really critical, based on browser defaults. HOWEVER, as a professional fine art printer and photographer, I have to take issue with you second paragraph and statement about AdobeRGB being an earlier nineties “fad”. WTF? Smaller gamut than sRGB? Are you serious? I’m hoping that you just briefly mixed up Apple RGB with Adobe RGB, because the latter is still very much alive and used by mainstream professionals.

Color management is not a trivial subject to cover in a forum post, but ProPhoto RGB has the largest gamut, followed by Adobe RGB and sRGB. You should always choose the smallest colorspace that will encompass the gamut of your subject, so sometimes ProPhoto is overkill. Adobe RGB has a gamut that can reproduce the majority of what we see, and majority of what we can print. sRGB does not come particularly close with either of those, but it’s the tabla rasa of the web, by virtue of it being designed to only hold “safe” colors that any monitor can reproduce.

PS: we boarded the train for digital design simultaneously, @Trystero. I still hold a bit of a grudge against Macromedia/Adobe for what they did to everybody’s favorite vector tool, Freehand.

15

@colorwave
I still have an HD with SnowLeopard and sometimes I boot from that old OSX only to use again FreeHand. With FreeHand I draw shapes and then export them as .ai files and open in Cinema 4D to create 3D models.

I do not say that ALL the addons and plugins of Rapidweaver work badly changing colors.
Only some, as Photo Album.
In the old forum (now deleted) I wrote a long list of OK or NO.
I searched in the HD with Spotlight and… I found the saved message :smile:

This was the end of old message of 2012:

The worst case is when a picture is positioned in a Styled Text page, but reduced in dimensions, or placed in a RapidWeaver Flash PhotoAlbum. It is converted in my monitor profile and then saved without embedded profile.
The same wrong thing happens also in the Collage plugin.
SymCanvas slideshow converts the picture in my monitor color profile and embeds the profile. Someone will see the pictures well (those who use a browser compatible with profiles), but I think it is a wrong behavior because it has no sense to convert the pictures in the user’s monitor profiles. Every profile of every user is different.
Stacks converts the pictures in Generic RGB Profile (wrong!)
Carousel, Weaverpix and Rapidalbum work very well: they save the pictures with original sRGB profiles.

16

Not that long ago, even Stacks itself was a bad actor. Every image was converted to PNG on export. How far we’ve come since then. After I switched to Foundation and 100% Stacks, I feel much more in control of my images, and can specify multiple sizes for mobile, tablet and desktop. IMO, the RW Plugin wars are over, and Stacks has trumped all. The advantages other gallery plugins had over it in UI/UX have now been fully negated, and the page integration it offers is a huge competitive advantage.

17

Ok, I know that using only Stacks could be the solution.
But sometimes the standard Rapidweaver pages as Photo Album are the best solution for small series of pictures inside purchased themes as the ones I am using.

I think I will switch to some Stacks album/gallery or Weaverpix (but it’s so clumsy, with a complicated interface…)

18

I’ve tried to like WeaverPix, and started a number of projects with it. Ultimately, though, I always wind up feeling as you do, that the interface gets in the way more than it facilitates and I turn to other gallery solutions. The “child of” feature of Stacks 3 has made reordering images (or other items in a array), the last stumbling block for many gallery stacks, a remarkably simple process now. All updated stacks should have the integrated child stack design that makes all components easily reordered.

19

Yes, I remember when RW 4 or 5 was released. I noticed that it introduced the action of stripping the profile from photo album photos. After some discussions on the old forum, the problem was corrected by Realmac.
When I choose Best quality in the photo album page, I would expect RW to leave the photos unmolested.
I am still using V5 for other reasons but this latest revelation about V6 is sad news indeed.

20

@colorwave
I purchased Stacks 3 upgrade the first day of release, but I had some issues with a .2 project so I restored the previous situation with Time Machine, waiting for a safe update.
Now I could try with 3.01 to discover this new feature you’re talking about.