Color Management in RW7?

In an old discussion about “What would you like to see in RapidWeaver 7?” I wrote:
COLOR MANAGEMENT.
I wish that “Photo Album” saves the pictures and thumbnails with their original color profile (usually sRGB), non only in BEST quality but even with the lower quality settings.
Only with Quality > BEST the photos are saved with their original sRGB color profile, but not the thumbnails.

This is another discussion I started about color management issues in Rapidweaver:

We’ve improved the colour management in RW7, you can download the demo here to see if it fixes your issues:

There’s a typo in your URL Dan :slight_smile:

Don’t know what you mean :wink:

I wouldn’t overstate color management in webdesign. The screens of the visitor are normally so different and often totally misconfigured. So you have no control what will happen with the color of the images you use in your pages.

Best way is to use no color profile or to use sRGB. I cannot see that there is any advantage to use a special ICC profile.

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It IS important to respect the original pictures and their colors. If I save a picture with sRGB profile I want that the picture in the web page keeps the same sRGB profile.
But if I put an sRGB picture in Rapidweaver Photo Album and I leave the default setting quality on “High” the software changes the color because it converts the picture in MY system color profile and then saves it without any profile. This way NO ONE in the the world will see the original sRGB picture.
The only way to keep the original pictures with original colors is to set the quality as “Best”, but I discovered it after publishing hundreds of furniture pictures in the web site of a client. And the client was not satisfied because she said "Why the pictures in my web site are so different from the original pictures I open in Photoshop or Preview or iPhoto, or any other software?
Respecting the original pictures, with their ICC profile IS IMPORTANT.

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Color management is good and important for photographers and for printing. But websites run on computers you absolutely cannot control. Most of these computers will have a more or less misconfigured screen and only a very few visitors will look at your photos with a calibrated screen. So the effort to implement profiles into the images is secondary. Most tools who prepare images for web will remove color profiles

I build websites for customers and sometimes it is unbelievable what screens they use. One of them used a screen with nearly only yellow and gray tones. For the customer it was normal. O.K., that was extreme but what should any color profile of my images do on such screens…?

If it is important for you to use color profiles, you shouldn’t use image stacks or plugins but embed your images via warehousing. There should be enough solutions besides the good old photo album plugin. That’s the only way to have control what will happen with your images

Ok, but this works only because the recent web browsers assign sRGB as the color profile in the case the picture do not have one embedded (or tagged). So the profile IS important.
It is important that my pictures will not be converted in other profiles.
I want Rapidweaver (or third party addons) leave the pictures as they are, without converting in other profiles, because in this way the number of the color changes, and all became a mess.
sRGB is the default profile for the web. You can embed the profile, tag the profile, or discard the profile, but in the last case (I repeat) the browsers behavior is to perform as the picture is sRGB.

You are right, modern browser should understand ICC profiles. But often browsers do not work exact. They often do not apply sRGB profile exactly. And if an image contains no profile the browser will use the monitor profile. Conclusion: The outcome is not predictable.

What RapidWeaver does with the images is an own story, but as I wrote I recommend warehousing for such situations.

GOOD! I tried Rapidweaver 7 Photo Album and now the pictures keep the original color profile, and there’s no wrong color conversion to the monitor profile (in my case is a wide gamut LaCie 324, profiled with XRite probe).

Here are the results:

Original picture:

Same picture from Rapidweaver 6 Photo Album

Same picture from Rapidweaver 7 Photo Album

The last one has the same colors and profile of the original. Regardless of whether the monitor is expensive or cheap, calibrated or not calibrated, light or dark…

Ok I will update soon :slight_smile:

I do quite a bit of work with colour management, so it may surprise you that I can agree with both @Trystero and @apfelpuree.

I have never used the Photo Album so this hasn’t affected me personally but RW should not be messing with the colour management of our images and applying the monitor profile to images is ridiculous. There are also developers creating graphics that are uploaded as part of stacks as Generic RGB. Perhaps some of them are also converting the profiles of gallery images in their stacks or plugins.

Dealing with the reality of the situation we have absolutely no way to control the display type, calibration, browser choice or viewing conditions of site visitors and in most cases it’s safest to assume the worst. The best strategy I find is to use untagged sRGB warehoused images. I believe FireFox is currently the best browser for colour management.