I have the Spyder2Pro Studio suite.

I've calibrated my monitor with it. As part of this, it generates an ICC profile for my monitor... which I then associate with my videocard/monitor and the Colorvision Profile Chooser loads at boot.

Also - Adobe Gamma is disabled at startup.

So - first question... is this right so far? Do I want the ICC profile loaded? I assume I do, but I'm not 100% sure.

Next question - what color settings do I need in Photoshop? (CS3 FWIW)

Current:
<img src="http://www.dloftis.com/colorsettings.jpg">

Do I want to use my custom ICC profile in here somewhere?

yes, you want the monitor profile loaded

Your Photoshop settings are fine.
Photoshop working colorspace - sRGB space is smaller than Adobe RGB and Prophoto RGB, but it will help in getting colors to appear somewhat similar on other people's monitors.

If your images are mostly for printing, adobe RGB or prophoto may be better choices, depending on printer you use

so consistent color across multiple computers/monitors is my primary goal.

I'm having trouble with an image looking different in photoshop vs a web browser on the same computer and I'm trying to determine what it is that I am doing wrong.

Photoshop is ICC aware. Most browsers (all Windows browsers) are not. Browser doesn't display the image according to the attached profile.

In Mac, Safari shows colors properly as it's ICC-aware. Firefox doesn't.

So what you see is unfortunately normal

why attach a profile to an image?

do al image formats even support embedded profiles?

is there a way in photoshop to work on an image and have it look the same in firefox on the same computer?

set Photoshop's working space to you monitor's profile. But then ALL bets are off in terms of what others will see on their monitors.

You can also just preview the image in your monitor's colorspace - with the image open, choose View - Proof Setup and select your monitor's colorspace

An image gets a profile assigned so that a color-aware device knows how to display/print it

Don't know about ALL image formats, but the "standard" ones (tiff, jpeg etc) do support profiles.

If you rarely print and mostly just view your photos using image viewers or web browsers on multiple computers, it's probably best not to use any profiles. This way your pics look the same in photoshop and in all browsers and image viewers. I used to print quite a lot and used profiles to get accurate prints but nowadays I print rarely, so I find it easiest not to use any specific color management profiles. All my images look the same in all my editing and viewing programs (CS3, PS Elements, ACDSee, IE, Firefox etc.) and also at work. I also get nice prints from online services, so the basic sRGB profile isn't that bad. Obviously those, who print a lot and need a wider color space, have different requirements. For viewing and online image sharing purposes you are probably better off without profiles. I got tired of editing pics in photoshop and checking what they look like in browsers and editing some more in photoshop and checking...



<img src="http://personal.inet.fi/private/petri/colormgmnt.gif">

I just don't understand this at all...

I don't understand how one color value can look different in two different applications on the same machine/monitor.

CCCCCC is CCCCCC. Why embed monitor specific information into that file? Isn't the idea to tell me video card / monitor the proper way to display CCCCCC?

Let's take this step by step.

When you calibrate and profile a monitor, two things happen:

- hardware is tuned to display colors as accurately as possible

- because monitor's gamut is narrower than, say, Adobe RGB gamut, profile is sent to your videocard's LUT (lookup table). In short, the profile says - if you get this color (that you can't properly display), replace it with that color

Properly calibrated and profiled monitor will ALWAYS appear less saturated or "punchy" than a basic uncalibrated monitor (in non-ICC-applications). BTW, ICC stands for International Color Consortium.

Now let's talk about the images. When you save images for the Web, it is always better to convert them to sRGB color space. The reason is, that you simply don't know what kind of monitor your viewer has, but what you do know is that its gamut is very close to sRGB gamut.

So on your viewer's non-calibrated monitor, the colors will appear just as punchy as they do in Photoshop on your monitor.

Problem is, your display IS calibrated, but your browser is color-dumb and does not understand profiles. It doesn't know that it must adjust colors according to your monitor's profile. It assumes your display is standard sRGB.

This will likely change sooner or later. Apple's Safari browser already knows to use the system profile. Hopefully other browsers will follow.

Petri is correct though - if color accuracy in prints is not your primary concern, and you mostly care about what others see on their displays, it may make more sense for you to stay away from profiling and return your display to standard sRGB. This way colors will be the same, whether in ICC-aware Photoshop or ICC-dumb web browser.

Does this make sense?

and from my understanding, what it boils down to is that you wasted your time profiling your monitor if all you wanted is for it too look like it would on a standard browser.

profiling is meant to ensure the proper color across (icc aware) devices.

Using a .gif as an example... (as it doesn't support embedded profiles)

I open that gif in firefox. Firefox assumes sRGB (Is that right?) and displays the image.

Now I set Photoshop to prompt for what to do with a file that has no embedded profile.

I open that same file in photoshop, it asks what to do... I have these options (with these results)

1&gt; Leave as is (don't color manage) --- if I choose this, the colors don't match
2&gt; Assign working RGB: sRGB IEC61966-2.1 --- again, colors don't match
3&gt; Assign profile [list] --- I choose my monitor's profile --- colors match

What am I missing here? I tell photoshop to treat it as sRGB, Firefox treats it as sRGB, and they come out looking different?

Sorry - I know I'm sounding dense here.

It's really a simple answer, but it's hard to formulate it without you first visualizing 2- or 3-dimensional colorspace charts and understanding how profiles interact.

For now just accept it as an axiom - if you want firefox/ie and Photoshop to display the colors identically, either set PS working space to your monitor profile, or use view-proof setup-your monitor profile

A short answer without explanation is that PS knows that your monitor is adjusted and adjusts the image accordingly and Firefox doesn't. When PS working space is set to your monitor, it doesn't adjust anything and just dumps the image there like Firefox does...

If I go that route...

Let's say I have two computers, mine and some random other persons. My monitor is "calibrated" and profiled, and I've got my monitor ICC loaded in Windows. My friend has an uncalibrated monitor.

By sheer luck, his monitor is reasonably accurate out of the box. This image I'm working with displays very similarly between firefox on my machine and on his.

Now I open that file in Photoshop with my monitor's profile selected as the working space. I make some changes, save the file, etc. Now, when I open it in firefox - it should look like what I saved in PS. Will it still be reasonably matched to his monitor? Or will I have somehow made it look different for him?

if the adjustments you make still fall within your display's gamut, but outside his, the image will look different.

Otherwise, yes, the image will still look similar on both monitors

Thanks for your help.

I just set it up with my monitor's profile as the working space, created a new RGB/8 document, saved for web as a jpeg (without icc profile), then opened the new file side by side with the original.

They're different.

If not, then it will still look different between PS and firefox.

If the file was converted to sRGB and there's a difference, then something is wrong

a good monitor makes a WORLD of difference in this case.

My dual LCDs that allow for RGB adjustments during profiling show very little difference between color-managed and non-color-managed apps.

On the other hand, both my IBM and Apple laptops show a HUGE difference. Since laptop screens do not allow RGB adjustments, they aren't really "calibrated" - just "profiled". Of course, 6-bit laptop screen is also not as good as 8-bit LCD to begin with.

In other words, the closer to "perfection" the monitor is CALIBRATED, the less of those differences you will see...