Attached Link: Color Perception and How it Might Apply to Photography

"In trying to delineate what is good and what is bad in photography, we should take into account the other person’s perception, but we can’t, even though it could make all the difference."

Some people say a photograph is overworked, or the color is too vibrant and blown out, however, it is only one view point and not necessarily everyone's viewpoint. And, certainly, the artist who presented the finished product as he saw it, sees it in another way.

Interesting video - the Sally/Anne effect was something I wasn't aware of. To further complicate the issue of color perception when dealing with photos viewed on a computer monitor, you never know what kind of monitor your photo will be viewed on or how that monitor might have been adjusted or calibrated, all of which can drastically affect how an image looks. And images look very different on Macs & PCs as well. So when we post our photographic "masterpieces" & they appear to be underappreciated, we can just assume it's either a color perception or monitor calibration problem & feel better about ourselves, right?

Well worth watching! When we tweak the color balance of a photo we may be doing two different things. We could be trying to make it look exactly as we remembered the scene, or we could be trying to make the colors look 'better' to ourselves. This may be viewed by another as very different events with different outcomes in their experience department.

"Art is in the eye of the beholder"

I thought of that phrase when reading this.

Thank you, PK. it was very interesting :)

When this place sorts out the colour issues that are WAY off, we can all then chew the fat over colour.  Nearly every image I post the colour is way off kilter.  Then you have to constantly remind people to "Zoom for the correct colour"  And sharpness for that matter.  I know my photography is correcly white ballanced!  But it isn't when displayed at this site.

Ronnie - I'm puzzled as to why an image displayed on Renderosity would look differently than the original that was uploaded. The size & number of bytes are identical & I can't imagine that Renderosity would be making any changes to uploaded images. But I can confirm that when I view my original images the colors are somewhat different. Could it be that browser software uses a different JPG display algorythm than the operating system (Windows 7 with the Picasa image viewer in my case)? I've checked with both Firefox, my usual browser, & IE & they both display the image identically. Are you suggesting that Renderosity uses it's own proprietary JPG display algorythm that overrides what the browser uses? Are you posting your photos to another site that displays the images differently than Renderosity?

Ronoir: I checked out your some of your uploads and a few are in colourspace AdobeRGB. That is probably the problem with your colours. Browsers don't handle colourprofiles very well if I remember correctly. Try converting to sRGB before you upload a photo.

When rendo generates a thumbnail the colours can be off because the PHP/GD software doesn't understand AdobeRGB and just messes up the colours.

Hmm interesting as I have always used sRGB my monitor and colour profiles are all set for sRGB

Where the Adobe 1998 comes from search me? After 15 years in the print as a colour matcher I know 98 is only used for printing, as I never ever print anything and only display to web, I find it interesting that you see 98 profiles on my images? Oh well like I said, this site is getting it wrong somewhere.  And I am not suggesting you are wrong 3DGuy, I have also just checked my self and seen 98 profiles on some of my images.  How tthey got there is a mystery.

Claude. I am not suggesting anything, the evidence is clearly there, the white balance and colours are wrong, and now it seems they are converting colour profiles too.

Is your camera set to AdobeRGB? Mine is

No all my Cameras are set to sRGB

OH yeah I should add Claude that yes, they are fine at smugmug where they are for sale, they are fine at red bubble, and also fine at flickr

Here is full exif data from my most recent upload

Exif data
Camera     Canon EOS-1D Mark II N
Exposure     0.003 sec (1/400)
Aperture     f/7.1
Focal Length     280 mm
ISO Speed     400
Exposure Bias     +2/3 EV
Flash     Off, Did not fire
Image Width     1000
Image Height     689
Bits Per Sample     8 8 8
Photometric Interpretation     RGB
Orientation     Horizontal (normal)
Samples Per Pixel     3
X-Resolution     240 dpi
Y-Resolution     240 dpi
Software     Adobe Photoshop CS6 (Windows)
Date and Time (Modified)     2013:03:20 20:35:25
    
Exposure Program     Aperture priority
Date and Time (Original)     2013:03:20 13:06:05
Date and Time (Digitized)     2013:03:20 13:06:05
Max Aperture Value     5.7
Metering Mode     Multi-segment
Color Space     sRGB
Focal Plane X-Resolution     3098.143236 dpi
Focal Plane Y-Resolution     3098.143236 dpi
Custom Rendered     Normal
Exposure Mode     Auto
White Balance     Custom
Scene Capture Type     Faithful
    
Serial Number     xxxxxx
Lens Info     98-280mm f/5.6+1.4x
Lens Model     EF70-200mm f/4L USM +1.4x
Compression     JPEG (old-style)
Coded Character Set     UTF8
Date Created     2013:03:20
Time Created     13:06:05+00:00
Global Angle     30
Global Altitude     30
Photoshop Quality     10
Photoshop Format     Progressive
Progressive Scans     3 Scans
XMPToolkit     Adobe XMP Core 5.3-c011 66.145661, 2012/02/06-14:56:27
Format     image/jpeg
Lens     EF70-200mm f/4L USM +1.4x
Lens ID     187
Image Number     65409
Flash Compensation     0
Owner Name Ronnie James Sefton    
Rating     0
Metadata Date     2013:03:20 20:35:25Z
Creator Tool     Adobe Photoshop CS6 (Windows)
Legacy IPTCDigest     402BC0F99F3A294C4719340FF557FE79
Color Mode     sRGB
ICCProfile Name     Adobe RGB (1998)
Document Ancestors     xmp.did:A2A28CD97291E211998F972348D914C4
Original Document ID     571537417D3A1A3A3189D0722D2A9FC5
History Action     derived
History Parameters     converted from image/x-canon-cr2 to image/tiff
History Instance ID     xmp.iid:A2A28CD97291E211998F972348D914C4
History When     2013:03:20 15:30:10Z
History Software Agent     Adobe Photoshop Camera Raw 7.1 (Windows)
History Changed     /
Derived From Original Document ID     571537417D3A1A3A3189D0722D2A9FC5
Color Transform     YCbCr

It says:

"ICCProfile Name     Adobe RGB (1998)"

11th row from the bottom...

Does cameraRaw make it AdobeRGB by default?

Hmm interesting, now it's time to contact Adobe for the exif fron ACR 7.1  You could be right about ACR 3D

Yup my fault. It was defaulting to 98 because I had not changed it when I upgraded from cs5 to cs6, So apologies to rendo.  So much in my head with this and that  3D you were hlaf right in your assumption, well done.  Save as now reads the correct sRGB IEC6 1966 2.1

This is where you change the profile in ACR, this is what I had not changed after upgrade.  Click the profile hyperlink in ACR marked in red.  And choose the ICC profile from the list it is the last one at the bottom.  Now your checkmark at save as will be you selected profile.  But be aware that if you print directly from within photoshop, you'll need to change this back to 1998.  1966 is for web display 1998 for printing.

Thanks to 3D guys eagle eye :)

Glad you got it sorted out

Hi Ronny,

About opening images in ACR:

I always open my images in the ProPhoto RGB 16 bit colorspace, because that gives me the widest 'color gamut', the widest range of color and tone information to begin with. All my processing is done in ProPhoto RGB 16 bit; it's only after resizing and final sharpening that I change the image mode to 8 bit and convert my images to sRGB, right before saving the images to be displayed for web use.

You should try it, I'm quite sure this will give you the best way to get the best out of your images' colors and tones.

Greetz,

Geert