Safari's Color Management Policies

Hello, I'm a graphic designer from Germany. I've encountered that Safari can handle color management, which is indeed quite up to date. But Safari always assumes that untagged RGB image data has to be translated with the "Generic RGB"-profile (Apple's system profile, right?) instead of sRGB - the official standard color-profile in the web.
Well, that's not a problem at all if every image has a sRGB profile attached. But the only practical web file format handling ICC is the JPEG (PNG works also but is a bit difficult to use thanks to the png-internal gamma "correction" and his chunk of a sRGB-profile). As a result, I'm limited to the JPEG. But the real problem is not only Safari: Macromedia Flash data isn't color managed too, and there is NO WAY of importing images with color-profiles into a Flash movie. Additionally, no browser (except IE5 for Mac) bothers about color management.
To sum things up: Safari handels images with color profiles correctly, but untagged image data is displayed wrong (sRGB is official). IE5 for Mac DOES emulate a sRGB environment in the browser's window. IE5 displays untagged data correctly, it's using sRGB.
I'm not searching for a plug-in for Safari or anything else. The customers, to which my graphics are sold, don't bother about such a plug-in. They want to use Safari right out-of-the-box. As a graphic designer I have two choices:
First, I only use JPEGs and maybe PNGs with color profiles. Firefox for Mac won't care, but at least Safari can translate colors.
The second is, that I always use untagged data and accept that Apple users just see the web a bit lighter. Images without an ICC profile are way smaller, a good reason to abandon profiles at all (by the way, profiles in the web should be obsolete anyway, browsers just have to interpret every RGB-value as sRGB).
My question is, does Apple plan to change Safari's color management policies to a standard sRGB environment or do I really have to see Flash pages an the like a bit lighter than it is intended to be? What is the best way to handle my images? Attach profiles or leave it untagged, so that Windows users (sRGB) will see it correctly and Mac users a bit lighter?
Thanks for any answers that will come! Greetings, Peter.
iMac 17" Intel Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Welcome to Apple Discussions
Good questions about rendering color on the web. Not being technically savvy when it comes to this type of thing, I'll leave the technical questions for others more versed in web design.
Suggestions to Apple for future versions of their OS and software can be made here.
iMac G5 Rev C 20" 2.5gb RAM 250 gb HD/iBook G4 1.33 ghz 1.5gb RAM 40 gb HD Mac OS X (10.4.6) LaCie 160gb d2 HD Canon i960 printer

Similar Messages

Color management policies

If color management policies are turned off in Photoshop's Color Settings dialogue panel what happens when a file is pasted into a document that has a different working space? Does the pasted file get converted to the working space or are the numbers assigned to the working space?
EG: Working space is Adobe RGB 1998 and the file being pasted into that document has an Adobe sRGB space. Will the color numbers in the pasted document be converted to Adobe RGB 1998 or will they be assigned?
Thanks

There is no “No Color Management” behavior in Photoshop despite the silly OFF policy. The RGB numbers are untagged and thus undefined but under the hood, Photoshop is still using its color management and Display Using Monitor Compensation architecture. The RGB working space you set in the Color Settings is what is used for the assumption of the scale ( color space) of the untagged data. Same with CMYK etc. All you have to do is open an untagged RGB doc, go into Color Settings and alter the RGB working space popup and the color appearance changes (not the numbers) because now PS is making a new assumption about this untagged RGB mystery meat. The OFF policy and untagged docs are bad, bad, bad!

Indesign CS5 Color Management Policies

Hello All,
I have just been having a look at Indesign CS5 Color Management Policies...
Can anyone clarify the following for me?
From my testing it looks like
1.) When placing an image into an indesign page the embedded icc profile is ignored and the "document profile" is used unless it is manually selected by the user in either (show import options) or (object > Image color Settings). This is despite the fact that the color settings are set to preserve embedded profiles.
2.) When placing an image into an indesign page greyscale profiles are also ignored and and all mono images are simply lumped into a "greyscale" colour space with no way to assign a particular profile or keep an embedded profile etc. This is despite the fact that the color settings are set to preserve embedded profiles.
3.) When placing an image into an indesign page there is also no way to manage the color of illustrator files. Embedded profiles are ignored in ai files. This is despite the fact that the color settings are set to preserve embedded profiles.
looks like a bug to me...
I am currently running indesign 7.0 on Mac OS 10.6.7

can you point me to any information on what is managed by the documents policy and what is managed by the application's policy?
Also, any idea what the reasoning behind having a document policy is? why not just let the application policy determine how to interpret everything?
Color Settings is a preference—there's no setting that would work for any condition (that includes Emulate Adobe Indesign 2.0 CMS Off).
The Color Management Policies setting is your global preference for how newly created documents will handle document and link profiles. Having the policy preference set at creation prevents unexpected profile changes as a document is passed from one user to another. The Ask When Opening check boxes give you the option to change existing document policies, which I described in post 7.
The policies let you control if existing CMYK color is allowed to be converted to a different CMYK space or not.
If the CMYK policy is set to Off then the newly created doc is not assigned a CMYK profile and all link profiles are ignored. In this case the document colors and the links are all color managed by the current Color Settings CMYK Working Space. The preview of all CMYK color in the document will change depending on current working space, but the output numbers will not.
Preserve Numbers (Ignore Linked Profiles) assigns the current CMYK Working Space to the new document and any placed links have their profiles ignored—the document profile is used instead. In this case the preview of all CMYK color (including links) comes from the assigned document profile, which travels with the document. After creation changing the Color Settings CMYK Working Space has no effect on the doc, its assigned profile is always used.
Preserve Embedded Profiles assigns the current CMYK working space to the new document and any placed links have their profiles honored. In this case the assigned doc profile drives the preview of the document color and links with out profiles, while links with embedded profiles are previewed via their profile. If the link's profile conflicts with the document profile, it will be converted to new CMYK numbers on export or print.
If the policy is Convert to Working Space the document colors are converted to the current CMYK Working Space and that profile is assigned to the document every time the document is opened when the working space conflicts with the assignment. Links are not converted but their profiles are honored.
Also would changing my color settings to "Emulate Adobe Indesign 2.0 CMS off" be considered to be a change of "application policy" or would this also effect my "document policy"?
There's never a good reason to use this setting. It would be the same as a CMYK and RGB Off policy except the Working Space profiles are some unknown—you don't have the option of choosing them.

CS3 Color Management Issue

No matter what I try when I open my pictures in photoshop, they look different than they did in ACR. I have gone throuhg all the color settings and even made sure to synchronize my settings between the two. Still, when I open an image that I've edited in camera raw into photoshop it looks different. Sometimes this is very minor, but sometimes it is enough to ruin an image.
Any ideas?

John,
This should not happen.
I can only speculate that you might somehow have some Photoshop default color settings out of whack. Just speculating, but assume that your default RGB profile is Adobe RGB. Then assume that your settings say, Convert to Working RGB under Color Management Policies. All this with no warnings set.
Now if you open the image with ACR in Pro Photo RGB it will be converted to Adobe RGB when it gets to Photoshop. Some colors may be altered if they are out of gamut in the target space. Depending on your conversion options, these changes may be visible. With other profiles such as sRGB vs aRGB the differences will be much more subtle.
If you have off selected under Color Management Policies, you can expect all sorts of bizarre behavior.
Nothing else makes sense to me.
Cheers, Rags :-)

Major Bug in CS's color profiles, color management & working spaces

Hi everyone:
First of all, thanks so much for taking the time to read and answer my questions!!! I am having a having a major bug in CS3's creative suite. The problem is the following:
1. My settings are not sticking in Photoshop. Last night I selected Adobe RGB as my working space and this morning I woke up with it being Apple RGB.
2. Bridge. When I select one of the thumbnails of my edited files I see the colors and levels changing before my very eyes. My theory is that profiles are being assigned to the images as I select them.
3. Photoshop. Photoshop is assigning embedded profiles (of whatever working space is selected) into my files. I have the color management system on off so this should not be happening.
The only solutions that I came up with were to either uninstall and reinstall creative suite or upgrade to CS4. Does anyone have any other suggestions out there? I would greatly appreciate them.
All my best,
s_ke

Ok open Edit > Color Settings. Where it says "color management policies" make sure that all these are set to "preserve"
• You seem to be saying that photoshop is automatically converting images, without opening them? - this is impossible
• Document profiles are readable at the bottom of the image window and choosing 'document profile'
If something strange is happening reset your Preferences, you will not need to reinstall
It may also be that your issue is to do with monitor profiles, or something similar but its impossible to tell from your description

Color management issue

I'm scanning some old 35mm slides on an old iBook G3. I must use this because my scanner is no longer supported by the newer versions of OS10. The setup works just fine; just the other day I rescanned something I originally did almost 8 years ago and you can't tell the difference visually between the two versions. However, I'm making a book using these scanned illustrations in a newer iMac using OS10.6. I'm laying the book out using InDesign and Photoshop CS3. The problem is that when I view the scanned images in Photoshop--which look great on the old iBook--on the new iMac, all sport a noticeable yellowish cast with also a tad of red. I've been tearing my hair out trying to troubleshoot where the problem is. Not only do the images look much warmer on the iMac, but the prints from this computer do also. Under "color spaces" I have set both computer working spaces to Adobe RGB(1998) and under "color management policies," both computers are set at "preserve embedded profiles." I have come to a dead halt and would appreciate some advice as to steps I might take to resolve this frustrating issue. By the way, both monitors have been calibrated numerous times; as I say, the prints come out just as different as do the images on the monitors. Thanks for any help.

10.6 was the first version to properly display untagged sRGB. The print thing, I don't know, that's a WTF.

CS4 - Color Management - Multiple Users

All,
Here is what I hope to be a question that some of you have encountered and solved already. I've tried dealing with Adobe on this, and even went as far as to purchase a pricey Gold Support Program, but that has turned out to be a waste of money so far (response times are horrible, and the "engineers" cannot seem to provide anything more than basic application usage support).
I am running CS4 on Windows 7 and I am looking to set up a custom CSF file for standardizing our color management policies across all of our CS4 apps. The workstations will be used by multiple users, so we configure the default account as we would like, and have new accounts replicate off of that.
The problem we are having is that the CS4 apps, and especially Acrobat, what CSF files in:
C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Color\Settings
When I place the CSF file there when I am customizing the default user account, the file would then reside in:
C:\Users\Default\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Color\Settings
The problem with this is that when new user profiles replicate off of the default account, the CS4 apps prefs point it to that folder for their CSF file, and I get errors, because the new profiles will not have privs to read from that directory.
So, in response to this, I have created a folder in the root of C and stored the CSF there. In Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign I can load the CSF file from that location manually. Unfortunately, Bridge doesn't see's only the current users color settings folder, so it cannot see it, but if I set the three apps above before I launch Bridge, Bridge recognizes the CSF. The issue is Acrobat, which seems only to see "Custom" for color settings.
Further, when new profiles are replicated off of this setup, it breaks entirely.
So, what I'm hoping is that someone here has had to configure color management for CS4 in a mutliuse environment, and that you may have a strategy for this.
Is there a way to specify the CSF file for each of the apps with a registry key? This would be easiest...
Please, any thoughts are welcomed.
Matt

Further testing yields these clarifications:
Putting the CSF file in a folder in the root of C seems to work well for Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. They are happy to have it there and work well in the Default account, and in user profiles that are replicated from there.
Acrobat still displays "Custom" in the list of drop downs for CSF files in Color Setup. The settings look to be configured properly, but the name of the CSF file is not shown, which makes us nervous.
Bridge does not like this at all. Previously I had seen it show the CSF file in the list if all the other apps had that CSF file specified, but I cannot recreate that condition. Currently is says that the suite is not synchronized, and it wants to apply one of the standard CSF files supplied with the suite.
Please help! This should be easy!
Matt

Color Management Settings

I'm not sure what to set my color management settings up as! I've been told a few different things! I shoot in Adobe RGB, but I've been told to set my working space to SRGB and then to set the color management policies to "Convert to working RGB, CMYK, and Gray." Then I've also been told to set the working space to Adobe RGB (1998) and then under "coversion options" change the "intent" to "perceptual."
Regardless of which setting I try to use, the coloring when I view it in Photoshop is much more yellow than when I view it on my monitor. I have callibrated my monitor, so I'm assuming the problem is within Photoshop. How do I fix this so that the colors match???
Thank you,
Jacalyn

I've been told to set my working space to SRGB and then to set the color management policies to "Convert to working RGB"
Yes, I'd back up what the previous poster says. Where did you get this advice? its extremely poor advice. If its valid at all, this would only apply to people doing an extremely narrow, low end type of work - destined ONLY for the internet.
'Autoconvert' in Color Settings is pretty nasty, it takes every file and converts it. And sRGB is a pretty dumb profile, I've always reckoned - as Bart says, its low gamut, designed for 'lowest common denominator' displays.
Spyder, and your monitor calibration: (because it sounds like your profile isnt being picked up) - I did some research and believe that there may be a "ProfileChooser" application somewhere on PC? - always thought monitor profiles should be stored somewhere in PC control panels. But lord knows whats happening with these settings on PC these days. On mac it does all this much more intuitively of course.;-)
But here's a thread I found where someone had a problem similar to yours…
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=57889

Color Management - Training DVD wanted - Recommendations?

Following my recent problems with colour management at my printers, I need to get my designer and myself up to date with the latest principles of colour management and in particular as they apply to ID CS3.
I have found the following on the internet - Colour Management Essential Training at www.lynda.com A DVD course would be most useful as the designer and I could watch it together. Anyone care to recommend this or another one?

I hope you are making progress with your color management issues.
I know you have gotten a lot of information in the forum from various perspectives. Much of the focus has been on the monitor accuracy. It is important to have a good monitor.
But a good monitor will not guarantee a proper conversion to CMYK. It is my belief that the color being off on your last print job is more the result of a faulty conversion than anything else.
I don't want to jump to conclusions and blame Photo Paint. Try the following:
1. In InDesign, right click on the image. Go to Graphics: Image Color Settings. The profile will be "Use Document Default". If you click on the pull down menu, see if there is a profile name above "Use Document default" If there isn't, the image is "untagged." Go to step 2.
2. Open the image in Photo Paint. This app will have some way of measuring CMYK % values. Go to the very darkest area of the image and read the CMYK values. This is the "black point" of the image. Knowing this can help determine the CMYK color space of an untagged image.
Here is more color management advice (hope it helps):
In InDesign, the default is to "Preserve CMYK numbers". This means that any placed CMYK images do not undergo a conversion to a different CMYK when you output a PDF.
This is standard practice in the print industry, but there is much debate about this. To illustrate what preserve numbers means, you can use View: Proof Setup: Custom, in InDesign. Under "Device to Simulate", try selecting different CMYK profiles.
Each time you do this and hit enter, you will notice the color appearance changing on-screen. What is happening is this - the CMYK file number values are not changing. But as you choose different print conditions (newspaper, web, sheetfed, etc) you can see how the color can shift, sometimes quite dramatically.
This is why choosing an ideal destination CMYK is so important. If you choose the wrong one, there is no way you can properly anticipate the print color, even if your monitor is accurate.
As far as Photo Paint goes - I don't know much about it, and I'm not sure what its color management capabilities are. If you do a lot of image editing with this program, it needs to have the proper color management policies in place. You may consider moving to Photoshop eventually, if you plan to do a lot of photo adjustments and manipulation, because it is very compatible with InDesign. Even so - it is not necessary to convert images to CMYK in either of these applications. It is much easier to let InDesign handle the conversions when you output the PDF.

Color Management and files for web

I'm doing a layout for a web page in AiCS(11). What are the correct color management policies I should use so the colors will display in Illustrator as they will on the web.
So far I cannot find a combination that works. Even if I (i think) have color management off.
Christo.

Here's the more complete, accurate approach to this.
In System preferences > Displays > Color run the calibration routine and set the gamma for your display profile to 2.2
That has nothing to do with Illustrator or Photoshop color settings but everything to do with how well your display is prepared to show you how your images will look on Windows displays.
In Illustrator, choose sRGB for your working RGB space.
For profile mismatch policies, for RGB, "Convert to Working Space" is often a good choice for beginners who only do Web work. After you have studied up and practiced some, or if you do more general art prep in Illustrator, you may want to instead use "Preserve Embedded Profiles."
I do a lot of Web and print work for a number of purposes. All in all, if you are preparing artwork for the Web, you will have best results if you profile your display with a colorimeter and work in sRGB. The only reason to preview in Monitor RGB is to preview how the image will look when the profile is stripped, or when it is displayed in an application ON YOUR CURRENT MONITOR ONLY that isn't color managed.

Safari Color Management

I am running Mac OS X Version 10.4.9 with a dual monitor set up.
Both are Eizo monitors, a Flexscan 1731 and a Coloredge CG 221. Since I've replaced my CRT Barco monitor with the CG221, I've seen huge color differences between Photoshop and Safari.
I finally realized the differences I see between Photoshop and Safari is that my working space is sRGB, while the monitor's profile (which it seems that Safari assigns to the web) is Adobe 1998. Since Eizo's CG221 has a larger gamut than the Barco monitor and my Flexscan S1731 (which are sRGB monitors), the drastic differences between Safari and Photoshop are more apparent on the CG221.
Eizo's solution is to calibrate emulating the sRGB space, which is possible with Color Navigator. But this does not sound like the best solution for me. Why should I clip the monitor profile? This would mean the only way to see my monitor's full gamut is to re-calibrate.
So now my question is, are there any browsers available with color management settings? It'd make sense if I could calibrate my monitor at it's full gamut and have a browser which converts to a working space instead of assigning the monitor profile, or which at least honors embedded profiles.
I must also note Eizo's suggestion of recalibrating to the sRGB space seems incorrect, because even if I worked in Adobe 1998 most webpages would display incorrectly (except my own which would have images with Adobe 1998 embedded). Even when I view Apple's website colors appear oversaturated, especially in skin tones.
Any help and feedback is highly appreciated.

An interesting problem indeed. It sort of emphasizes the lack of color management on the WEB.
The commonly recommended workaround, to calibrate all monitors to something close to sRGB is suddenly outdated when monitors can display a gamut outside of the sRGB range.
To clarify your problem a bit.
Safari uses the monitor color space as working space, always. This is not necessarily a problem, as long as images gets converted into the monitor color space when they are opened. However, this does not happen when the image does not have a color profile. Correct but inconvenient.
In Photoshop you can choose the working space. Best is if the working space is the same as the target space. Thus, if you work with WEB publishing choose sRGB. If you work with printing choose your printers color space etc.
But Photoshop will also have a problem if images does not have a color profile, unless the image has an EXIF tag, indicating that the image is in for instance sRGB color space. Photoshop is intelligent enough to understand this, because most digital cameras produce images without color profile but with the EXIF color space tag. In case there is no color profile, and no EXIF color space tag, Photoshop will, depending on your color preference settings, ask you to assign a colorspace or automatically assign working space, which could be whatever.
There are possible solutions to your problem.
1. If you publish WEB sites and want to browse them correctly, using your very expensive monitor without lobotomizing it's capabilities. Use Safari or other color managed browser and follow the two rules of image publishing for the WEB
Rule 1) Images on the web should be published in sRGB color space (otherwise they will not be displayed correctly in browsers on the MS-Windows platforms, with the exception of Safari, viewing images with a color profile)
Rule 2) Images should have a color profile, in particular the sRGB images (otherwise they will not be displayed correctly on the MacOS platforms. Maybe close to correct if you have calibrated your monitor to PC-gamma)
For a test, go to http://www.gballard.net/psd/golive_pageprofile/embeddedJPEGprofiles.html
2) If you want to browse WEB sites, created by people who did not follow the second rule, that is most WEB-sites, and by the way, includes parts of the Apple WEB site.
Do the following: In Safari, Safari Menu/Report Bugs to Apple - include the following statement.
Dear Safari development team. Most WEB sites on the internet does not display properly in Safari, due to the fact that most WEB publishers are unaware of that they should include color profiles in their images. Today, Safari effectively disables color management when the color profile is missing, a correct but not very practical approach. In reality, most images published on the WEB are in fact sRGB or close to that but without a color profile. In order to enhance the WEB experience for the vast community of Safari users, could you PLEASE include at least the option in Safari, to "Assume sRGB for WEB colors". Since Safari is already color managed, it should mean only a few lines of code in the Safari application.
I did this, but probably we need a lot of users to complain before it gets fixed. It has been like this for ever, but I really expected it to be fixed in Safari 3.
See also http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5204498&#5204498 and http://www.tomasjonsson.eu for more information
Tomas

Color managing Safari 4.0.3

I read Safari is automatically color managed and it is linked to the ICC profile the display is using.
I use a colorimeter for monitor calibration and my display profile is set to that created profile. Am I getting accurate colors with Safari? I just want to be able to view sRGB correctly.

HI,
This thread might offer some insight.
Safari Color Management
Carolyn

*Please* Apple, fix Safari color-management

Hey,
I was very happy with the SL update and following 10.6.2 regarding color management under OS X.
The problem is that Safari's own color management is broken. It reverts any untagged content to Monitor RGB. This is a huge problem on wide gamut monitors as they'll render over saturated colors (almost neon-like).
Apple should follow Mozilla's steps and see what they did with Firefox 3.6. It manages all colored content (whether it's images or CSS colors) and reverts everything to the ICC monitor profile you set on your preferences.
I cannot rely on Safari (or Chrome for that matter) anymore.
I know this issue is well-known and was reported before, but Apple has to fix this.
-F

HI,
Best to put a bug in Apple's ear...
From the Safari Menu Bar click Safari/Report Bugs to Apple.
They will not respond but developers do read the reports.
Carolyn

Is there a way to force color management ON in Flash Player 10

Here's my problem:
I have a wide gamut display (calibrated and profiled) and
with a wide gamut display, it is very important to have web
browsing (and ideally everything else) fully color managed, because
unmanaged colors get displayed horribly wrong.
Firefox 3 supports full end-to-end color management (when
switched on). It even wisely assumes sRGB for CSS color values and
untagged images. But of course, Firefox 3 can't control Flash
rendering and this makes it impossible to view web pages that
contain Flash with correct (or even near-correct) colors.
So is there a way to force Flash Player 10's color management
ON by default? I know it is probably not a good idea in many cases,
but in my case, it would work a lot better than having if off by
default.
I'm using Mac OS X 10.5.5.

The website may alter its page display based on the browser ID that is transmitted to the site from your browser. Some browsers on the iPad like iCab allow you change the browser ID to something desktop-oriented. Safari does not provide this capability.

Color Management In Various Web Browsers For Untagged Images Broken Since 10.8 Upgrade

I have recently updated my early 2008 Mac Pro to 10.8 and have noticed that neither Safari, Firefox or Chrome handle untagged images correctly anymore. Instead of assuming sRGB as the ICC profile for an untagged image (like they did prior to upgrading), they now just convert to monitor profile which looks over-saturated on my wide gamut monitor (Dell 3007WFPHC, hardware calibrated with a Datacolor Spyder 3 Pro). Color management in Photoshop, Lightroom and all other previosuly color-aware applications appears unaltered. The interesting thing is that in Safari, if I open a link with "open in new tab", the untagged images are rendered as if their color profiles are sRGB and are displayed correctly! But just clicking the link in the same tab or "open in new window" results in the incorrect over-saturated colors. This doesn't make any sense. Anyone else have this same issue?

After digging around, I found that the behavior of Firefox can be changed to assume sRGB on untagged images by putting about:config into the address bar and changing the value of gfx.color_management.mode to 1. I vaguely recall doing something similar for Chrome years ago, but can't for the life of me rememebr what I did. When upgrading to 10.8, I did a fresh install so any mods to Chrome are no longer present.
As for Safari, I have never really used it and only notcied it behaved similarly when trying it because Chrome wasn't working. Still can't figure out why Safari works correctly when you select "open in new tab" though. Maybe this should be moved to the Safari forum?

Safari's Color Management Policies

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