LR3: Exports are dark and over-saturated

... or: LR3 shows everything dull and to light...
I've upload an image and described my problem her:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tcdk/4753052290/
But here it is:
I'm having some color and curve problems with my exports, it all looks to dark and to saturated when I export from Lightroom 3. So I'm trying to figure out what's happening.
Here's the setup:
Windows XP
Nvidia 8600GT graphics card
One Dell 2407WFPHC screen
One Dell 2408WFP screen (my main)
Huey Pro color calibration kit (software version 1.51)
Everything calibrated. It looks good to me when I import in lightroom (from raw from Pentax K20D, and Panasonic LX3)
Exporting to jpeg (sRGB) or tiff and viewing in anything else the colors are darker and over-saturated (tried in firefox (profile aware), Internet Explorer, irfanview and chrome). Loading the jpeg into Lightroom and comparing it to the RAW, they look the same (not dark or over-saturated).
What you see above is a screen grab, of a test chart viewed in Lightroom and IrfanView. They where just imported/loaded - nothing was done. No development settings are applied as part of my LR3 import.
The colors in lightroom 3 are dull compared to the IrfanView.
Sample rgb values:
1 red:
Lightroom 224,52,27 (not that pure)
Irfanview 254,0,0 (~pure red)
4 purple:
Lightroom: 124,1,251
irfanview: 131,0,254
9 green:
lightroom: 126,255,54 (far from pure green)
irfanview: 0,255,3 (pure green)
The red and the green are the worst - a lot more "energy" in them. So imagine the reverse process. I've a photo in Lightroom and it looks good to me. I export it and every 126,255,54 gets made into pure green. Darker and over-saturated!
I've no idea what's happning or what to do about it. I've tried everything I can think about.
I don't really think I had this issue with LR2 - not enough to notice anyway.
System info:
Lightroom version: 3.0 [677000]
Operating system: Microsoft Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3 (Build 2600)
Version: 5.1 [2600]
Application architecture: x86
System architecture: x86
Physical processor count: 2
Processor speed: 1,8 GHz
Built-in memory: 3007,1 MB
Real memory available to Lightroom: 716,8 MB
Real memory used by Lightroom: 278,4 MB (38,8%)
Virtual memory used by Lightroom: 266,7 MB
Memory cache size: 49,7 MB
System DPI setting: 96 DPI
Displays: 1) 1200x1920, 2) 1920x1200
Application folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3
Library Path: P:\Lightroom\Lightroom 3 Catalog\Lightroom 3 Catalog\Lightroom 3 Catalog.lrcat
Settings Folder: C:\Documents and Settings\Thomas Christensen\Application Data\Adobe\Lightroom

So in my case it seems I'm better off running uncalibrated as that seems to produce something more natural across the board than when I use calibration and it goes between extremes, fine or totally wrong... I can see the images fine on my controlled environment but if you're distributing online then things don't work out at all!
This is a very common misconception. Needless to say it is wrong. the only way you can get reasonable colors on everybody else's monitors is to calibrate your display and only trust color managed apps. If you don't calibrate and don't use color managed apps, your output will basically be completely random. At least with calibration and management you will be targeting the standard (sRGB) that most monitors cluster around (that's what they were designed to), so while individual monitors will be more or less random, on average they will show what you intended. If you don't calibrate and manage you will target only your specific monitor. Since this is a wide gamut display, the average viewer (who doesn't calibrate nor color manage) will see a dull desaturated image with respect to what you see.
Bottom line: If you use a wide gamut monitor, calibrate and only trust color managed apps. If you have a normal gamut monitor, calibrate and trust color managed apps the most, but non managed apps will be OK if you use sRGB as your export space. You cannot do away with the calibration step if you care about what others will see.

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Re: h.264 gamma and/or color off
Posted: Mar 14, 2008 4:11 PM in response to: Dave Mauriello
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