Viewing Images

Apologies if this is the wrong section, but I had a quick browse around and this seems like the most suitable place to ask.


I've recently been working more with photography, and have encountered some problems that I'm sure must just be silly mac-noob mistakes.


When I view images on my 5D, they look fine; high contrast, high saturation, great looking pictures.
I then import them to Lightroom or iPhoto, and they look the same. Put them into Photoshop (Proof setup as Macintosh RGB).

However, when I come to view them in Xee (been my default quick-image viewer since buying a Mac), they become desaturated and dull.
I uploaded a test photo to photobucket, and found the same (perhaps to do with Firefox, as it looks fine in Safari)


Here is the image uploaded straight from camera (resized in Photoshop)
http://i275.photobucket.com/albums/jj287/alexisonlineTGI/smallgiraffe.jpg

And here is how I see it on two browsers (Firefox then Safari):


(The Firefox version is exactly as I see it in Xee)


I understand this isn't a massive issue; I can just use Preview for my pictures. But my worry is, if I'm editing pictures and then printing them, if I'm getting colour profiles wrong or anything like that.


Any information/suggestions would be massively appreciated.
Apologies for the lengthy post but I wanted to get everything down.

photos

simple answer, take a snapshot with your mac of safari and firefox with the preview, and print the same photo....then compare them!;D

Well this ( http://i275.photobucket.com/albums/jj287/alexisonlineTGI/Picture2-1.png ) pretty much assures me that they're different :s

I'm rather certain it's colour management; in Lightroom, I have an option to print using the sRGB profile (That I shoot in). However I don't have access to my printer, and won't for a while, so I'm stressing over this a bit.
It just puzzles me why Xee won't work, and why Safari/Firefox display them differently; even though I wasn't aware they display in different colour profiles.

You may want to check out:

John Resig - Color Profiles in Firefox 3

it may have some information relevant to your firefox problem.

This here is relevant to xee:

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/im...hy/125286-color-space-aware-photo-viewer.html

According to that last thread, it appears XEE is color space unaware.

two suggestions tho:

1) make sure you are fully color calibrated
2) with photos to display on the web, you may want to stick with srgb instead of converting your photos to another color space. sRGB is standard for digital cameras and supported by most if not all OS', where as adobeRGB is better for printing and to be honest, I've never used the "macintosh RGB" that you mention.

Thanks Nethfel, that Firefox link was really useful, as well as learning that Xee is colour space unaware.

Macintosh RGB was the Proof Setup I was using in Photoshop.

The reason I'm so flustered with this question, is that I've just started with wedding photography, and was worrying that my prints were going to look desaturated.

The only way to know if your prints will look correct is to color calibrate your system. Calibrate your monitor, if possible get a color profile for your printer, and setup photoshop correctly and what you see on photoshop should be very close if not spot on to what you see in print.

Yeah this has become a problem I'm quite worried about now.


I understand colour management, but can't seem to apply it here.


I import the pictures from my camera, throw them into Photoshop and they look great. When I come to save them as jpgs/pngs or print them, they become desaturated and awful looking, on multiple computers/printers.

The only way I can get the right colours to show clients, is to printscreen each individual picture.