Desktop Wallpaper Color Issue

Today I ran into an interesting and somewhat minor issue, but one that I think probably has a simple solution.

I applied a photo I had taken as my desktop wallpaper, but the color (saturation, mostly) of the photo is not the same when it is applied as the wallpaper as when viewed by any application. Even comparing screen shots reveals that the photo's color in the original file is noticeable different than when it is applied as the desktop wallpaper. A cropped comparison is attached.

The less saturated clip is a screen shot of the desktop wallpaper whereas the clip with deeper colors is taken from iPhoto.

Any ideas?

Sorry to dig up an old thread...but did you ever find the issue? I'm having the same problem!

yay! people with the same problem

Hey I finally found some folks with he same problem I'm having...you ever find any solutions? again, what's going on is that any picture i use as a desktop background loses saturation when it's applied as the desktop picture...the problem is very clear on my external monitor because the contrast ratio is so much better than my mbp...help!!!

p.s....check the attached pic to get an idea of the problem

This is likely a color space issue. I would guess that the desktop photo you are trying to display is in the Adobe RGB color space (or some other color space). I suspect that the wallpaper is being posted as if it were the default sRGB color space. This throws off the color quite a bit.

Applications such as iPhoto and even humble Preview are color space aware and do the right thing with images that have embedded color spaces. However, Mac OS X may not do the right thing when it posts a desktop wallpaper image.

You will need an image editor that is color space aware, and that allows you to convert an image from one color space to another to test this theory. If you have such an image editor (Photoshop for example) open the image in question and check the color space. Then convert it to sRGB and save that off as a separate file. Try posting that as your desktop wallpaper. I bet that this resolves the issue.

By the way, the excellent and free GIMP image editor, v2.4.x, is color space aware and does allow you to convert and assign color spaces.

hmmm...more weirdness

no dice...the color space idea made sense so i opened the original jpeg in photoshop and lo and behold...photoshop rendered the picture the same washed-out desaturated colors as leopard had done when displaying it on the background...so preview is the only program that shows the picture correctly

or maybe preview is rendering it incorrectly

solved

problem solved, for any who might need this info in the future...it had to do with the color calibration differences between my MBP lcd and my external Dell lcd...im now having the MBP lcd on normal calibrated color and the external monitor on apple rgb color settings....seems to fix things pretty well...all-in-all to fix things for certain one should probably buy a real color calibrator (never used one, just seen them online) and not just the system preferences colorsync utility...