Do you check how your photos look on mobile devices?

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cedarsphoto

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Edit My Images
Yes
Although I do 99% of my processing on the computer with a good display, I share tons of images online. Lately I'd found that the images shared looked very different on mobile/tablet than on a monitor. I did some digging around and have found the problem - colour spaces, and how Lightroom/Photoshop assign them when editing images.

I've written up my findings here, let me know what you think :)

http://davidcandlish.photography/news/2015/11/1/colour-spaces-mobile-devices
 
I've been banging on about this for years on here... no one listens :)
 
I went to read your blog article, hoping to learn something new. But in fact the entire content could be summed up as:

Sharing images? Use sRGB.

You could have trailed that in your thread title or post and it would save people time.
 
No.
 
StewartR said:
I went to read your blog article, hoping to learn something new. But in fact the entire content could be summed up as:

Sharing images? Use sRGB.

You could have trailed that in your thread title or post and it would save people time.
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Thanks for the feedback, I'm sorry I wasted your time.

Because Lightroom & Photoshop don't always default to using sRGB I think highlighting what can happen & how it might look is more useful to people than simply saying "sharing images? use srgb". I find that engaging with people on the internet is often more productive when you don't order them around.
 
I found this out by accident after discovering alternative colour spaces (with wider gamuts) that made my images look nicer when viewed as a file on my computer but looked worse when viewed using a web browser. After a little research I discovered that most browsers display images using sRGB regardless of which colour space the image is saved using.

Since then I save everything as sRGB (and my monitor is set to sRGB too).
 
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Answering the question in the title, no, I don't check how my photos look on mobile devices, as I'm only concerned with how the print looks.

Colour space is important, but it also helps to have a calibrated monitor. I have a dual monitor system, one calibrated the other not and the difference between then is large (I could calibrate both, but one is used for the photo and the other for the toolbars in Photoshop, so I'm not really bothered. And it serves as a very visible reminder of how different monitors can be).
 
StewartR said:
I went to read your blog article, hoping to learn something new. But in fact the entire content could be summed up as:

Sharing images? Use sRGB.

You could have trailed that in your thread title or post and it would save people time.
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TBH I think YOUR answer is both pathetic AND extremely discourteous!

Perhaps what the OP did may have been obvious to you but he has obviously spent time and a lot of thought on it and it will probably help a lot of people, especially beginners, who may not have your incredible insight into these problems.

After all I presume there was a time, long long ago, when you also didn't know a great deal.

And as regards manners, you still don't!
 
petersmart said:
TBH I think YOUR answer is both pathetic AND extremely discourteous!

Perhaps what the OP did may have been obvious to you but he has obviously spent time and a lot of thought on it and it will probably help a lot of people, especially beginners, who may not have your incredible insight into these problems.

After all I presume there was a time, long long ago, when you also didn't know a great deal.

And as regards manners, you still don't!
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Thank you - I felt the same but being new here I didn't want to cause a fuss. I think it's better to have done some research that comes up with a conclusion that helps people (and I've had messages from some saying as much) and get a little bit of grief for being wrong in some assumptions & early analysis. I've benefited from being inspired to learn more about colour spaces too & it seems to have helped others. Definitely worth it if it means putting up with some trolling online :)
 
There's also the added factor of the display rendering the image, there will need to be a colourspace conversion from sRGB to whatever the display native primaries are, bt709, bt601, bt2020, sRGB, aRGB, DCI P3,...

I'm sure that some manufacturers will increase the saturation and brightness to make the product appear better.
 
I sort of knew there was an issue with colours and Web pages etc....
But gave up reading most explanations.
But felt this was definitely easier to understand. Thank you
 
st599 said:
There's also the added factor of the display rendering the image, there will need to be a colourspace conversion from sRGB to whatever the display native primaries are, bt709, bt601, bt2020, sRGB, aRGB, DCI P3,...

I'm sure that some manufacturers will increase the saturation and brightness to make the product appear better.
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Profiling the screen makes all that redundant.
 
I'm always going on about this, a mate works in digital video and has much the same views, calibration is only valid when all use it, I don't know anyone outside of photo/print who has or has even considered calibrating a display, given phones, tablets, smart TVs, media players etc etc etc all vary, I check my images from one device to another and they vary as you'd expect, I export from PS or LR in sRGB and always denote that in my filenames, rest of the time it gets fired straight to print.
 
From my point of view, calibration is necessary because I print. Yes, you can't expect everyone else to have a calibrated system, but that's their look out, not mine. Assuming that I wanted my main display medium to be the internet, I can't allow for all the vagaries of other people's screens. But if I wanted to sell my work, I think it might be reasonable to suppose that agencies etc. would have calibrated screens, and they are the people to whom it might matter if my colours were awry. On a much smaller forum than this one, there is at least one person who calibrates everything from camera onwards because he is serious about producing the best possible prints he can (for club competitions).
 
arthurbikemad said:
I'm always going on about this, a mate works in digital video and has much the same views, calibration is only valid when all use it, I don't know anyone outside of photo/print who has or has even considered calibrating a display, given phones, tablets, smart TVs, media players etc etc etc all vary, I check my images from one device to another and they vary as you'd expect, I export from PS or LR in sRGB and always denote that in my filenames, rest of the time it gets fired straight to print.
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Digital Video is considered correct if it's correct on a reference monitor in a reference viewing environment.

TV manufacturers provide settings to adapt the signal to their screen and your ambient environment.

Problem is, most people don't.
 
StephenM said:
From my point of view, calibration is necessary because I print. .....I think it might be reasonable to suppose that agencies etc. would have calibrated screens,
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But the gamma in sRGB is a function of the viewing illumination, so you need to calibrate that too.
 
st599 said:
And what %age are profiled? 1 if you're lucky?
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Not my problem. I know what I'm producing is accurate. So long as I disseminate images in sRGB, that's pretty much all I can do.

st599 said:
Certainly no domestic screen I've ever seen matches a reference monitor.
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I have a reference monitor right here in front of me, and my wife uses a much cheaper Dell U2412M. They are both calibrated with a Xrite i1 Display Pro, and while mine is clearly better at certain things (consistency, gamma accuracy, and absolute colourmetric accuracy) visually, there's not much to choose between them unless you actually put them side by side. If you look at the same image on mine, and then walk into the other room to view it on hers, you can't tell the difference.

Even before I profiled her screen it wasn't terrible. Certainly not bad enough to have the image viewed incorrectly. It would have caused an issue if you were printing from her computer, but just viewing it would have been fine I think.
 
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StephenM said:
From my point of view, calibration is necessary because I print. Yes, you can't expect everyone else to have a calibrated system, but that's their look out, not mine.
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I agree and do the same, but felt it worthy to show how the viewers screen can have an immediate impact. e.g. I'm sure your prints are fantastic but if a client looks at your store on the mobile and the colour space leads to rendering issues it might mean they never even get as far as seeing your prints :)
 
st599 said:
But the gamma in sRGB is a function of the viewing illumination, so you need to calibrate that too.
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Which is why 100 to 120cd/m2 has been established as a luminance target for most calibration, as it matches MOST luminance levels in MOST situations.

I have no idea why you seem to think calibration is pointless, but Stephen has already pointed out why we do it: Printing. I don't really care how my images appear on YOUR screen, as there's nothing I can do about that. All I know is, they are accurate, because my screen is accurate, and if I send them to a printers, they will print accurately. If they're intended for the internet, they are saved as sRGB to prevent gamut saturation issues caused by profile mismatches. People with decent screens who aren't idiots can see my images fine... beyond that... everyone else can sod off LOL.
 
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Pookeyhead said:
Which is why 100 to 120cd/m2 has been established as a luminance target for most calibration, as it matches MOST luminance levels in MOST situations.

I have no idea why you seem to think calibration is pointless, but Stephen has already pointed out why we do it: Printing. I don't really care how my images appear on YOUR screen, as there's nothing I can do about that. All I know is, they are accurate, because my screen is accurate, and if I send them to a printers, they will print accurately. If they're intended for the internet, they are saved as sRGB to prevent gamut saturation issues caused by profile mismatches. People with decent screens who aren't idiots can see my images fine... beyond that... everyone else can sod off LOL.
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I've never said it's pointless, it's critical. I said most images/videos won't be viewed in the correct conditions though and that calibrating a monitor is only half the story. For sRGB it's (from memory) a 100 nit D50 screen in a 80 nit ambient room with a 20% reflective wall. Deviate from that and the gamma will be wrong.
 
st599 said:
I've never said it's pointless, it's critical. I said most images/videos won't be viewed in the correct conditions though and that calibrating a monitor is only half the story.
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I know, but I can't control the decor of other people's houses :)

I do have controlled lighting in here though (D65 to match my screen), and grey walls painted with Munsell, calibrated grey paint. If anyone else wants to view my images on a screen with everything out of whack while sitting in a room with red lighting and lime green walls, that's their problem.

st599 said:
For sRGB it's (from memory) a 100 nit D50 screen in a 80 nit ambient room with a 20% reflective wall. Deviate from that and the gamma will be wrong.
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No.. it won't. The gamma of the screen is a fixed value. The screen doesn't KNOW what room lighting you have. To be accurate, you mean it will be perceived as wrong. No one uses D50 for display screens any more outside of the printing industry though, so calibrating your screen to that would actually cause you more problems than not. Besides, as you've said, a printing house will also have room lighting to match their D50 screens so will be PERCEIVED as accurate to them despite my screen being calibrated to D65. As their entire workflow will be D50 oriented, there's no problem.

My screens are calibrated to D65 because that has since become the most common white point that screens are calibrated to these days. Outside of the printing industry, I know no one who calibrates to D50.
 
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Pookeyhead said:
I know, but I can't control the decor of other people's houses :)

I do have controlled lighting in here though, and grey walls painted with Munsell, calibrated grey paint. If anyone else wants to view my images on a screen with everything out of whack while sitting in a room with red lighting and lime green walls, that's their problem.



No.. it won't. The gamma of the screen is a fixed value. The screen doesn't KNOW what room lighting you have. To be accurate, you mean it will be perceived as wrong. No one uses D50 for display screens any more outside of the printing industry though, so calibrating your screen to that would actually cause you more problems than not.

My screens are calibrated to D65 because that has since become the most common white point that screens are calibrated to these days. Outside of the printing industry, I know no one who calibrates to D50.
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The system gamma of the image includes the camera gamma, screen gamma and signal gamma. If you set the signal gamma under the wrong viewing conditions it will be wrong. (The eye will be in a different state of adaptation).

In saying D50, I'm quoting the spec. I personally use D65 as my screen is calibrated to 709.
 
st599 said:
The system gamma of the image includes the camera gamma, screen gamma and signal gamma. If you set the signal gamma under the wrong viewing conditions it will be wrong. (The eye will be in a different state of adaptation).

In saying D50, I'm quoting the spec. I personally use D65 as my screen is calibrated to 709.
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I suspect you are talking about video though. We're still image photographers in here.
 
Pookeyhead said:
I suspect you are talking about video though. We're still image photographers in here.
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Nope, system gamma is the same for stills and video. Just checked the sRGB spec, it's got an entire pre-amble about the different gammas that make up what it calls the viewing gamma and a section on how to modify the image if it's been edited in the wrong viewing environment.
 
Yes, but you're talking about adjusting the signal gamma, camera gamma etc, and setting these under correct viewing conditions.. which is impossible and impractical. Why would anyone calibrate their camera's gamma/profile to one specific viewing condition? I think you're being overly pedantic now.


People... just calibrate your screens to D65 (6500K) with brightness set to 100 to 120cd/m2 and encode your images with the sRGB colourspace, and you'll be fine.
 
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Pookeyhead said:
Yes, but you're talking about adjusting the signal gamma, camera gamma etc, and setting these under correct viewing conditions.. which is impossible and impractical. Why would anyone calibrate their camera's gamma/profile to one specific viewing condition? I think you're being overly pedantic now.


People... just calibrate your screens to D65 (6500K) with brightness set to 100 to 120cd/m2 and encode your images with the sRGB colourspace, and you'll be fine.
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This all makes really interesting reading though much of it goes right over my head.

What I would like to know is how do I adjust my iMac to 6500K when the only adjustment available is for brightness?
 
I had this exact issue with my mac where the color profile settings was using something other than sRGB. The pictures came up fine on the mac and when i uploaded, got a shocker. Screen has since been calibrated correctly and I'm now able to show my face publicly again.
 
kraftyskillz said:
I had this exact issue with my mac where the color profile settings was using something other than sRGB. The pictures came up fine on the mac and when i uploaded, got a shocker. Screen has since been calibrated correctly and I'm now able to show my face publicly again.
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Yes this happened to me last week. I had calibrated my monitor all looked fine, I emailed an image to a friend and found out the colours were desaturated. I hadn't converted the profile to Srgb. I am new to Mac and I knew that Srgb was for viewing on the web etc but somehow had missed this vital step.
I still don't know how I find out what kelvin measurement my Mac is.
 
Maggie52 said:
This all makes really interesting reading though much of it goes right over my head.

What I would like to know is how do I adjust my iMac to 6500K when the only adjustment available is for brightness?
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I'm not sure you can. Apple tend to over simplify everything. I could be wrong, I'll wait for a more experienced Apple user to correct me if I am.

Just get a calibrator, and calibrate it to whatever you like... just make sure you switch all that auto dimming crap off, or there's no point.
 
When you say auto dimming crap is that the ambient light measurement?
 
Maggie52 said:
When you say auto dimming crap is that the ambient light measurement?
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Yep... plus the auto screen brightens on the Mac itself. You should be controlling the room lighting instead.
 
HoppyUK said:
Review of monitor calibration tools here http://www.digitalcameraworld.com/2...-photographers-6-top-models-tested-and-rated/ Best buy is the X-Rite ColorMunki Smile - also the easiest and cheapest at under £70 on Amazon etc.

From memory, I think David PH rates that one too. Hopefully he'll confirm :)
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Thank you Richard. In a previous thread I was seeking help re monitor calibration, colour profile etc. I said I have the Spyder Pro 3 but it is a good few years old now and was wondering if this would still be OK to use on my new IMac. May consider the X-Rite, I think PH uses that one too.
 
Maggie52 said:
Thank you Richard. In a previous thread I was seeking help re monitor calibration, colour profile etc. I said I have the Spyder Pro 3 but it is a good few years old now and was wondering if this would still be OK to use on my new IMac. May consider the X-Rite, I think PH uses that one too.
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I don't use the Color Munki, no... I use the i1 Display Pro.
 
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