Image hosting sites, how true is the result?

[EdBray]

After editing an image belonging to Dean (The23rdman) and uploading it to flickr the end result had a slight red hue so having a photobucket account I tried that and was even more displeased with the result as it had quite a muted look and greenish hue.

I then adjusted the image to reduce the red slightly and then uploaded the file to flickr.

 

[Musicman]

Here's your problem

ICCProfile Name ProPhoto RGB

You want to export to sRGB if uploading for web use, otherwise the colours will be wrong on uncalibrated browsers.

 

[EdBray]

Here's your problem



You want to export to sRGB if uploading for web use, otherwise the colours will be wrong on uncalibrated browsers.

But why the difference between photobucket and flickr, its the same file?

 

[Musicman]

Having checked by downloading the file, Flickr serves it with the ProPhoto tag. Photobucket doesn't serve any colour space information, but it may strip the tag without converting first, or use a sub-optimal routine for any conversion it may do.

 

[The23rdman]

This could have been my problem as I have been occasionally forgetting to upload in sRGB.

Ed, I actually thought you wanted to highlight the compression you get with photobucket over Flickr. It is the major reason I never use it.

 

[Byker28i]

As mentioned, sRGB all the time for web, I've been caught out this way before.

 

[EdBray]

Thanks all for the info. I tend to do everything is adobe RGB although I have never noticed such a difference as I did with Deans image.

 

[Musicman]

Photobucket doesn't serve any colour space information, but it may strip the tag without converting first

A little experiment shows that this is what is happening.

Take the Photobucket version into Photoshop and Edit > Assign Profile...

It shows as Don't Colour Manage this Document (i.e. no profile exists)

Apply ProPhotoRGB and it then looks identical to the one hosted at Flickr (which is too red for my tastes on my monitor, even in PS).

Apply sRGB instead and there is no change to the displayed colours in the image.

Most calibrated web browsers assume untagged images are sRGB and display them accordingly.

Google Chrome on the Mac does a rather weird thing and displays untagged images using the monitor profile for the display, while everything else gets rendered with sRGB regardless of the actual profile. On my screen this makes both the Flickr and Photobucket versions very similiar, although not quite identical. Safari renders the Flickr version correctly (compared with viewing in Photoshop) but the Photobucket one still looks grey/green.

sRGB is always the best and safest option for uploading to the web.