I am on the 14 day trial Power user mode at Smug Mug (but a similar problem has occurred with the Kelby Worldwide Photo Walk upload).

I uploaded my photos to SMug Mug using Lightroom 2 and the Smugmug plu-in and then compared them to what I see in LR2 and the Smugmug photos have significantly lost color. These files were JPG to start with.

How can uploading create such a loss of color? And what can I do as the photos people will see at Smugmug are what people will base their decisions upon and they won't accept come see me for the good photos.

I have color calibrated my laptop but that shouldn't matter as the comparison of my LR2 photos and the Smugmug photos are viewed on the same screen.

I am uploading files to my Umstead Park gallery and the LR3 UPL photos look the same as the MDaddy UPL files. (I used MacDaddy to upload a different way to see if that made a difference, it apparently didn't) (Go to my gallery and compare.) The greens are almost gone compared to what I have on my laptop. When I blook at the file through Apple Preview, it looks just like it does in LR2 so its not LR2.

Ref the Kelby Worldwide Photo walk. When I uploaded there, the greens lost color also and looked brown and much less vibrant. I contacted the Cary leader and he noted that the histograms showed a loss of blue and green. What is going on. If I have to guess what to make the photos look like to get them to look right online, then I don't know what to do!

Attached is a copy of a file # 17 in my Umstead gallery. (Of course it may upload here differently too!!!)

My Smugmug gallery: http://www.leedawson.smugmug.com/

I was about to get my domain name through Smugmug at GoDaddy and use Smugmug but now I don't know what to do.



(PS. Edit: I just pulled this file back up and compared it to the photo in Preview and sure enough, it looks great in Preview and LR2 but on Nikonians it looks faded and less vibrant??? Its not myy monitor as I am looking at the images on the same monitor. Its not LR2 as Preview, LR2, and even the OS X system all show the same color. The problem seems to occure after it leaves my computer and is uploaded.)

Nikonians is the Smithsonian of Nikon knowledge. If there is a question they can't answer, I want to see the question.

My Gallery: www.HLDPhotos.com
My Blog : www.HLDPhotos.blogspot.com

Attachment #1, (jpg file)

This sounds like a color profile problem. I examined the metadata with PhotoME, and it says that it is sRGB. What color profile did your images have before you uploaded them? It's possible that they were not in sRGB and the plug-in you used applied the sRGB profile without converting it.

By the way, when I view your image with Firefox 3.5, the greens look pretty good. If I view it with Internet Explorer, they do look a bit washed out.

Danny
A Nikonian in North Carolina

Well I know the answer and have the solution thanks to the good folks at SmugMug.

Here is their response:

*******
Hi,

Thanks for your reply. It looks like you're using Firefox 3.0. That version of Firefox doesn't have color profile support enabled by default. That's why it looks different from preview and LR2. I compared your photo with Preview and Safari and it looks the same to me. There's a slight difference on Firefox due to the aforementioned lack of color profile support. You could get Firefox 3.5 with enabled color profile support to see if that helps.

For reference the link to your attached photo:
http://leedawson.smugmug.com/gallery/9025519_jUCq4/2#602379815_J8ygd-A-LB

On Windows, Internet Explorer isn't color profile aware at all and that's why it might differ from color profile aware photo editing software.

Read more on the color profile support of Firefox here:
http://blog.patyuen.com/2009/07/04/firefox-35-and-color-management/

I hope this has helped. If you have any questions, please let us know.

Best Regards,
Sebastian
http://www.smugmug.com/help
**************** End Quote

I had not thought to check the photos with Safari. When I did, there was no difference between The computer view (LR2, Preview, OSX) and the SmugMug site through the browser.) I rechecked Firefox and yes I had 3.0, the difference was there. When I upgraded to 3.5, it was gone and the photos matched !!! I noticed SmugMug said that Firefox 3.5 had the color profile support as a default, I wonder if it could be set via an option in Firefox 3.0?

I don't know what to say about people with MS IE, apprently they will see the colors differently. This is what SmugMug had to say about that:

**************
I'm not aware of any way to teach IE color profiles. But Windows people could simply use Firefox.

But to put things in perspective, color profile support in the browser doesn't help anything at all if the viewers screen is set wrong, like too bright or too dark or if it's a cheap screen that doesn't show colors accurately.
************

for now I am a happy cmaper (until the next issue ).

Thanks to all that emailed and helped.

Nikonians is the Smithsonian of Nikon knowledge. If there is a question they can't answer, I want to see the question.

My Gallery: www.HLDPhotos.com
My Blog : www.HLDPhotos.blogspot.com

Color management can be enabled in Firefox 3.0 with the use of this plugin. When I originally responded to this thread, I had viewed your picture with FF 3 and this plug-in. I have since moved to 3.5.

Danny
A Nikonian in North Carolina