Web Browsers and Colour Management
As of late 2017, web browser colour management has - on the desktop at least - improved quite a bit, with most of the major browsers supporting colour management in their most recent versions.
However, most tablets and phone browsers still do not support colour management.
What Should Happen
If a browser is displaying an image without an embedded colour profile, the image should be assumed to be in sRGB and the image should undergo a standard sRGB to monitor profile transformation. (The assumption should be sRGB as it is by far the most likely colour space for the image to be in).
If a browser is displaying an image with an embedded colour profile, the image should undergo the standard image profile to monitor profile transformation (and would then appear identically to that same image being displayed in Photoshop).
(Specifically, these ICC transformations should arguably by default be done with Relative Colorimetric intent, but definitely Perceptual or RC should be used over Absolute Colorimetric or Saturation).
What Does Happen
Browser support for colour management has improved a lot by late 2017.
Latest desktop versions of Chrome now support colour management.
Firefox desktop versions have for quite some time supported ICC colour management. However, you should check your settings to be sure it is turned on, and configured correctly...whilst Firefox gives you more control than any other browser, it's default settings are not the best.
You can also reach these settings by typing about:config into the Firefox address bar.
Use this table of settings to achieve your desired behaviour, and we have shown our recommended setting in each case:
| Setting Name | Possible Settings | Effect of Each Setting |
|---|---|---|
| gfx.color_management.display_profile | Path to display profile e.g. C:\WINDOWS\system32\ spool\drivers\color\Monitor.icc | Sets the specific display profile to be used |
| Nothing (default) | Recommended: Default system display profile will be used | |
| gfx.color_management.mode | 0 | Disables colour management |
| 1 | Recommended: Colour manage all images (assume untagged images are in sRGB) | |
| 2 (default) | Only colour manage images with embedded icc profiles | |
| gfx.color_management.rendering_intent | -1 | Use intent specified in embedded icc profiles |
| 0 (default) | Perceptual | |
| 1 | Recommended: Relative Colorimetric | |
| 2 | Saturation | |
| 3 | Absolute Colorimetric | |
| gfx.color_management.enablev4 | true | Recommended: enable ICC V4 support |
| false | Disable ICC V4 Support |
Supports colour management.
However on
the Mac platform, Safari apparently assumes the monitor profile for images without an
embedded profile - which is a truly bizarre choice and means that for
all untagged images the display will be incorrect - so really Safari is
in many ways not colour managed at all on the Mac!
Oddly, on Windows,
the assumed profile for untagged images is, correctly, sRGB - meaning rather ironically that the
Mac browser offers significantly better colour management performance
when run on Windows!
Supports colour management.
Version 11 supports colour management.
Older versions: No or only broken support for colour management.
Mobile browsers: In general, these do not support colour management.
Other Desktop Browsers - unpredictable - webkit based browsers may offer colour management, but most likely won't. IE based browsers don't.
Summary
Use an up to date, modern browser and on your desktop computer you will generally have support for colour management (if you're using Firefox, check it's settings).
However, mobile browsers on iOS and Android, and lesser known desktop browsers still generally do not support colour management.
- Robert A -Just started working on the scans of old 35 mm negs you did for me a few months ago. Seeing things I've never seen before. Now I know what they mean by a beautiful scan!