The International Color Consortium (ICC) issues standards for presenting color. Computer applications need to recognize these ICC standards (profiles) if they are to present "tagged" images correctly. In other words, if your web browser is ICC Profile aware, it will present the colors in photos that have embedded ICC Profiles in them (tagged) the way the artist intended. If your web browser is not ICC Profile aware, it will present the colors some other, unintended way.
Let me add that to really see colors accurately your monitor needs to be calibrated as well. If you go tweaking the color, brightness, contrast and other settings on your monitor, no amount of standards or profiles will help. Calibrating a monitor is a must for a serious photographer, but it is a topic for another time (contact me if you want to know more).
Why is this suddenly important to you? Good photographers will go to great lengths to capture and edit images in which true and accurate color is preserved. The sophisticated tools these artists use to create these images are ICC Profile aware and the images are tagged with a color profile which defines the color space in which the the image was created. In order to see the work as the artist intended, a web browser must be ICC Profile aware as well, otherwise the browser makes assumptions about the presentation of the colors; not always correct.
So, how well do the various web browsers implement ICC Color Profiles you ask. Well, I checked the four that are installed on my two computers and present the following brief ranking.
Apple Safari - BEST. ICC version 4 (the latest).
Mozilla Firefox - GOOD. ICC version 2 is implemented.
Microsoft Internet Explorer - POOR. ICC Profiles are not implemented.
Google Chrome - POOR. ICC Profiles are not implemented.
The test samples are shown below. You can test your own browser and read more about interpreting these images by clicking here. If this interests you, another good site that will show you how well your browser presents colors is here.
Essentially, less funky color is better.
I am not surprised in the least that Apple is number 1! Have you joined the best team yet?
ReplyDeleteYeah, Bonnie. I have an iMac. I got the wrong Mac for critical work though. Turns out the iMac monitor cannot be calibrated properly.
ReplyDeleteApple initiated the ICC, so they'd better be abiding by its standards. According to polls, more than half the world is still using MS IE which comes in last for presenting colors. Safari has from 3 to 5% of the market share.
That is a great instructional post. I don't know how I missed it. Dang IE being so bad...One day I will join the Mac wrold...probably not for a few years though.
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