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How do I get color management working right?

  • 13 replies
  • 2 have this problem
  • 28 views
  • Last reply by Will

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I use a calibrated monitor profile on my laptop. In About:config, I've set color management mode to 1, and I've enabled ICC v4 (even though my monitor profile is v2), but colors are still consistently oversaturated in firefox. They look the correct in Chrome like they did in Lightroom. The colors look similar or the same in Firefox as if I apply my monitor profile to an image without converting color spaces.

I've tried a clean reinstall of Firefox, I've tried putting the path to my calibrated profile in About:config, but nothing changes.

I use a calibrated monitor profile on my laptop. In About:config, I've set color management mode to 1, and I've enabled ICC v4 (even though my monitor profile is v2), but colors are still consistently oversaturated in firefox. They look the correct in Chrome like they did in Lightroom. The colors look similar or the same in Firefox as if I apply my monitor profile to an image without converting color spaces. I've tried a clean reinstall of Firefox, I've tried putting the path to my calibrated profile in About:config, but nothing changes.

All Replies (13)

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Update: I just tried changing color management mode to 0, just to see what would happen, and it didn't change anything, so obviously something isn't working right here. For some reason color management isn't happening at all, no matter how I set the settings.

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On my Mac, colors are over saturated only in Firefox - Safari does not have this problem. Is a fix coming, or must I go back to Safari?

Thanks, in advance.

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I wanted to update/bump this with new info. I found that I can replicate the way Firefox is rendering images in my photo editor by changing (not converting) the image color profile to my calibrated monitor profile using the "assign profile" tool. I'm trying to wrap my head around what this means.

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Hi, You can do the color management by following steps, Open a new tab in Firefox. Type “about:config” into the URL field. Access the Firefox config after the notice of warning. Filter for “color_management” in the search field. Change “gfx.color_management.enablev4” to the value “true” Change “gfx.

Thank You.

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Like I said in the original post, I've already done all of that, and it doesn't change anything. Images look the same (oversaturated, the same as if my monitor profile is assigned to the image without conversion) no matter what the settings are. It seems that firefox is using my full monitor gamut instead of restricting itself to sRGB space. I've tried every combination of the color management settings, and nothing changes, which doesn't make sense.

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Will, You ever get your problem solved? I have pretty much the same problem.

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Not yet. The only lead I have is from an offhand comment about how Google chrome used to reject icc profiles with weird data or non-standard white-point info or something, but now it doesn't. So that makes me wonder if my monitor profile is wonky for some reason and Firefox is rejecting it. I made my profile using the "camera colorimeter" Android app, which is hardly a tried and true method. But I don't know how to know if my profile is good or not.

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Will, I have an NEC PA127Q-BK monitor and running Windows10. I calibrate my monitor with the MDSVSensor3 which is made by X-rite and I think it is the same as either their i1Display Pro or Pro Plus. It is very automatic and unlike my older monitor and the older i1Display tool I do not have to manually make adjustments to brightness or any other setting by using an onscreen menu. I had noticed my JPG sRGB photos looked over saturated using Firefox but not Chrome. I made the adjustments you mentioned that you made, i.e. True for gfx.color_management.enablev4 and 1 for gfx.color_management.mode. I also noted under the four color management settings there was a place to select Boolean, Number or String. Mine was set Boolean and I left it alone. So far things look good.

However, I have found that Windows Edge does not show colors correctly and neither does Windows 10 Explorer, they both over saturate the images. Don't know if any of this will help but thought I would share what worked for me.

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I have the same issue on Mac running Catalina - this is a MAJOR ONGOING problem with an otherwise terrific browser - the browser needs to be fixed...it does not work properly with any color profiles

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This article is very old, but it's the reference for what the different color management preference values do:

https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Releases/3.5/ICC_color_correction_in_Firefox#Configuring_color_correction

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AggiePilot said

I had noticed my JPG sRGB photos looked over saturated using Firefox but not Chrome. I made the adjustments you mentioned that you made, i.e. True for gfx.color_management.enablev4 and 1 for gfx.color_management.mode. I also noted under the four color management settings there was a place to select Boolean, Number or String. Mine was set Boolean and I left it alone. So far things look good.

So changing those settings fixed it for you? That's good, and I think its more evidence that the issue is with my monitor profile and not with Firefox. I downloaded some utilities from the ICC website that I could only about 10% understand, but one of them is supposed to check for compliance with ICC standards, and it said that my profile was non-compliant for a few reasons that I didn't understand at all (I think it was something like xyz: negative z value, or something like that?). So I'm thinking that's the issue. Especially because I can make Chrome look the same as Firefox by setting the "Force Color Profile" flag to "sRGB" (which would imply that Firefox is also using sRGB as its color space instead of my monitor profile). Unfortunately I currently don't have any way of creating a new profile, and the default profile is hot garbage, so I think I'm out of luck until I can buy an actual colorimeter.

But just to confirm my suspicion, does anyone know for sure that Firefox does in fact reject non-compliant color profiles in its color management?

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Will, Did you take a look at the post by jscher2000, that is just above your last post? It is old as it refers to Version 3 & 4 and I am running Version 75 but maybe it will give you some info. You might also want to look at Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_version_history and look through the history to see if there is anything there about color management. Also I agree, Color Management can be difficult to understand and get correct. Most photographers have a problem printing their photos to match the screen. Been there done that and wrestled. The main problem in matching screen to print is prints come out dark. I used to increase brightness of an image by 25% before printing to get it close. So I figured with a better monitor and the ability to calibrate it would solve the problem and it did after doing what a friend at one of my photo clubs recommended. "As far has having the print look like the monitor, that is tricky. Colors will never match exactly because color spaces are different and the paper has reflected light and the monitor makes light. But you can get very close with the a calibrated monitor set at the correct brightness. Often, monitors are too bright which leads the photographer to compensate by adjusting the image too dark. Then it is printed too dark. For a reasonably bright room, 120 cd/m2 is recommended. My editing environment is fairly dark and I set my brightness to 75 cd/m2." My room is not dark but also not bright, I finally found 80-85 cd/m2 worked for my environment. This probably has nothing to do with how things look on the web but thought I would share it anyway.

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Yeah, I've seen that page several times during my quest to figure this out; it's what I was referencing when I was testing out different combinations of those settings to try to get it working.

That's good advice about monitor brightness, though. I also learned that the hard way recently with too-dark prints.

I'm now 95% sure that I just have a non-compliant profile and Firefox is rejecting it and displaying in sRGB, since changing those color management settings in Firefox doesn't have any affect on the appearance of colors and I can replicate the appearance in Chrome by forcing it to display in sRGB. Not to mention the ICC utility telling me my profile is non-compliant.