Molly fixed (preview) and colors

Tying up somebody is one thing, but to keep her in an uncomfortable position just because it offers nice views to me (and to my patrons of Power- and Special-level) could already seen as mean - but Molly wasn't bothered...

Anyway, for those of you who are interested in technical details I wanted to talk about colors and my struggle with them.

Colors are a problem in digital imaging. My photos probably look completely different on your screen than on mine. Your monitor probably uses another color-model, it also depends on your personal contrast/brightness/color settings, and then on the browser or photo viewer program that you use...

I came (again) about that problem when I copied photos to my mobile phone to send them as whatsapps to the model - on my phone the colors were just... terrible!

So, the whole weekend and yesterday I was testing different possibilities to better make sure that the images look as good as possible on as many devices as possible.

Color spaces and profiles

The color space of a device determines how the digital information in the image file is "translated" to the displayed colors. "Normal" monitors and cell phones use the so-called sRGB color space.

I work on a calibrated Monitor that uses the AdobeRGB color space, that is quite different to sRGB. The colors are more vivid, and there are more different colors possible. Also the images on my screen look exactly as they look when I print them on my (also calibrated) printer or let them print in a print shop that uses a calibrated printer. That is why almost all professionals use devices capable to reproduce the AdobeRGB color space.

The downside is that when you look at such AdobeRGB-images on an sRGB device they look very flat and lifeless. This is what actually happens with all the images that I have published until now, including my website, my blogs, the gallery here...:  actually they only look good when you look at them on a AdobeRGB-Monitor...

To compensate those differences there are so-called color-profiles. They (sometimes) are embedded in image files and then the displaying program can adjust (change) the colors to the device on which it displays the image so that it should look as similar as possible to what the creator has seen. In theory.

In real life it gets a bit more complicated.

The problem starts with the one who is sitting in front of my computer screen. 

I must confess that I just did not understand not even the basics of digital color management. I have an excuse: The longest part of my photography experience was analog, I photographed on film. Now, when you are in the dark room you adjust the colors, contrasts, whites... until you like them, then you print, develop and that's it.

So, I happily sat in front of my screen and did the same. 

The difference is, that who ever takes my analog print sees the same, but in digital photos this is completely different. Of course I knew a bit about that, and that's why I bought a calibrated screen, chose the best color representation (AdobeRGB) and was very happy that finally my images on the screen looked almost exactly as the prints on my also calibrated printer, and also as the huge prints a professional print shop makes for me.

That others see my photos different on their screens was just something that is, I took is as natural, because all the devices are different, aren't they? It simply didn't come to my mind that maybe there are possibilities that I could do something to produce similar impressions on other devices...

I knew about the color profiles described above, but I didn't use them: my images looked the same on my screen whether I embedded a profile or not, whether I used color management in my editor programs or not. So I considered them as useless. 

What a mistake! 

I had to get 64 years old to finally, this weekend!, begin to understand the importance of color management.

(I'll edit and continue this text later...)