[feynman]

Websites with international pull have infinitely many visitors with infinitely different viewing devices (PCs, Macs, iOS tablets, Android devices, etc.).

What is best practice if online display fidelity is to be achieved across the widest possible audience? Should monitor calibration be switched off on the computer where post production is done to mimic the average user's display? Should an sRGB profile be embedded in the image? I know what to do for CMYK printing, etc. but online display, where the majority of users have uncalibrated screens and view images in Chrome or IE, is a different matter. Some newsletters I receive look great on all devices I can muster at home, for example. How is this done?

Images rendered and post produced on my monitor calibrated PC look far too dark on some Macs, for example, on others they look fine but too warm; on Android tablets it is again a different story.

So, what would be the best "average" so one can cover the widest possible audience?

Thanks!

[tom]

There's no such magical color profile which looks best in all platforms. It's about the viewer software. If the software has built-in color management, it will display any incoming image properly. Roughly speaking, you should still prefer sRGB profile for majority of systems.

[feynman]

sRGB it is. After testing with many other people's devices, it is best to turn one's own quality monitor to factory settings while post processing images for online viewing by large international audiences. The difference in displays is just overwhelming.

[Mihai]

This page, maybe somewhat outdated, is useful:

http://www.gballard.net/psd/go_live_pag ... files.html#

It's also a good test for different browsers on different devices. I'm not sure if Chrome is better now at color management but at least with Firefox, it can both read an embedded ICC tag AND use your monitor profile. But in order for it to also use your monitor profile, you have to change a setting in the preferences, otherwise it will only read the ICC tag but ignore your monitor profile.

So even if a browser advertises it is color managed, doesn't mean it's "fully" color managed if it only reads the ICC tag but ignores your monitor profile.

In short, just save as sRGB and you can also skip embedding the ICC tag. Even people using FF will not see the image as you see it in a fully color managed app like Photoshop, because while it will read the tag, probably 98% of people that will see your image will not have a calibrated monitor, and even if they do, they probably don't know to change that setting in FF. So.....embedding or not the ICC tag.......same difference.

[feynman]

Yes, I know that page. What we found out in a two-day mini-survey is that 1. there are just too many different devices out there with all kinds of displays and that 2. the average user never adjusts, calibrates, profiles or even only thinks about their display settings; that is why temporarily setting one's own display to an "out of the box" setting and using a crappy monitor and tablet alongside seems the best way to judge what one does while post producing images for online viewing by a vast group of unknown users.

[Mihai]

It's a freaking nightmare What I'm interested mostly is not so much color accuracy but black levels / contrast ratio. Unfortunately we were in a much better position in regards to this 15-20 years ago when all graphics artists where using CRTs, so the black levels and contrast was great and pretty much homogeneous across them and even fair quality CRTs. But with LCDs you have so many different technologies and a HUGE difference between them that there is really no way out. I suppose the best you can do is edit a photo/render as best you can and hope that all the details in your shadows don't become a black/greyish blob on most peoples LCDs. Or that what you wanted in shadow and black, is dark grey...

Lets wait 10 years or so and hopefully OLEDs will be the new standard and we can forget this LCD madness

[feynman]

Yes. Compared to the print workflow, which is easy, renderings for websites are a nightmare. Just comparing ten people's iPads and Android tablets yields a chaotic variety of brightness levels and colour casts. So, dumbing one's own monitor for online work works very well, as far as I can see.

[tom]

Actually, I'm impressed with the Full HD Super AMOLED on the Galaxy S5. The color tests I've ran on it left most of the mid-level monitors behind. The contrast is simply awesome and pretty accurate...