Gamma(?) issue with Mozilla Firefox vs. Paint Shop Pro 8 & Windows Photo Viewer

[Neyjour]

When I'm working on my maps in Paint Shop Pro 8 and viewing them in Windows Photo Viewer, I see the identical image... a nice, bold contrast of lights/darks. However, once I post them on the web (deviantART, here at the CG, etc.) and view them in Mozilla Firefox, they look significantly brighter.

Can anyone help me, please? This is driving me absolutely nuts. I'm assuming I need to tweak something in Firefox, but the few guides I've been able to find with a Google search are extremely confusing (may as well be written in Greek), and I'm not even sure if they're the solution to my problem (something about changing ICC color management...?).

TIA!
Ney

[Bogie]

Interesting, I have the opposite problem, everything I post here looks 20% darker than I see it on my computer, but I don't have the same issue on DeviantArt or DundJinni Forums.
Also, when I download or view your maps and images, they all look very dark, and I can't imagine you wanting them to be darker.

I have always assumed it to be due to differences in video cards and monitors, but I use several different computers, all with the same result.

[Neyjour]

Interesting, I have the opposite problem, everything I post here looks 20% darker than I see it on my computer, but I don't have the same issue on DeviantArt or DundJinni Forums.
Also, when I download or view your maps and images, they all look very dark, and I can't imagine you wanting them to be darker.

I have always assumed it to be due to differences in video cards and monitors, but I use several different computers, all with the same result.

I'm sorry to hear you're having a similar problem. It's extremely frustrating, isn't it? *sigh*

Hmmm... in case I'm not able to fix this, it would be really helpful if anyone else who uses my maps could give me an idea about how light/dark they look for you. So, if the majority says too dark, I could try to compensate for that by upping the brightness a bit before posting them online. Even if you don't use my maps, if anyone would be willing to just download a few to test them out for me, I'd really appreciate it. (The link to my maps is in my sig.)

I do tend to go a bit dark for some of them (especially the dungeon/underground ones), but they shouldn't be so dark that parts are impossible to see clearly...

[waldronate]

Try using the sRGB color space when saving the JPEG files.

[Neyjour]

Try using the sRGB color space when saving the JPEG files.

I don't see anything that says sRGB in my Save Options. (I'm using Paint Shop Pro 8 )

[Redrobes]

Under File / Preferences / Monitor Gamma, check its set to 1.0. Under File / Preferences / Color Management check that its not on, I.e. Enable is off.

Some apps use a colour profile which is especially used in printing images where you need to calibrate the colours between devices with different gamuts. That is normally only professional printing devices. I expect that Mozilla does not take heed of the calibration tables within the file and that Adobe and MS apps usually do.

Do you get good results when viewing these:
http://www.w3.org/Graphics/PNG/all_seven.html

[Bogie]

Do you get good results when viewing these:
Dave Martindale's gamma test imagess

They look good to me.

[waldronate]

I don't see anything that says sRGB in my Save Options. (I'm using Paint Shop Pro 8 )

Some research online shows that PSP 8 may have difficulties with color space conversion. According to a couple of articles that I read, it uses sRGB internally, but may not be correctly marking the color space on saved files or may be incorrectly doing an extra conversion in some cases. There doesn't seem to be any fix for the problem. Then again, this was a 10 minute look into the problem; the product's vendor may have additional information on the problem.

[Neyjour]

Under File / Preferences / Monitor Gamma, check its set to 1.0. Under File / Preferences / Color Management check that its not on, I.e. Enable is off.

Some apps use a colour profile which is especially used in printing images where you need to calibrate the colours between devices with different gamuts. That is normally only professional printing devices. I expect that Mozilla does not take heed of the calibration tables within the file and that Adobe and MS apps usually do.

Do you get good results when viewing these:
Dave Martindale's gamma test imagess

Thanks very much!

The images at that link look good for me in Firefox, so it looks like Firefox is the "true" view, and PSP8 and Windows Photo Viewer are the problem.

I adjusted the settings in PSP8 to what you suggested, and now my maps are looking almost identical in Firefox and PSP8. Now I just need to figure out how to fix Windows Photo Viewer, which is really dark compared to the other two.

Some research online shows that PSP 8 may have difficulties with color space conversion. According to a couple of articles that I read, it uses sRGB internally, but may not be correctly marking the color space on saved files or may be incorrectly doing an extra conversion in some cases. There doesn't seem to be any fix for the problem. Then again, this was a 10 minute look into the problem; the product's vendor may have additional information on the problem.

Thanks for the info waldronate. Luckily, it looks like I've fixed the problem with PSP8.


If anyone knows how to adjust the light/dark for Windows Photo Viewer, please let me know!

EDIT: I think I've got everything fixed now. I followed a guide on how to delete a color profile. The map was still looking the same after that (way too dark and over-saturated), but then I found another guide about adjusting settings in Windows Live Photo Gallery. I didn't actually adjust any settings, but enabled something that now opens all my images in Windows Live Photo Gallery rather than Windows Photo Viewer (I didn't realize they were two different things - LOL) and everything looks in good in that one. So now I've got all 3 looking pretty much identical. Phew!

Thanks again for the help guys!

[Redrobes]

See this:
Change color management settings

Remove your windows ICC colour profile and set it back to default.

EDIT - ahh I see you fixed it now.