Washed out colour from RAW with Apple Aperture - Help!

Posted by paul
Thursday, September 14, 2006 18:23:26 GMT

I’m back from holiday, having spent nearly a week in lovely Paris and am in the process of getting some shots up onto Flickr but am hitting a few problems. Chiefly, the colours in the exported JPEGs (from RAW) are appearing washed out when viewing in Camino, but not Safari.

I spent a day or two earlier this week in Aperture making tweaks to the photos, picking the shots to keep, rejecting the ones that were quite plainly rubbish.

I’m a relative newcomer to Aperture, and to shooting in RAW. The additional flexibility I get in adjusting white balance (I frequently forget to adjust it on my camera) and other similar fixes after the fact are invaluable to me as a pretty average photographer.

I also love using Flickr. I’m a member of the Nikon D50 Group (the DSLR I use – it’s fantastic), and love to just nosey around when I get down time, it’s a great way of getting inspiration for things to do, see, and take photos of.

I’m now trying to get to grips with my workflow in taking photos all the way to Flickr and PhotoBox (my printer of choice) and the colours in Camino look very washed out:

They were exported using the sRGB ColourSync profile, and I’ve also read posts saying that Aperture even implicitly converted every JPEG to sRGB. So, as far as my limited understanding tells me, I’m doing all I need to have the correct colours in place for images to display bright, vivid, delectable colour. Is it just Camino doing something stupid? Or are the images actually rubbish.

So, trusted lazyweb, do people have suggestions for what to do? Any other Aperture/Flickr addicts with tips?

All this malarkey just days after recommending it to another TW-er – Sam Newman. D’oh.

Anyway, many thanks in advance!

Comments

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  1. jim – September 14, 2006 @ 07:39 PM
    I don't think the problem is Aperture. I just looked at some of mine in Firefox and Safari and they do the same thing and I processed them in Photoshop. My guess is it's difference in the image rendering somewhow. But I wouldn't no what the differences are. You can compare mine here: http://attics.mosaicglobe.com/gallery/127
  2. James Stewart – September 14, 2006 @ 07:45 PM
    Is one browser honouring the colour profile and the other not? It's been a while since I checked, but I seem to remember that Safari makes use of profiles and Camino/Firefox doesn't?
  3. Scott Laird – September 14, 2006 @ 08:42 PM
    Yeah, it's almost certainly profiles. Safari is one of the few browsers with ICC profile support, so it'll display images tagged with a profile differently then other browsers. Make sure that Aperture exports your photos in sRGB and your problem should go away. Posting anything else online is asking for trouble.
  4. Paul Ingles – September 14, 2006 @ 10:05 PM
    Thanks for that guys. I [posted this same question on Flickr](http://www.flickr.com/groups/nikond50/discuss/72157594283785747/#comment72157594284272371) and had a great response. > "I checked one of the photos in your stream, however, and it definitely has the srgb profile assigned to it by Aperture. The flaw you have found is with camino/Firefox. Firefox does NOT assume the srgb space, it assumes whatever is the working space your monitor is using. For Windows/Linux users the working space usually is srgb, hence most people think srgb is assumed. Macs, however, come with a default working space that more closely matches the output of the monitor (this time Apple has it right), so Camino is assigning the default working space of your monitor to every photo you view with it. To see that this is the case, set your working space to srgb and the photos will look identical in Safari and Camino!" But, apparently, there are problems when you import JPEGs with Aperture. [The post](http://www.flickr.com/groups/nikond50/discuss/72157594283785747/#comment72157594284272371) had more info on this, but seems like Apple make some bogus assumptions when loading JPEGs. Thanks again!
  5. Tim Lucas – November 24, 2006 @ 12:14 AM

    I use PS to convert my photos to the “Generic RGB” profile before posting to Flickr to ensure all the browsers, whether they support embedded ICC or not, display them somewhat consistently.

  6. Ian – December 15, 2006 @ 07:12 PM

    There’s also a “Remove Color Profile” (or something like that) AppleScript droplet in /Library/Scripts or something. You can drag images onto there and the profile is removed, then upload them to Flickr.

  7. Nathaniel – December 28, 2006 @ 07:21 AM

    If you want to fix this, export the file, open it in Photoshop, and change the Proof to Monitor RGB. From there you can tweak the saturation/contrast/etc so it matches the version in Aperture. From there you save for web, and do not include any profile information.

    Only way I have found to ensure that all browsers, including Firefox, display the same across the board. Not very elegant at all though :/

  8. Taneli – January 24, 2007 @ 10:22 PM

    Actually I just got almost the same problem. I noticed one weirdness in Aperture importing raw images from Canon 350D, the color space Aperture says the image is in is always Adobe RGB for every raw image even if I was shooting in sRGB.. I’ve yet to get a decent test if just shooting in Adobe RGB or getting Aperture to notice sRGB would fix the problem.. I understood that if I shoot in RAW that shouldn’t matter, but I hope to be wrong in that and get nice colors in exported images..

  9. cheers – February 26, 2007 @ 12:23 AM

    For flickr (and in fact any web image), you should always put your image in sRGB space