IE8 Color Management (No?)

[sambob]

Hi all...

I thought I had colour management down pat but I have just gone to Windows 7 and now am using IE8 after many years of FF. (and chrome of late)

What I have just noticed is that in IE8, some iamges are over saturated - yet are as expected in ff and chrome.

I have been trawling the internet and it appears that IE does not colour manage?

Here is an image (view side by side in FF and IE)
http://www.sambayliss.com/images/stories/Collections/exhibit/image-17.jpg

My setup:
EIZO screen (Eye1 calibrated)
Image colour profile is sRGB

Is there something I am missing.

Appreciate any input on this confusing issue.

[Tannin]

Is there something I am missing?

Yep. You are missing Firefox. Why would you want to go backwards?

Traditionally, IE has never been colour managed. Unless they have changed that recently maybe? On checking, it seems not.

Upgrade to Firefox.

[sambob]

I use all three (reluctantly) to check how client sites look in IE (as ie still accounts for 50%)

So Am I right in saying that 50% of internet users see the above image (and all other inages) incorrectly?

Seems 9searching) that IE hasnt CM'd since before 6. What logic is behind that?

[sambob]

Here is something...
http://www.artstorm.net/journal/2009/07/color-management-wide-gamut-dell-2408/

It is (I am guessing) as I have a wide Gammut montor.

http://www.sambayliss.com/image-17wg.jpg (profile of RGB)
This looks as printed

But this http://www.sambayliss.com/image-17a.jpg (sRGB) looks way oversaturated.

But the second one looks ok on normal monitors (non wide Gammut)

Is that right? (So should I use RGB?)

[Kym]

Because not everyone has a colour managed browser you MUST publish on the Web using sRGB.

Otherwise they will see your images as 'flat' - or at least not correct.

[sambob]

So digging has revealed so interesting things.

It seems microsoft are only too aware of the problem, especially in light of an increasing % of people using wide gammut displays.

They 'planned' to use a thing called 'High Colour' in windows 7 but it appears that it going to be imlemented down the track.

"We have a technology called High Color that will be in Windows 7 that aims to solve this problem. In High Color, color data is all first converted into an extended range color space that uses the sRGB primaries, but which allows values less than 0.0 and greater than 1.0 (let's call it sRGB-XR). High Color is closely related to xvYCC and Sony's xvColor. Wide gamut color data can be converted into this space without any loss. Displays (and display cards) that support High Color are required to be able to convert internally from this sRGB-XR space to their native color space. With High Color, un-color-managed RGB is treated as sRGB, which is unchanged when converted into the sRGB-XR space (it's all in the [0..1] part of the encoding). But then High Color compliant devices will correctly map this into their native space, so the sRGB data doesn't get over-saturated by being treated as though it were already in the display's native wide gamut space (as happens now). And, any actual wide gamut image content gets properly mapped to take advantage of the display's wide gamut. The plumbing for High Color is in Windows 7. However, the Desktop Window Manager was unable to implement High Color support in time (this requires the use of a fixed or floating point rendering surface), so the desktop won't be using High Color, yet, in Win7. Maybe next time.

I wish I were able to give you more than excuses, explanations, and futures".

Best Regards,

Michael Bourgoin
Program Manager | Windows Experience Color & Imaging Team
Microsoft Corporation

[sambob]

So further digging and found the solution to enable accurate image display for wide gamut displays.

Most quality lcd displays have a function to display sRGB (and that too can be calibrated on many models.)

With the EIZO, there is an app 'Screen Manager' and it allows one to set up 'profiles' for diffent software. EG, sRGB for IE. So whenever I go to an IE page, the screen switches to that profile.

So it overcomes the non CM issue in IE.