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128 Comments
- dropoutfilms, on 10/12/2007, -7/+128CTRL,OPTN,CMND,8
No - THIS - is your Mac on drugs. - iainwall, on 10/12/2007, -12/+77Being a web designer, I have known about, and had to life wih this for years.
Really mucks up a site view on Windows when it is created on a Mac and all the colours are so dark.
The fact is that the Mac is not wrong as such: Windows has a larger market share, so what it uses is considered "correct", and the Mac "wrong" - rasterbator, on 10/12/2007, -13/+69Gamma has been used by Adobe and Apple for many years to calibrate monitors and color environments. 1.8 was always the setting if you were working on color for commercial printing. 2.2 was the setting if you were doing work for slides, video, etc.
If you are working on critical color on a Macintosh that will be sent to a printer for offset printing, DO NOT use Gamma 2.2. Your work will look like *****. (But if you are doing color for commercial printing, you better already know this!) - dignation, on 10/12/2007, -11/+41kick your ass? sure
- anniemac, on 10/12/2007, -15/+40I just changed my gamma on my Mac Mini to 2.2 and it made a world of difference. Very cool.
- robdazomba, on 10/12/2007, -2/+24If I was your iMac, I'd commit suicide too.
- dDuk, on 10/19/2007, -9/+31On drugs? Wow, just because Macs are industry standard in the print sector and are widely used where correct colour profiling is critical to output, no need to exaggerate the fact it uses colour profiles throughout the OS right down to the browser. "Yeah but I don't work in the print industry dude, why should I care, I just wanna see sRGB like I should do", OK, it's easy to change the gamma settings to the standard set by Sir Gates by going into colour settings. It takes about 2 minutes of your time... Oh, and are you now going to tell me that Windows is bang on colour accurate right out of the box? Are you gonna tell me that because it has a higher gamma rating it is better? You'd be wrong, the print and design industry use this gamma standard because it has a wider gamut and more accurate reproduction. Jeeez, this article feels like a bit of a tirade against the macintosh platform for having more flexibility when it comes to colour, and as such I am digging it down. Call me a fanboy, I expect to be dugg down for stating the damn facts.
- iainwall, on 10/12/2007, -11/+31Maybe they just thought you were a bit of a prick?
- kuwan, on 10/12/2007, -4/+22@onethumb
Actually, no it's not *broken* on a Mac. The problem is, how do you render colors that are not properly defined? An RGB color space cannot properly define color based on the red, green and blue components alone. In order to render color properly in an RGB space you need the red, green and blue components as well as the Illuminant (white point), color primaries and the Gamma. The problem is that the Web is not color-managed.
Color on the Web is generally not defined according to any Illuminant, color primaries or Gamma; all we get for the most part are RGB values and it's up to each browser to render those however they want. Browsers pretty much just render them according the RGB space of the operating system and that's why we get the different colors on the Mac & PCs. Neither one is wrong or "broken" as the RGB values haven't been properly defined, but the much larger market share of the PC makes it look like the Mac is "broken" because it displays the colors differently.
The solution is to use ICC color profiles as the print industry did long ago. JPEGs can already support embedded profiles and part of CSS3 ( http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-color ) will allow you to define a color profile via the CSS of your website. Now, since the CSS3 Color Module isn't yet a standard and since a large part of the world is already using sRGB (with the PC's 2.2 gamma) and since sRGB will be the default color space used by CSS3 it would be a good idea for Apple to apply an sRGB profile to anything that doesn't already have an embedded profile.
So a better solution (until everyone provides embedded profiles, which will be never) would be for Apple to allow Safari to use an ICC profile of your choice for its color rendering (it'd be a great advanced option). It'd be even better if the default profile were sRGB. That way you'd see the colors the same way PC users would and you wouldn't have to change your Mac's gamma system-wide. And if you want to damn all PC users to hell you could change your profile in Safari to Apple RGB and continue creating your website and pictures just for Mac users. Everybody wins!
PS There's actually an interesting post on webkit.org about color spaces and Safari: http://webkit.org/blog/?p=73 Apparently there are 2 reasons they didn't do it for Tiger 1) Speed and 2) Color mismatches in plug-ins (Flash). - Kakaze, on 10/12/2007, -5/+22This article isn't very accurate.
The reason all those images look the same on a PC is because Internet Explorer and Firefox (also FF Mac) IGNORE the ICC profile attached. Safari does not ignore the profile and thus adjusts the colours for the selected colourspace of the profile.
If Safari ignored the profiles then everything would look the same as on Mac FF and PC FF and IE. Gamma is just an expression of the lightness and darkness of an image and changing the Gamma of your Mac to 2.2 is only going to make everything look darker. Images are still going to chanage drastically depending on whether or not they have a profile attached to them.
This behaviour is not wrong it's just not "normal" when compared to the majority of Internet browsers. If you're a photographer you'll want your images displayed in Safari over IE or FF because Safari should show them just as they looked when you edited them provided you upload the image with the ICC profile attached. Since FF and IE are just going to throw the profile out your photos are going to look unsaturated.
If you want your photos to look mostly consistent between platforms just don't upload your images with attached profiles and they'll look the same on Safari as they do in IE and FF. - rstarr, on 10/12/2007, -4/+20Odds are, yeah.
- PRind, on 10/12/2007, -10/+26@rasterbator "If you are working on critical color on a Macintosh that will be sent to a printer for offset printing, DO NOT use Gamma 2.2. Your work will look like *****. (But if you are doing color for commercial printing, you better already know this!)"
Yeah, great advice 10 years ago. In the modern world, you calibrate your monitor at D65 2.2, adjust the luminance to match your lightbox then CHARACTERIZE that setup by making a good ICC profile. Then you can change your proof simulation space a dozen times in a day so that your not calibrated to A printer, you’re matching EVERY printer. - quiltmaster, on 10/12/2007, -7/+22I don't understand how someone can hate a computer manufacturing company enough to swear at them. That guy must be living a life of extremes. "I HATE NISSAN!!!! FORD IS THE ONLY GOOD CAR!!!!"
- iainwall, on 10/12/2007, -9/+20Because, 1.8 is the standard all the pros use, and 2.2 is the "deFacto standard" that Microsoft choose for Windows.
This means that, yet again, Microsoft is being stubborn, and Apple following the professionals. Anyways, programs such as Photoshop and Fireworks let you view the object you are editing in Windows gamma if you are on a Mac, and vice-versa for PC users.
Its really not that big a problem. - kuwan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12@onethumb
The problem is not an OS problem, it's an undefined color space problem. The problem is - how do you render color that is undefined? Please view my previous comment above for more information ( http://digg.com/apple/This_is_your_Mac_on_drugs#c5246807 ). The fact that most images and sites on the Internet are meant to look good in sRGB is an accident of popularity, it's not by design. As such, Apple has no need to change the way color is rendered by their operating system to correct an accidental problem for a single application. They should probably, however, make it so Safari uses an sRGB profile to render everything that doesn't have an embedded profile. In fact it sounds like they did try this during Tiger's development which you can read about here: http://webkit.org/blog/?p=73 Apparently they didn't do this for 2 reasons, speed and mismatched color in plug-ins.
My guess is that we'll see Safari eventually render in sRGB by default. Eventually all browsers will need to be color managed anyway, well that is if they want to support the CSS3 Color Module standard that allows you to specify an ICC color profile for your site ( http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-color ). Who knows how long it will take for that to happen though.
In the mean time, browsers on the Mac should probably use an sRGB profile to render everything that doesn't have an embedded profile. There's no reason to change the color for all the other applications on the Mac just because the Internet accidentally defaulted to sRGB. - iainwall, on 10/12/2007, -5/+14@CheapDigWannbe
Not a ***** one.
Example. A good designer will rarely have to "slice" an image, because he/she will be proficient enough at making standards based site that work in nearly all browsers, and use CSS to place the image in the background, or if necessary, embed it as an image, but use *talent* to make it work.
By the way, the "format" does not matter. It is the monitor that is at fault, irrespective of any format.
"You're ***** joking" -- The laughs on you..... - GawtMilk, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11JUST A NOTE:
For PC users who get wonky colors, change your color space or right click on the desktop, hit "Properties", select the "Settings" tab, hit "Advanced", then hit the "Color Management" tab. You can choose the sRGB profile there. - dDuk, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12Title should read "This is your Mac Correctly Displaying An Image With An Embedded ICC Color Profile". The image is being rendered correctly, it's just that Windows doesn't care about it and OSX does.
As for gamma settings, see my earlier comment. - Kakaze, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Ahem...Apple makes the case. The actual "monitor" part, ie the LCD, is made by other companies.
- greymarketbrain, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10Cannot agree more. The profile is the definitive way to use the colour space correctly. Sorry Win users but your OS doesn't know ***** when it comes to colour space.
And why would ANYONE ever trust the visuals on a monitor for output on a printer? Use the info palette. - sandbird, on 10/19/2007, -2/+9I'm in a color dispute right now with a client. I'm working on a Mac, and they're on PC.
They requested a certain shade of purple. So I used 80% Cyan and 100% Magenta. They called me back saying it looks muddy. Well, yes, on a PCs display, it will look muddy. They insist I need to make it darker.
Problem is, this is going to a press. I know what the 80/100 purple will look like when it's printed. It's going to look like the shade they requested. I can darken that purple up like they requested, but the color is going to be extremely dark, and then they're going to be really ticked. But they aren't believing my color proofs, and they're pointing at their screen, saying it's gonna look horrible.
So if you're designing for screen, then yes, you want to work with the 2.2 gamma. However, if you're designing something that's going to cost several thousand dollars when you get the bill from the printer, then hell yes you want the Mac native 1.8 gamma. - robdazomba, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8This same thing happens to Windows when it comes to print and traditional publishing which makes trying to match colors a bit of a crap shoot. If you listen to graphic designers, they'll often complain that the colors on Windows seem muddy or too dark. Unless Windows decides to standardize on 1.8 as its gamma settings, Macs will just seem a little more "right" to graphic designers.
- Tamriel, on 10/12/2007, -6/+13Did anyone read the two top posts and chuckle? I don't know if anyone finds flame wars as entertaining as I do, but I feel like there's some genuine humor there. Also notice that they're both just going to keep getting dugg down.
- Kakaze, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Apple does not make the monitors used on Macs. Apple uses the same LCD panels as the rest of the industry uses.
- onethumb, on 10/12/2007, -11/+18Are you crazy? Have you actually read the article?
The whole point of the article (since it's on my blog and I co-wrote it, I should know) is that it's *broken* on the Mac and Apple should fix it. - funkytrousers, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8This is common sense and basic discipline for any mac based web designer. That's why most mac web designers also have a pc/friend/virtual PC/photoshop profile to compare between the web page on a mac and what it might look like on a PC and IE 6 or 7. It isn't new, it's just gamma settings. It's been around since the 1990's. If you ARE a mac user please remember photoshop very fast and easy gamma conversion. or simply create a monitor profile (system preferences, display, color tab) that replicates PC gamma.
- justnick, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Industry standard has changed. Photoshop uses 2.2 and the web uses 2.2. Even Apple recommends 2.2 now. They should have 2.2 for default and let the professionals that want or need to use 1.8 change it, as they are the ones that would more than likely know how and why.
When over 90% of the market view things with 2.2 gamma, the standard for website creation should be 2.2. - Dayyve, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8"Color on the internet do not look wonky on a Mac; colors on the internet look wonky on a PC."
"nothing is broken... If you want to say anything, you should say i hope vista is 1.8 before it ships because that is the industry standard."
"It is funny how this guy thinks the Macs have it wrong when it is really the Windows PCs that are on Crack!"
Maybe this is why the _broken_ gamma setting won't be corrected anytime soon. Steve Jobs himself could admit it's something that needs to be fixed and people will still find a way to blame it on Windows. That last quote is gold.
RARE good blog post on Digg. Lots of diggers actually learned something new for a change. - pnmoore, on 10/12/2007, -7/+13Great article, but isn't it a little "Microsofty" on Apple's part to have a default setting of 1.8 and suggest you change it to 2.2 so everything looks like it should? Why not make 2.2 the default and say change to 1.8 for specialized use?
- dDuk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7@onethumb. I have a 2.2 gamma, 6500/D65 profile good to go at all times, I just prefer to work at 1.8. I trust it, I know what I'm getting with it and it looks consistent enough when I see it translate to a Windows box. The de-saturation is kept to a minimum because I am aware of the difference and make sure that I use the correct profile when I am outputting to web and when I output for print (not that I embed any images with ICC, just that I have a 'working profile'). I guess it would probably be easier if everyone had one standard gamma setting but it seems almost impossible when an entire industry, namely 'the print industry' is still using QuarkXpress 4 when we are up to version 7! There will be different gamma settings in different industries for years to come. I also feel defensive because this article is clearly sensationalist in its approach, the headline is ludicrous, and without any explanation as to why OSX has different gamma settings in the first place. I basically think this was a really badly written article with poor explanations.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6So, the reasoning is is that back in the day the only people who could have cared about gamma were the printing/desktop publishing people, so Apple and NEXTSTEP defaulted to their gamma, 1.8.
These days the vast majority of people work with digital pictures and video. So if you don't work in print (you don't) Apple suggests that you set your gamma to 2.2, which is the standard for video and for PCs
Here's how:
- Goto System Preferences -> Monitors -> Color
- Click Calibrate
- Uncheck the 'expert options' checkbox and click Continue
- Select 'Television Gamma', click Continue
- Select D65 White Point, click Continue
And you're done. - cheera, on 10/12/2007, -7/+12Welcome to Michigan. Driving a VW? You're getting tailgated.
- onethumb, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7This is completely true.
But how many people browse the web versus how many people are graphic designers? - iainwall, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10I agree.
It sure is a lot easier for Apple to correctly calibrate the monitors, mainly because they MAKE nearly all of monitors used on Macs. - turpenine, on 10/12/2007, -15/+20nothing is broken... If you want to say anything, you should say i hope vista is 1.8 before it ships because that is the industry standard.
- dDuk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6True, but the best monitors in the world are made by EIZO and are calibrated with either a huey or a spyder. These monitors can cost upto $5000 (such as the BBC use). This of course would never suit someone who just uses a mac to browse the web or check some email, but then if you only use a mac for those type of things, why not just buy a Dell and use Windows? Anyway, point is macs have a nice little niche market with the print industry, and have partially designed their operating system to cater to their needs, as such web designers who own a mac should be fully aware of the bleaching effect the 'save to web feature has' and they should also have a fully calibrated monitor and a Windows box handy to check the output (on a local server). I digress. basically if you're in the print industry OSX is fantastic, if you design for web with Photoshop then make sure your images are not exported with ICC profiles and are profiled with sRGB, and finally if you only use a mac to surf the web then stop moaning and get a PC or something.
- dDuk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4And another point. It is the fault of Apple themselves, but yes, Macs are becoming popular through the 'halo effect'! This was not how the Mac platform survived during its dark days, it survived because it catered to specific niche markets, namely print, design and music. OSX (and those before) are designed to cater to specific demographics and now that they have more mass market appeal, ipod effect or whatever, they are being requested to succumb to so called, 'standards'. Now, I firmly believe that Apple should and are obliged to continue utter support for these niche markets and not water down their OS to appease consumer level problems. In my sector, OSX is a professional platform to use. Angst about "everything should look like it does on Windows" is not particularly an issue because for web design, icc profiles are never attached and rendering is cross platform checked (it looks the same), and for print the output stage is almost always mac based anyway, so ICC profiles are attached to give consistent colour reproduction. If a Windows client has issues because he/she is looking at a proof on a Windows machine, I just explain why it looks different and show the client some pantone colour guides. As the slogan reads 'Macs are different', and they are for a reason: they cater to and serve specific needs and industries. Suffice to say I prefer the mac standard personally because of my profession. 1.8 is my default, 2.2 when I need to output to web so the 95% of the world sees the same thing. My rant is over (phew!).
- betasp, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4"It seems to me…that artists and photographers want their admirers to see the web the way they intended, which they would if Mac browsers used a gamma of 2.2 for everything on the page."
I tend to think that if you really know digital art and photography you would understand color and color profiles, at least all of the artists at my last job did. - onethumb, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7You're missing the point.
Billions of photos online have no ICC profile attached to them at all. Photoshop saves them this way when you 'Save for Web' and so do tons of other apps, online and off.
Safari renders them broken. Firefox renders them broken. Opera renders them broken. Why? Because this is an OS problem, not a browser problem.
If the OS would use the sRGB profile with a gamma of 2.2 by default, photos would look perfect and identical in Photoshop, Safari, Firefox, Opera, etc. Plus they'd match a PC which already uses these defaults.
Then Safari could still properly work it's magic on the very few photos out there that use different colorspaces, like Adobe98 and ProPhoto. I wish all browsers were color-managed, but they aren't and we have to live with that. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5What a load of *****.
- TNHitokiri, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4@Tamriel
I sure as hell chuckled when i saw that he typoed kick instead of kiss.. - onethumb, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6We're not talking about color accuracy, which is a completely different discussion (and worth having).
We're talking about a given color matching across the board on web pages, something that millions of people do. Offset printing isn't something millions of people do.
When your photos look like they match your page elements in Photoshop, and then you publish them to the web and they don't look right, there's a problem, plain and simple. - dDuk, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6They must have been following the new guidelines, that "Mac is a reflection of You", that's why they installed the wires 'backwards'.
- gerkin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2LOL @ the PNG on windows always gets the color right.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Windows sRGB FTW!
- supermanKD, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3That is a good point but still agree they should ship it with the M$ standard it would be less frustrating to new web designers like myself. I think a good solution would be making customers aware of the situation in the original setup of osx.
- seamoon, on 10/12/2007, -6/+8Is Bernie Mac on drugs?
- gerkin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3The biggest problem with this article is the author is taking a 20th century approach -- get with the times. The Mac is not on drugs in this situation, everything else is. Why should thumbnails NOT have a profile in them? Why should _any_ image NOT have a profile? Why do certain browsers (not Safari) not deal with them. Given proper profiles (and OSes and rendering engines that can deal with them) then things should look correct _everywhere_, that's the whole point of it all. Remember (in the words of Bill Atkinson) ... RGB pairs are _not_ colors, they are values of "some" red, "some" green and "some" blue. The ICC profiles are used to convert these into the proper values for _your_ setup. Without them you're blindly throwing darts at a dart board and hoping they hit close enough to what you're looking for. And lastly as for "not everyone has a calibrated setup", well .... too bad for them. If they want things to look good maybe they should :)
As for the 1.8 gamma vs. 2.2 gamma it's the same deal, get with the times folks. 2.2 is the standard, deal with it. OSX uses 1.8 still (why I'm not sure as I always calibrate to 2.2 and my stuff looks awesome for both print AND video, go figure). The "commercial print industry" as it's referred to in the article is one of the worst for being behind the times . . . don't let them hold things back. With a proper printing setup there should be little to no need to set "spot" colors ... that's so old and crusty it's almost 19th century technology.
If the article's original author thinks this is funny, wait until he tries to deal with the differences in how browsers handle sRGB vs. Adobe RGB vs. Pro Photo RGB :D *evil* - DonCarcharo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Example. A good designer will rarely have to "slice" an image, because he/she will be proficient enough at making standards based site that work in nearly all browsers, and use CSS to place the image in the background, or if necessary, embed it as an image, but use *talent* to make it work."
It depends on your workflow. If its a full design / comp in Photoshop many designers slice the comp into parts for reconstruciton in CSS / HTML. This isn't the slicing an image into little pieces thing (I saw a design shop doing this yesterday, one square shot, six slices) but it's still slicing. It creates the site's framework.
Keep in mind not everyone does true CSS design. There's still plenty old school designers around using tables & divs with their CSS. - robdazomba, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5I wasn't trying to make a point for or against either platform, but trying to abstract the issue a bit. The article does have a "Macs are wrong for doing this" tone that seems sort of childish. The gamma settings are intended for different uses. Neither setting is wrong per se.
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