Problems exporting photos from Aperture 1.5

09/05/2007 09:44:15 PM · #1

I'm a recent Mac convert and having problems exporting photos from Aperture.

The problem is that the photos are much lighter and have less contrast when exported. I figured it was a gamma setting, but I have it set to 1.0, which is the lowest. Moving the gamma up makes it worse.

I'm exporting as a JPG to be no more than 640px wide or high.

I'm confused. I recently rejoined DPC and submitted a photo in a current challenge and was really disappointed in how the photo looked looked online in comparison to how it looks in Aperture.

Any help is appreciated.

Chris

09/05/2007 09:58:02 PM · #2

I just did a test of exporting an image from Aperture and then uploading it to DPC in my portfolio.

It may not be an issue with Aperture, but something else that I'm going to have to research.

If I open up the file in Preview and place it side-by-side with Firefox opened to my gallery image, they look completely different. Colors are off also.

This is the SAME image that was uploaded, so I'm truly baffled.

I am exporting as sRGB - do browsers no support that colorspace? What should I be using?

Thanks,

Chris

Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0L IS

09/05/2007 10:35:07 PM · #3

...Doing some more tests and I decided to see what the photo looked like in different browsers.

There is a HUGE difference in how browsers handle the color.

Safari is spot on with how it looks in Aperture and in Finder on my Mac
Firefox is definitely desaturated and has less contrast (washed out)
Opera is the worst, the image appearing even more washed out.

Since I have Parallels, I booted up Windows and found that IE 6 looked identical to the Safari version.

I also tried Mozilla on Ubuntu Linux and found the same results as Firefox on the Mac.

I'm guessing there is nothing I can do about getting photos to look the same across all browsers. Seems like the best option would be to optimize for the browser with the highest amount of users (which I'd assume is IE6+/Windows.) Do we know what the breakdown of our members' browsers are? The server logs should have that info.

Any help in getting my photos to look correct is helpful.

Chris

scalvert

Canon EOS-5D Mark III

09/06/2007 12:03:00 AM · #4

I haven't actually opened Aperture yet (even though I have it installed), but a few pointers that might help...

Your gamma is probably way off. The Mac standard is 1.8 and the PC standard is 2.2, so 1.0 just isn't going to match either one. If you calibrate your monitor to 2.2, your images should be pretty consistent from Aperture to Photoshop to web browsers.

AFAIK, Safari is the only browser that recognizes ICC profiles, which is probably why your images look best with that one. Other browsers will ignore profiles and/or assume sRGB.

Hope that helps a little. ;-)

magnus

Canon EOS-30D

Sigma 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 DC OS for Canon

09/06/2007 12:04:48 AM · #5

I may be completely wrong here, but I think Safari honors an attached profile (like sRGB) while Firefox ignores it. So if you use the Export for Web command in PS and have it not attach a profile, then if it looks correct in the export preview window with the "uncorrected" preview, then it will look correct in both browsers. Don't know how to do that in Aperture, but there must be some way to tell it not to attache any profile when exporting.