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As you probably know colors show differently across browsers and whether its CSS or some image. After doing some research it appears that Sketch, Firefox and Chrome (I am on OSX Yosemite) use the sRGB profile. Safari and the Finder seem to use something else and the colors are quire different. I am trying to establish some consistency across my workspace.

My understanding is that Safari defaults to the OS color profile which is "Color LCD". Switching to sRGB (both the one I have in the Displays > Colors list as well as one I downloaded) result in super blued/washed out colors.

How can I get Safari to use sRGB? or I am incorrect that this is the issue? Part of my current challenges is coming up with a CSS color palette for a client but I have no idea which browser is more "correct" - I am assuming my assumption to use sRGB and that Safari does not is correct but perhaps not?

cyberwombat
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1 Answers1

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Antique Question Roadshow

Very out of date question, here is a modern answer:

At the time of the question, Chrome and Firefox did not have color management, while Safari and OS X has been color managed for a very long time. The web's standard is sRGB - but for that to work with a non color manage browser, the monitor must be calibrated (not just profiled) for compliance with sRGB.

Today

Today, Firefox and Chrome are color managed (depending on version, may only apply to images and not CSS colors).

To force a certain ICC profile in Chrome, you can pate this into the address bar:

chrome://flags/#force-color-profile

Nevertheless, many mobile browsers are still not color managed (color management uses a lot of processor resources).

The Wide Wide World of Gamuts

I am answering this old question because I want to address something else: If you are using a standard sRGB monitor, and your color managed browser does not match an sRGB image displayed in a non-color managed browser such as older Opera, then your MONITOR is way out of adjustment, or does not meet sRGB. If you are using a wider gamut monitor this is to be expected.

While there ae a few "wider gamut" monitors/displays such as Apple's Display P3, and AdobeRGB Wide Gamut monitors, most monitors on the market are intended to display sRGB.

To use a "wide gamut" monitor, you essentially MUST have color management, and use color managed apps for anything where color is important.

But if you are using an sRGB monitor, things should work without color management if you can adjust your monitor to match the sRGB specifications. This because sRGB is a display-referred colorspace that is also the standard for the World Wide Web. And while CSS4 will be adding additional colorspaces, sRGB will remain the default space for the foreseeable future (there are some accessibility reasons that sRGB is better suited for).

You can actually have better performance if you do NOT use color management, and instead ensure your display is properly calibrated to sRGB. If you can.

Calibration

If you are using color management, and you want accurate results, you really need a hardware calibrator/profiler and software, such as the XRite i1 Display Pro.

Myndex
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  • Not really an answer. You cannot(as far as I know) force user's browser to use sRGB, you can only change it for yourself. If you are trying to get consistency of your website for all of your users i think we are all out of luck. Let me know what you think about this. I actually asked similar question and nobody has any answer for this problem. – Jon Nezbit Aug 08 '20 at 11:31
  • @JonNezbit It depends on the browser and if the browser/system/user is using color management. If they are, then tag the images as sRGB. (Color managed browsers usually interpret untagged images as sRGB, because sRGB is presently the standard for the internet.) If no color management is being used, then the image is displayed per the display device, which is usually sRGB. As for consistency: out of luck. That requires users to calibrate their systems. – Myndex Aug 11 '20 at 04:12