Re: Color management in web browsers
Re: Color management in web browsers
- Subject: Re: Color management in web browsers
- From: Graeme Gill <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 02 May 2011 13:34:54 +1000
Tom Lianza wrote:
I do not believe, personally, that General Color Management should be part
of the world wide web. Color management addresses a very small (but vocal)
population of users.
Hi Tom,
I'm not sure how you come to that conclusion. While I'm
sure it's true that for very many uses of the WWW color is not critical,
it is of interest to a far wider audience than just color
specialists or photographers. The most widely cited example
would be internet purchases of any sort of item that has a color
appearance.
Under the best of conditions, color management imparts
a performance hit which for most web applications and browsers, is too
onerous for general distribution.
That seems to fly in the face of many browsers having such a capability,
not to mention the power of modern GPU's. Even a 3D lookup
is a minor overhead when encoded as a GPU texture operation.
Most important, for color management to
work, as defined today, the OS cm system would have to work well, and the
user needs a calibrated display. That alone should put a nail in the color
managed web coffin.
These are obstacles, but it wouldn't seem to advance the possibility
of solving these problems to just throw up our hands about it.
I understand from recent feedback that (for instance) the
accuracy of EDID monitor information is better than it has been
in the past, and provides a starting basis to apply color
management techniques to the new challenges of wide gamut monitors,
even in situations where no instrument is available.
Both sRGB and the current Rec. 709 standard for HDTV share the same
primaries and similar transfer functions. Hence, properly rendered content
should look quite acceptable on a properly adjusted display. Even on a
poorly adjusted display, the content will look "as it should". Given the
legacy of sRGB images and current video content being produced to Rec. 709,
why would anyone, in their right mind, wish to upset the current situation
which fits the needs of nearly 100% of the consumers. The web is the
equivalent of a "standard printing condition", it is output referred and it
was never envisioned to convey color in an editable form for reuse in other
environments. This is the wrong venue for color management.
I get the impression that the continuing problems with the web and color
are to do with the default non-tagged RGB _not_ being interpreted as
sRGB (the de-facto standard) by various applications that participate
in accessing the WWW. Given that ICC profiles and raster format
tags are pretty well established standards, there is no reason why
such images should not also be rendered in a reasonable way. I don't
see anything at all that makes images or color value accessed via a browser
any different from any other image that is being viewed on a user platform.
Does that mean that there is no solution? Well, the Web Kit is open source
and anyone can build a color managed browser if they had the time and money
to do so. The question would be, would any one pay 250 bucks for a color
managed web browser that offered display calibration and calibrated
printing? It would probably take two thousand users to cover the cost of
such a development. Is there anyone on this list that would actually pay for
the problem to get solved?
I would ascribe the problems more to the ignorance and non-interest of
the general run of software developers and their management. Too many
people I suspect, continue to think "RGB is RGB, isn't it ?", and
don't understand why there should be anything more to it than that.
Before we whine about the lack of color management on the web or handheld
devices, we need to consider the market need and demand. The fact is, that
color management does not normally make the image look "better" to most
people. Absent that demand, you will not see any work in this area, from the
major industry players.
I think it's a matter of frustration to many people that do want some degree
of accuracy and consistency in color reproduction, that the necessary technology
and standards are well in place, but they are not made use of due to the
apparent ignorance, "laziness" and belligerence of mainstream product developers
when it comes to dealing with color.
Graeme Gill.
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