Different sort of crit; colour issues

[tirediron]

Wasn't sure where the best spot for this was, but since it is critque I'm after...

Anyway, I spent the other evening shooting the Victoria Christmas Truck Light Parade; an annual event where the commerical trucks, big rigs etc, put on their best holiday costumes and go for a drive through town. The gallery is located here. flumoxed with the final result. Viewing the images in Capture NX, or CS3, they're exactly how I want them to appear. Viewing them in a web-browser, or with MS Picture & Fax viewer, etc, many are dull, desaturated, and frankly, look like crap. #15 is a perfect example; it looks fine in the editors, but is, to say the least, lacking otherwise, or at least so it appears to me.

I'm using sRGB across the board (camera, Capture NX, and CS3) as this batch was meant primarily for the web and using a colour-corrected monitor. Is this simply a result of viewing in non colour-managed applications? I've never noticed it before, at least not to this extreme degree.

I'd be grateful for any input on the problem, as well as to anyone who might want to take the time and check out the images and provide their thoughts on how they appear, esp. if you're using a colour-corrected monitor.

TIA
John

[JAS_Photo]

I can not help you, John, but I just wanted to comment that I never knew such a thing existed! That is really cool. I liked photo #20 especially but I am not qualified to comment beyond that. Cool photos!

[Ben H]

Viewing the images in Capture NX, or CS3, they're exactly how I want them to appear. Viewing them in a web-browser, or with MS Picture & Fax viewer, etc, many are dull, desaturated, and frankly, look like crap.

Yeah, it's annoying.

I'm using sRGB across the board (camera, Capture NX, and CS3) as this batch was meant primarily for the web and using a colour-corrected monitor. Is this simply a result of viewing in non colour-managed applications? I've never noticed it before, at least not to this extreme degree.

Very possibly. I too struggle with this, especially as my default platform and web browser are all colour-managed - then you view on something else and things change dramatically.

While I'm not 100% up on the whole colour profile thing, I've futzed a workflow that generally works for me.

Generally speaking, after editing in Photoshop, I copy the picture data into a new document with "no colour management" as the profile. This effectively "burns in" the profile into a non-colour managed document. I then use save-to-web to export, making sure to not include colour profiles (there are a variety of profile setings semi-hidden in the save-for-web dialog).

This outputs a picture that should look correct on colour managed *and* non-colour managed systems.

However, I'm always looking for better ways to handle this...