Request Color Awareness in Next Version of Opera

Request Color Awareness in Next Version of Opera

As more early adopters and just average users buy new LCD monitors, many of the new models are wide gamut. By default wide gamut monitors used on a Windows system will not display colors correctly for Opera, Firefox (current build) or IE. Safari and Firefox 3 beta are both color aware and solve this problem. Both are aware of color profiles and will display content beyond sRGB correctly but more importantly will display all none tagged images (most of the web) in sRGB thus ensuring that wide gamut monitors will display colors correctly in a web browser.

This is a really important feature fo folks getting new LCDs and I would hate to see IE get it first. At this rate, Opera could be last in line of the major alt browsers.

Link for explanation of how color aware broswers work.

Sounds similar to the request about color profiles ...

I have never seen compelling arguments to implement this, as examples are either highly subjective (photos with slightly different hue/contrast/whatever, without a clear objectively superior rendering) or highly academic (testcases claiming that a blue square should show in yellow, which is not backwards compatible and thus shouldn't be encouraged).

I'm not saying that Opera shouldn't implement this, but unless it's entirely trivial to code I'd say there are far more important matters to attend to where usability and display are concerned.

That's profiles, though I don't really see implementing "color awareness" without also knowing what the image really should look like (profiles). But even though I brought it up, as far as criticisms stick to the original suggestion - should Opera adjust its appearance based on the color sensitivity of your display device (to such an extent as it can)?

Most monitors - and high-end graphics cards - allow the user to adjust the color. Brightness, contrast, gamma, "color temperature", ... we've all seen the settings both in our monitor's on-screen display and our graphic's cards Control Panel applet. That brings up two questions:

1. Do the monitor and graphics card (and program, since we're talking about that) talk to each other. Does the graphics card actually have any idea what you've set your monitor for? If the answer is no then the whole discussion is moot - since the computer doesn't know what the monitor is set for, it has no way of knowing the "correct" way to display anything anyway.

2. Presuming that the computer and your program can actually know how your monitor renders colors, do we really want a program to ignore those settings and say "This is what this image is really supposed to look like, never mind your brightness and gamma and so on"?

Okay, it could have its place in a few rare cases, people involved in visual media who have to have everything presented as realistically as possible for example. But for the other 99% of us it serves no purpose I can see.

I did a search so I appologize if there is similar requst. Yes color awareness would simply mean that the browser respects profiles but more importantly defaults to sRGB for untagged (images without profiles). As for the use, you are both completely wrong on its use. Here is the problem, wide gamut monitors by default display the native color space of the monitor which is can be anywhere between 92%-117% of NTSC vs. the internet standard of 72%. This number is only going to continue to rise in 08 and 09. Because sRGB is the standard for the internet (72%) this means that images and colors in the browser window are the wrong shade, which generally has the look of being "oversaturated." The effect is noticable although when the difference is only 92% vs 72% but as the gamuts rise in 08 to 110-120% the effect will become progressively more cartoonish.

Firefox 3 and Safari have already addressed the issue. Opera needs to put this on their road map. It will probably be several years before Microsoft addresses this issue. As Opera is a favorite of techies and early adopters, it would seem strange if Opera put chose to ignore this important feature.

This is an issue that will effect anyone buying a new 24" or larger LCD and as then 22", wide gamut, TNs hit the market, the more mainstream as well.

OK, I think I partly understand the issue now, thanks for explaining. I still don't understand why the industry is gradually moving towards a standard that breaks the internet though. Was the previous default technologically inferior or something? What would we miss if the old value were simply preserved?

That wasn't exactly what he said. He said that new monitors can show redder reds, bluer blues, etc. and that this can make images seem as if the colors are intentionally made stronger than they should be. That, and I just saw they were talking about a new plasma television with a true black. No doubt that will also be making it into computer displays.

I'm still not sure that the browser actually can do this, as in I'm not sure that the computer can either identify or change the monitor's profile - at least on standard analog monitors. Maybe digital monitors will have this ability.

What he said is that the browser should consider both what the monitor is capable of and the way the picture was intended to be displayed and adjust as necessary (to the extent possible of course). If you're looking at a picture on the web of the Matterhorn or of Tahiti it should look the same on your monitor (to the extent your monitor can do that of course) as if you were looking at an actual picture, or as if you were actually there.

Of course without color profiles that's redundant, you just render everything according to the default profile - and that's what should happen normally. The colors should look normal, not garish. If Opera isn't going to implement color profiles then it just renders everything according to the sRGB profile and that's that.

Originally posted by sgunhouse:

Of course without color profiles that's redundant, you just render everything according to the default profile - and that's what should happen normally. The colors should look normal, not garish. If Opera isn't going to implement color profiles then it just renders everything according to the sRGB profile and that's that.

Yes, if Opera used the sRGB profile by default it would solve the basic problem.

Originally posted by F_V:

I still don't understand why the industry is gradually moving towards a standard that breaks the internet though. Was the previous default technologically inferior or something? What would we miss if the old value were simply preserved?

To be honest it's not gradual, its happening across the board. Nearly every 24" and larger monitor is wide gamut now and the next wave 22" models being released are wide gamut as well. Strangely they are even implementing this feature on these 6 bit TN panels. And yes, across the board all of these units display all PC content outside of color aware applications incorrectly (web, games, desktop, etc). Why? In the past the only users that wanted this feature were designers and photographers doing color critical print work. But the push behind it now is HDTV content. The HDTV color space is wider than sRGB. It is also designed to be compatible with sRGB as sRGB is a subset of the HDTV color space.

The problem is monitors are being sold without an OS solution. In other words each will simply display the default color space of the monitor (92-117%) vs the correct 72% of NTSC rather than the actual HDTV color space or any other defined color space. This would be fine if either drivers for these monitors or windows was using the HDTV color but they're not. The result is everything looks oversaturated because each RGB value is not mapping to the correct shade of each color.

The sales pitch is you are getting deeper, richer colors but the truth is you are just getting colors mapped to the incorrect shade. Because the effect oversaturates the colors, it has an eye candy effect and which the sales person can use to con the average user. The actual scenerio where the extended color space would matter would not effect 9 out of 10 users outside of hooking up your Xbox 360 or PS3 to your monitor.

Both Safari and the next version of Firefox are using the same color engine. I don't see why Opera couldn't do the same thing. As I don't think Microsoft or W3C are going to be looking at a new standard any time soon (although scRGB is probably the future).

So if Opera fails to address the issue, then if you buy a new wide gamut monitor, which is quickly becoming any monitor 20" and above, you would need to switch to Firefox 3 or Safari.

Hi. First post, registered for this issue.

I definitely think that this will be a big issue in the near future.

I just got my new monitor today. I´m very happy with it. I was shocked to realise that Apple Safari is the only web browser supporting wide gamut colours without extreme red saturation. I think that Opera, in my opinion the most advanced web browser, should go along with the active developers of Firefox and bring on the wide gamut colours as soon as possible as it will be necessary to users like me who has already gone into it.

I really don´t wanna change my browser.

Ohh

This is also a major concern to me as the current trend in the LCD industry is to release nearly all new monitors with a wide gamut (greater than 72% of NTSC). As others have pointed out, FF3 has this feature in the works and Safari already has it. I use Opera as my primary browser, but I would be forced to switch to FF if color management is not implemented by the time I purchase my next monitor so I must also request this ability!

I also don't see any reason for this feature to be missing from a future Opera release. It's a critical feature for those of us with wide gamut monitors. For now, it should be implemented the same way as in Firefox alpha (disabled by default; enabled by choice).

Hi, first post for me as well.

I would like to join my voice with the people above requesting color awareness. I enjoy using Opera for a few years now, but I will be forced to change to another browser since I am about to buy a wide gamut LCD. I frequent photo forums and this request is very common among the people doing digital photography.

Allow me a friendly suggestion.
I think that if the developers take some time and have a look or even better discuss this issue at such forums they will understand the potential of such a feature.

Thanks a lot.

There's no question about the importance of that feature to everyone who understands the underlying issue of images being displayed by an application not capable of color management.

I am working with a hardware calibrated monitor and I'm putting a lot of work into post-processing my photographs. Now as soon as I'm uploading them to my website or deviantART or wherever, the colors are slightly off in every browser that does not support color profiles. In every of my b/w negative scans shadow details are lost.

The huge advantage of using a web browser with support for color profiles is the fact, that the user will KNOW that he's seeing the image EXACTLY as it was supposed to be seen! No more "I think the colors are slightly over-saturated" or "the blue color of the sky looks artificial" comments from people viewing the image. If something looks odd or different they will know that it is supposed to look like that.
Of course, the important part is that the monitor has been calibrated and the operating system is using the color profile the calibration tool created. Without a properly calibrated monitor the use of color profiles is pointless, but that of course also applies to applications like Adobe Photoshop etc.

A few days ago I installed Apple Safari v3.1 to test its color management capabilities under Windows, and I've to say it's a pleasure to see the very same colors in the browser as in Photoshop. I'll still use Opera as my main browser as Safari lacks a lot of features compared to Opera, but for browsing deviantART or other image galleries I'll stick to Safari from now on.

I strongly support browser color management. Non-colormanaged browsers should become obsolete. It's hard to beleive it's taking so long for browser programmers to catch up to the digital photography revolution. Anybody with a calibrated monitor needs a color-managed browser.

Can we please get an official statement whether color management is planned for Opera or not?
Now that Firefox 3 supports it (in addition to Safari) it's very likely that I'll switch to it if Opera Software does not reveal any plans for implementing color management, which would be a shame.

I guess that is a no. Thanks.

Originally posted by sgunhouse:

I'm still not sure that the browser actually can do this, as in I'm not sure that the computer can either identify or change the monitor's profile - at least on standard analog monitors. Maybe digital monitors will have this ability.

What he said is that the browser should consider both what the monitor is capable of and the way the picture was intended to be displayed and adjust as necessary (to the extent possible of course). If you're looking at a picture on the web of the Matterhorn or of Tahiti it should look the same on your monitor (to the extent your monitor can do that of course) as if you were looking at an actual picture, or as if you were actually there.

I don't think that's what he's saying. he's saying that when a picture is tagged, then it should be displayed according to the current profile, else the untagged picture should display in standard sRGB. I think that's actually quite a simple request. It's not trying to detect your monitor hardware or anything like that, but just detecting whether a picture is tagged or not, and display those tagged according to the profile, while display those untagged according to standard sRGB.

I'm doing a lot of colour sensitive work too and I'm amazed how poorly the current browsers support colour profiles. As Opera clearly wants to support all the net standards, I wonder why not implement the colour profile support too? Even just to display all the pictures in sRGB. It could be purely optional too. In my opinion this would be far more important than passing the acid3 test, for example.

I've been using Opera for a long time and I think it still has some amazing features, but the lack of colour profile support is a major problem. I guess I need to check out Firefox 3 when its released..

I'm in the market for a new monitor probably a 24" and so this is an issue that is going to start affecting me soon.

I'm running opera and firefox both part time now but will definitely stop using Opera if images start looking oversaturated on my monitor.

I'll give this a +1, as it sounds like a cool and useful feature that won't clutter the UI (or a big impact on performance).

This is a must have feature. There is more and more media online and having correct colours is a huge benefit especialy with a good monitor (and let's face it if you are buying 24" monitor you can get good enough calibration equipment for the fraction of the price (about 100€ should be enough).

Not sure how Opera can overlook something like this (consdiering that it's used by advanced users.

Well, I at least would expect an official statement here, but they just keep ignoring it...

Well they are certain that people will not switch over to FF I guess. In my case it's almost true since I hate the whole add on stuff but I might use it more and more once it gets the color management sorted out

Yeah. For deviantART and other similar pages I already switched to Firefox because of its color management capability. And yeah, overall I don't really like Firefox that much, but the color management feature is a strong reason for using it nevertheless.

Interesting post about color profile support in Firefox 3 with lots of picture examples at http://www.favbrowser.com/pretty-colors-–-firefox-3-color-profile-support/. Provided that such support did not significantly effect image rendering speed in Opera, I would support this wish.

Can always have it as an option if it is impacting performance that much. Not sure if it impacts CPU or memory (my 100tabs are already eating a crap load of memory (as they should so I'm not complaining but CPU is "easier" than memory)).

I'm still waiting for an official statement.

Originally posted by iliiad:

Originally posted by sgunhouse:

I'm still not sure that the browser actually can do this...

I don't think that's what he's saying. he's saying that when a picture is tagged, then it should be displayed according to the current profile, else the untagged picture should display in standard sRGB. I think that's actually quite a simple request. It's not trying to detect your monitor hardware or anything like that, but just detecting whether a picture is tagged or not, and display those tagged according to the profile, while display those untagged according to standard sRGB.

Exactly. Its not a question of if a browser can do this, Safari has done this for a while and Firefox has implemented this in the next version of Firefox 3 in beta. The only mistake FF makes is it is not a default setting right now and has to enabled. I have not read about any performance issues but having the option to turn something off is always good.

I think Opera is asleep at the wheel on this on. I will be forced to switch to FF3 once its out of beta which really sucks. Opera does so many things right and this would not be a difficult feature to add. Keep waiting and Opera will be last in line to the party.

Hell if they want to make it simple, just enforce sRGB on all images. After all the number of images on the net that are not sRGB are almost none existent.

Yea I just ran into this as well and saw only safari and now firefox support color profiles... Hopefully Opera 9.51 can have it? even if it starts as off by default and you have to turn it on this way there is zero impact for those who don't know about it.

I've been using Opera since version 5.

After trying out Firefox 3, which supports color profiles, I'm really considering switching browsers.

I've always wondered why images and web pages look like oversaturated crap on browsers, when they are fine in Photoshop and ACDSee...

Now I know the answer

Well, color profiles in pictures should be supported by Operas new Browser.

Design in these days does not mean »Show gaudy or varicoloured« like in the 90ies with some-colored-GIF.
Professional photographers and designers have to use color profiles. Creating a »special« version with handcorrected colors and gamma for the internet cannot be the solution. A modern browser should be able do deal with color profiles.

I got the experience, that customers were askin, why Opera did display some pictures (with correct profile) too dark on the web browser.
Well, i used to answer: »Sorry, use Safari or Firefox for correct color display. Opera is not able to display these photographies correct.«

Originally posted by qubit:

Yea I just ran into this as well and saw only safari and now firefox support color profiles... Hopefully Opera 9.51 can have it? even if it starts as off by default and you have to turn it on this way there is zero impact for those who don't know about it.

No such luck. It wasn't in the change log and I just upgraded no change.

If Safari and Firefox can do this, I know Opera can. Now I'm stuck using FF3. Its out of beta and there are things I like about FF but Opera just fits like a glove. I feel banished. Come on, somebody fix it so I can come home.

This is a feature I would love to see in Opera. Not only would this allow you to use other colour spaces than sRGB and have them look good. Your sRGB photos would actually look like they do in Photoshop. Spending hours getting the colours just right on the photo you're uploading sucks when you realize that people aren't seeing it as you intended to, even though you used sRGB ...

Originally posted by yrjans:

This is a feature I would love to see in Opera. Not only would this allow you to use other colour spaces than sRGB and have them look good. Your sRGB photos would actually look like they do in Photoshop. Spending hours getting the colours just right on the photo you're uploading sucks when you realize that people aren't seeing it as you intended to, even though you used sRGB ...

What he said.

+1 on this one, definently

Opera Software ASA still doesn't care about implementing color management.

Originally posted by MetalRaise:

Opera Software ASA still doesn't care about implementing color management.

are you an insider to know that for sure?

Take a look at this swiss shopping site:


Since I use a wide gamut display, this is a problem for me, too..

Originally posted by serious:

Originally posted by MetalRaise:

Opera Software ASA still doesn't care about implementing color management.

are you an insider to know that for sure?

If I were a developer I would react to repeated questions about a certain feature request. Simply ignoring this thread and also several of my questions over at the Desktop Team blog isn't a very clever way of showing interest.

Actually, I see myself using more and more Firefox because of that, as accurate color reproduction is very important to me, and I never saw any official statement (which I was asking for more than once) whether it's planned, already being worked on or whether they do not intend to implement it at all.

And honestly, I'm just getting sick of waiting.

Hello all,

With the recent activity in the browsers world, I have tested the major competitors and I have to admit I will stay with Firefox because of this lack of color management in Opera. Digital photography is now everywhere on the internet and more and more people want accurate colors. I have a wide gamut LCD screen which has proper calibrationand yes the summarised explanation given in this thread is good, more vivid colors.

Could you give an update to the Opera community if there is any plan for delivering features that are needed now ?

Thanks in advance,

Boris

Color management is enabled by default in Firefox 3 beta 2.

I hope it's among those features being added once Peregrine enters the Beta phase.

Since I got my new HP 2475w 24'' monitor with wide gamut (near 100% of AdobeRGB ColorSpace), I use the FireFox 3.0.5 Browser with activated Color Management support. The problem of opera and other browser of not supporting color management and color profiles are for me not only the pictures of the homepages and sites. The colors of some text and background are incorrect. A red will be to a neon-red, burning in my eyes. With FireFox3 and color management the hole pages, all text and pictures are correct in color.

If my favorite browser opera doesn't support this feature - it was my favorite browser. I can't use opera so!

Apple Safary supports color management too, but it needs to much time to start for the first time. FireFox3 is fast and small as it is opera too.

I presume this feature won't be in Opera 10 :-(

My new wide gamut display (LG W3000H) is arriving this week, so it will probably mark the end of Opera being my number one choice.

I have the same LCD like Gotsche and the same problems. I hope that Opera will support color management because I use Opera since the version 3(?) and it would be a shame to use firefox.

+1

+1

+1

+1

Originally posted by MetalRaise:

Well, I at least would expect an official statement here

No you wouldn't. There's no reason for Opera to comment on every single feature request.

Originally posted by MetalRaise:

If I were a developer I would react to repeated questions about a certain feature request.

No you wouldn't. There are thousands of feature requests. You can't actually believe that Opera discusses each and every one of them in detail, do you? And how can they comment if they haven't even decided anything?

Stop whining already.