Improving your web viewing experience

[renault]

This is a little tip that I hope you will find useful

 

It is applicable to both Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge which are based on the same Chromium browser engine.

 

Both web browsers are colour managed browsers which means that they can use specific colour profile files to control what colours you actually see when

viewing a website image, such as our beloved screenshot forum.

 

The colour profile file is like a little colour dictionary that tells your monitor how to pick the right colour to match up with the colour on the image when it was created originally.

 

The standard range of colours on the web is called sRGB and this is the default colour range for windows based pc's.  Monitor manufacturers will provide profile files for specific monitors that they make, however since most of us just plug in the monitor we end up using the windows system  default profile which is an average sRGB colour profile. 

 

However if we are using a higher resolution monitor than a standard 1080p monitor or what as called a wide gamut monitor , regardless of its resolution, your monitor has the ability to display a much wider range of colours than the standard sRGB profile.  As a result , when viewing  a  web image on a wide gamut monitor we may see different colours than what was created by the originator of the image.  In addition, the image hosting service we use, especially if  we are using an anonymous account, may not provide any colour info with the image to the web browser, because they assume it will be sRGB.  So it is quite possible to end up with quite a wide variability in how an image may look to different viewers. 

 

The interesting aspect of all of this is that I have found that  regardless of the monitor in use, you generally will see much deeper , richer colours in both Goggle Chrome and MS Edge by specifically setting the colour profile in the browser  to sRGB rather than leaving it at its default setting.  For a wide gamut monitor as an example , Chrome or Edge will end up using the much wider colour range of the monitor profile and sometimes look quite out of place. 

 

I don't use a TV as a monitor, however I had passed this on to my friend who does and his comment was he was pretty impressed with how much better everything looked.  So all I can say is give it a whirl , as with most things computer related  , individual mileage will vary.

 

Recently I upgraded my monitor and was having this problem when viewing different web based images.  This simple change has certainly helped my individual viewing experience.

 

I hope this of interest and help to my fellow members

Cheers

Pete

 

How to change Browser colour profile

 

Unfortunately, there is not simple setting in either browser called colour profile.  

 

Here is how you can access it:

 

1) Open either browser

 

2) Enter   chrome://flags/#force-color-profile    in the search bar of your browser. Please note that both Chrome & Edge are based on the chromium browser engine

and the chrome://   is referring to this, not Google Chrome
 

As  soon as you do this you will see the item Force color profile.  Initially it will be shown as Default and you want to change it to sRGB as shown .

As soon as you have done this, click Restart at the bottom of the panel and you are finished. 

 

Please note if you don't like the result, you can always revert it back to the Default settings

 

 

Have a look at screenshots in the forum. In some cases, the range of colour and depth of colour change is quite significant.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 15, 2021 by renault

[kevin123]

Thanks for this information.

[PiotrMKG]

And for those of us who use Firefox here is a guide:

 

https://cameratico.com/color-management/firefox/