News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

June 17, 2008

huh

Firefox 3 renders images lighter than Safari?

Posted Jun. 17, ’08, 4:20 PM PT by David Dahlquist
Category | Apple » Huh?

Macenstein.jpg

It seems there may be a slight, slight color rendering discrepancy between Safari and the spankin’ new Firefox 3. Macenstein reports that there is a subtle, but noticeable difference in the brightness of images rendered by Safari and Firefox 3. The difference is especially apparent when visiting Apple’s homepage. You can see a clear distinction between the Safari rendered bar and the Firefox 3 one, especially near the darker shades.

This might not be a big deal to most, but it is worth pointing out, especially to those who rely on their browser to render images as accurately as possible. I’ve had a hard time finding other noticeable color differences aside from the Apple bar. Anyone else notice anything?


14 Comments

Call Me Yo Daddy Author Profile Page said:

You're right. However, on my Intel MacBook running Leopard 10.5.3 it is not very obvious unless this has been pointed out.

Anyway I prefer Sarari 3 with the latest webkit nightly builds over Firefox 3. 

June 17, 2008 5:22 PM
Don Horne said:

The issue might be the following:

Firefox 3 is now color managed but, by default color management is now turned off.

See this link to turn on color management.

http://robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-9311-9478

June 17, 2008 5:24 PM
Anonymous Coward said:

This is nothing new it has been happening for years!!

June 17, 2008 6:42 PM
PT said:

Some of us prefer Firefox so because it just looks right.

June 17, 2008 7:05 PM
Noah said:

Isn't the same colour space issue as always? That Safari will render images according to their colour profile (or under Generic RBG in when there isn't one assigned), while other browsers - like FireFox - just render them with the generic sRGB?

June 17, 2008 7:05 PM
Manusnake Author Profile Page said:

Opera renders it like Safari (probably the right way then).

Are those images jpgs or gifs ? It might point a bug in gray rendering of the format with the new Gecko engine... (I mean, Apple images have nothing special by themselves, so hte problem comes from the rendering engine).

It renders pngs from this site lighter too : http://secondeguerre.net/index.html

June 17, 2008 7:22 PM
尼克 said:

Firefox does not use Color Sync. But you can change this with the Add-On Extension called "Color Management".

June 17, 2008 7:36 PM
William said:

I so want a life like you guys......
Especially one where you rely on a web browser to render colors accurately??

June 17, 2008 7:37 PM
Anonymous said:

William said:
I so want a life like you guys......
Especially one where you rely on a web browser to render colors accurately??

Color accuracy is everything for us photographers. We often collaborate over the web.

It is just this type of careless spec that IS the difference between a PC and a Mac.

June 17, 2008 10:21 PM
Scooter said:

I enabled the color management through the link above and now the Apple bar, and the rest of the Apple site, compared to Safari, looks identical in the Apple top bar, and I would say, as a photographer, even better - a tad bit more contrasty, and very sharp. The iPhone v2 in the splash page looks awesome on Firefox. Thanks for this great link! FF3 is a great update.

June 18, 2008 5:04 AM
Mike P said:

William, it matters to photographers who want their images to render accurately. Shame on Mozilla for not enabling this by default.

June 18, 2008 5:54 AM
William said:

I am a photographer....and to need a web browser to render colors accurately is nonsense. If you collaborate over the web, then to verify colour, you need to download the image and run it on a color balanced monitor. Since all people using the web, and therefore browsers, do not have the same color balance, least of all in most cases, accurate color balance, the best you can do is an image that looks right to your eyes and hope it looks ok on MOST other monitors/displays and web browsers. Web sites and images on them have exactly the same limitations due to the non generic setup of monitors and ICC profiles. And just to point out, that goes for macs, pc's, safari, firefox etc....


June 18, 2008 4:46 PM
William said:

Will rephrase - to need a web browser to render colors accurately for the sake of collaboration and final work output is nonsense. Obviously we want images to look 'right' in color but are still limited to accurate profiles, accurate monitor profiles and setups and that is not the case on most people's systems, least of all the entire www

June 18, 2008 6:40 PM
Howard Brazee said:

How does this compare to the recently released Opera 9.5 rendering?


(I tried to create a signon, but it never sends me authorization)

June 19, 2008 5:59 AM

Leave a comment

 



Visit other IDG sites: