Lightroom export problem

[ATJ]

I'm having a weird problem with exporting a particular image from Lightroom where there is significant variation in colours between how the image appears in Lightroom and how the exported image appears in Firefox 3.0 (with colour management turned on), Safari, CaptureNX and even Lightroom itself. i.e. the exported JPEG looks identical in each of the viewers but is quite different to how it appears in Lightroom.

My monitor has been calibrated in the last month and it doesn't make any difference if I export with or without LR/Mogrify.

I'm unable to show what the image looks like in Lightroom because even if I do a screen capture and save it, it looks different.

Any ideas?

[ATJ]

OK, here's the exported image:



Now, I exported the image using the exact same settings, but didn't resize it and then imported it into Lightroom. In the develop module I can toggle between the NEF and the exported JPEG of the same size. To my eye, everything is exactly the same in the two images except for the blue background in the top left corner. The blue changes significantly between the NEF and JPEG created by exporting the NEF.

In the develop module I can put the cursor over an area and get the relative red, blue and green. If I chose one particular spot I get the following:

NEF: R 38.0 G 45.9 B 77.8 %
JPG: R 42.8 G 46.5 B 77.7%

It appears that the amount of red is changing. And while it doesn't appear to be much, it make a huge difference to the appearance. If I do the same thing with the cursor on other areas of the image, I get very minor variation.

[Ant]

Andrew,

Where was that taken? Looks too blue for Melbourne

What quality setting do you have on the jpeg export? Try setting it to maximum quality and see how that goes.

Ant.

[W00DY]

Hey Andrew,

Are you exporting it using SRGB colour space?

I had this issue and then started using SRGB as the export colour space and it worked. I believe (someone correct me if I am wrong) that SRGB is the best colourspace to use for web images.

[ATJ]

Yes, I have tried maximum quality for jpeg and I always use sRGB.

[Yi-P]

Hey Andrew,

I believe LR uses ProPhotoRGB colour space by default in the software. It will try to open and display pictures in the ProRGB space instead of AdobeRGB or sRGB. Do the exported JPEG look the same in all softwares (firefox, photoshop, etc)?

The response from your data value of the colour tells that red clipping in the sRGB space occurred during the conversion. Be aware that the sRGB has much smaller gamut space and will clip red channel much easier.

Have you tried using AdobeRGB? Its gamut is larger than sRGB is more commonly accepted than ProPhotoRGB.

[ATJ]

YiP,

Looks like you nailed it. If I export with ProPhoto RGB or AdobeRGB, I don't get the colour change. Only sRGB gives me that.

The images look the same in Firefox 3.0, Safari, Lightroom and CaptureNX, all of which honour the colour profile. They look different in IE.

Here's the interesting thing, though... when I export with sRGB, the image looks "wrong" in the colour managed applications, but "correct" in IE. When I switch to ProPhoto RGB or AdobeRGB, it looks "correct" in the CM apps, but "wrong" in IE.

Here's the image with ProPhoto RGB:



And here it is if I export with ProPhoto RGB, but mogrify to sRGB: