Washed Out Colors

[maxmagnum]

I've noticed this problem on Win 7 64-bit several months ago. Had v4.25 then, now having the same problem with 4.27. In a gist, here's what happens:

I open a jpeg, edit, change contrast, saturation etc., whatever... Then save the image. When I open the saved image, the number of colors is much larger than in the original which I don't mind, but what I do mind is that the image looks a little washed out, colors not as vivid as in the original image. I tried increasing the saturation quite a bit but then it becomes a guessing game. I cannot predict how vivid the colors will be in the saved image, in order to match the original.

The parameters for saving jpeg are the same I always used before encountering this problem. I use 100% quality, but changing to lower value doesn't affect the above outcome.

Due to this issue, I had to stop using Irfanview and switched to Picasa which does not have this problem. Too bad, since I've been using Irfanview for many years and had been very happy with it.

Any thoughts?

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

If you want the highest quality colour, disable colour subsampling. File sizes will increase significantly. Compression to a lower quality will reduce file size without affecting the colour, but will introduce artefacts.

Being colour-blind and with less than perfect eyesight, I find that a compression setting of 75 with colour subsampling enabled is quite good enough.

[maxmagnum]

Unfortunately, this didn't do the trick. I tried playing with several options, but the outcome is always the same - colors are not as vivid as in the edited original (before saving):

progressive jpeg on/off
color subsampling on/off

The original has just over 100,000 colors while saved jpegs 2x-4x more! I suspect this may be responsible for the problem, but not sure how to prevent that from happening. Or maybe there is something else going on?

Can anyone reproduce this problem on their computer? Could this be Win 7 related? I have an old XP machine, but may take me a couple of days before I can try it on that one. IF the problem turns out to be OS related, than it must be a bug in Irfanview.

Any other thoughts?

[maxmagnum]

Possible culprit - just noticed that I have color profile plugin enabled. When I disable it, the problem seems to go away! Somehow, the saved copy (even if no edits are performed) shows visible loss of vividness in colors compared to the original when color profile plugin is on. Why then does it not affect the appearance of the original, but just the saved copy? As I noted earlier, the saved copy typically has double, triple or even quadruple number of colors compared to the original. Why?

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Maybe a colour management issue (Properties, Viewing).

[maxmagnum]

That is what I came up with. It definitely has to do with color management. When it's turned off, the edited and saved jpegs show no difference. I don't know why is that, but I suspect the color management profile interprets the jpeg differently du to much larger number of colors in the saved image (see my earlier posts for details). I don't know why would Irfanview double or triple the number of colors from the original to the edited saved copy? I don't have this issue with other image editors.

[Lnksyr]

I'm having a similar problem. Any RAW image that I edit in Photoshop CS5, then save as a jpeg looks slightly less saturated when I open it in irfanview. I've tried turning color management on and off and it makes no difference. This also happens when I open it in MS Paint, but it does not happen when I open it again in Photoshop, Firefox, or Picture and Fax Viewer.

[maxmagnum]

Hopefully, Irfan will look into this. It's a shame since I love the program and had been using it for years, but after this started happening, I pretty much don't use IrfanView any more for any type of editing.

[Koert]

I have a similar problem still with IrfanView 4.30 and some JPGs I have on a WIN 7 64 bit system if that makes a difference. When I open the image in Irfan it looks very bright. No plugins installed, default install.
When I open the images in MS paint, or the Windows Photo Viewer the colors look OK. If I open them in MS paint and save them there, the problem goes away since that seems to save to 24 bit color depth.

The original images are 200 dpi with a bit depth of 32, quite possibly created in PhotoShop, and those are shown with very bright colors when compared to just about any other program. So I suspect a bug there.

I just discovered that Snagit Editor also shows different colors than the Windows Viewer, they are bit darker then IV's but noticably different. It seems that different programs have somewhat different interpretations of the information in those 8 extra bits.

[Koert]

How can I set up IV to show, or at least keep, the original logo colors? If IrfanView cannot be trusted with 32 bit JPG's, then even something as basic as a resize is a no go since you'll never know if IV dramatically changed the colors with it's interpretation and modification of 32-bit to 24-bit.
This is a total and utter dealbreaker here because it makes using only IV, even with a format as basic as JPG, something only the irresponsible would do.

Nobody else seeing significant color differences with 32 bit color depth images?

[derniwi]

Hi,

@Koert: what is a 32 bit JPEG? JPEG just can use 8 bit per color so it is 24 bit for all colors. PhotoShop does allow to save a 16 bit per channel picture as JPEG and you also can save an image for web as JPEG. But the resulting JPEG is always a 8 bit per channel picture.

So you should check your photoshop file what color profile is used. Click on the edit menu and look for something like "Convert to color profile" or "change color profile" (I don't have an english PS), the entry should be located in the section before the last. What source is given?

And if you use the "Save for web" option have a look if the "Embed color profile" is selected.

In IrfanView enable the color managent in the options, section "viewing".

Regards
Nils

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

CMYK JPG images are 32-bit.

[derniwi]

@Bhikkhu: you're right.

IrfanView can't currenntly not deal with CMYK-JPEGs.

[Koert]

IrfanView shows something, but it's quite different from what other programs show. Not all programs show the exact same thing.
It's a real shame. Even the most basic of modifications requires you to first check the bit depth of every JPG you want to use it on.
And if it is 32 bit, you need to look for another program anyway, unless the other programs are all wrong.
On my system there is a significant difference between the CMYK JPG in IV and in e.g. Internet Explorer or MS Paint or ...
There is no work-around to apply a "CMYK-colorspace" (if there is such a thing, I'm no expert) or something?

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

IrfanView is an image viewer — if you're particular about maintaining colour integrity for editing photographs use a photo-editor, preferably one that support 16-bits per channel.