Inspiring

Answered

Images are darker when viewed via Safari or Chrome?

Forum|Forum|4 months ago
December 30, 2025
3 replies
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Images created in photoshop (26) on an imac with a hardware calibrated monitor/display (x-rite & calibrite), & with sRGB color space embedded, appear darker when viewed in a browser (safari or chrome). Why?

I prepare the images and either upload them, or first create a pdf in photoshop. When I view the images via a url on Safari or Chrome the images consistently appear darker.

Does it mean my display luminance/brightness is set too high during calibration . Or that browsers are not reading the sRGB embedded color setting correctly . I f the file isn't already in sRGB I convert it to.

should i be soft proofing these images. If so, with what profile - the monitor?

What is happening ?

More importantly, what can I do do to correct this?

Any insight appreciated.

Correct answer mglush

Hi!

We are sorry to hear that you are having this issue! Can you show us a screen shot of the image in Photoshop and the image in Safari side by side?

I have a couple of questions for you -- why are you saving your images from Photoshop to a pdf and then looking at them in a browser? What are the pdfs being used for? PDFs are not necessarily the best file format for a web browser--do they get downloaded for print?

Have you tried saving out a jpg from Photoshop and looking at it in a browser window to see if you have the same issue with the jpg format?

Being able to see what you are looking at will be really helpful for us to assist you.

Thanks!

Michelle

E

ExUSA

Legend

Try temporarily changing the display profile to the Apple-supplied version, which is usually pretty accurate. See if that makes a difference.

D Fosse

Community Expert

As long as the profile is embedded, any major web browser should display identically to Photoshop. They are all fully color managed.

If they don't, it's either a defective monitor profile or a GPU driver bug (the conversion into the monitor profile is executed in the GPU).

To test the monitor profile, replace it with a generic system profile (sRGB/Adobe RGB/Display P3 depending) and relaunch all applications so they can load the new profile.

That said, if you save out PDFs you need to double check color management settings carefully in the PDF save dialog. The profile can easily be stripped or converted there.

F

frankg_photosAuthor

Inspiring

*To test the monitor profile, replace it with a generic system profile
(sRGB/Adobe RGB/Display P3 depending) and relaunch all applications so they
can load the new profile*

What does the change tell me. That my calibration is incorrect?
I usually set the targets to- D65, 2.2 & 100 luminance

D Fosse

Community Expert

@frankg_photos

Not the calibration - the monitor profile. Those two are not the same thing. The monitor profile is a standard icc profile, just like any other icc profile. It needs to describe the native color space of the display in its currently calibrated state, as accurately as possible.

The calibrator does two things. First it calibrates R=G=B to a certain white (and black) point and a certain tone curve. When that is done, it measures the response in this state, and writes an icc profile describing this response. The profile uses many more parameters and has much higher precision.

A bad profile will often affect applications differently. So any such difference is a red flag.

mglush

Correct answer

Community Expert

Hi!

We are sorry to hear that you are having this issue! Can you show us a screen shot of the image in Photoshop and the image in Safari side by side?

I have a couple of questions for you -- why are you saving your images from Photoshop to a pdf and then looking at them in a browser? What are the pdfs being used for? PDFs are not necessarily the best file format for a web browser--do they get downloaded for print?

Have you tried saving out a jpg from Photoshop and looking at it in a browser window to see if you have the same issue with the jpg format?

Being able to see what you are looking at will be really helpful for us to assist you.

Thanks!

Michelle

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