Confused about recent color differences in apps

Question

Hi,Recently, I noticed that my site (plus images and icons, etc.) and other sites look much darker or washed out in Chrome and Opera.In Edge, IE and Firefox, they still look the original bright colors.I thought this was just a temporary visual glitch, but I noticed that the hex values are indeed different for the same images in different browsers, now.I've been using Fireworks to make my simple images and things for my site for ages.In Windows explorer, the images look bright and so too when opened up in Fireworks or online in Edge, IE and FF.I decided to install Photoshop and Illustrator and take a look at my images, and indeed in both of these apps the images look washed out and dark again and a different hex value like before.I've never noticed this issue up until a couple of months ago, and I thought it was maybe a temporary issue in Chrome. I use Edge mainly, but test in other browsers.An example of my issue is here. If you use a color picker, you can see that the YouTube logo is FF0000 in Edge, but DB3318 in Chrome.Is this my video card or what? (GTX 970 with up-to-date drivers).I've never come across this situation before. Are you getting FF0000 when you visit YouTube in Chrome and color pick the logo? If so, then it's just my PC I guess.If this is easy to understand then I apologize, but I've never had this issue before and hate seeing washed out colors.Have a Happy New Year.Grant

D Fosse · Accepted Answer

How are you color picking in Photoshop from a web browser? Are you making screenshots and opening them in Photoshop? In that case you should know that with proper color management, a screenshot has already been converted into your monitor profile. This changes the values in order to display the color correctly. This is the remapping I talked about.

Without color management, the original numbers are sent directly to screen uncorrected. So you're not getting the same numbers with and without color management. You're not supposed to.

Explorer, Fireworks and Edge are not color managed. They will display an sRGB file oversaturated on a wide gamut monitor. It will not be correct. Firefox will not have color management for untagged files at default settings (which is mode 2), so that too will display the same way.

This isn't a question of getting a "better" monitor. This is about the monitor's native behavior, how it is supposed to reproduce color. A wide gamut monitor is usually regarded as "better" than a standard gamut one, because it's capable of reproducing more saturated colors. But you must know how to use it!

I feel you're still not getting the crucial point: with a wide gamut monitor you must have full color management at all times! You don't have a choice. Without it, that monitor will never display correctly. You cannot use web browsers or other applications without color management. This is important to understand.

Grant Barker · Answer

Thank you Davescm and D Fosse for your time and advice.

Even as a non-designer, I realize that hex is very old as a discussion topic. I only use it when color picking in Fireworks and up until this point it has been a simple reference that I'm picking the same colors. I'm just a hobbyist with a blog, not a pro designer (obviously).

Sorry, just to clarify, what I meant by `Where does the hex value get calculated?' (I have known my hex values for my logo and icon colors off by heart for ages.) I was trying to get my head around what decides the hex value when color picking. Bearing in mind that up until this point I never noticed a difference when referencing color between browsers, both visually and digitally (if I may use the term digitally for color picking with hex/RGB).

I also can't remember noticing a difference in color visually and digitally between a local image (like a logo) in different apps until now.

Group A) Explorer, FW, Edge and FF color pick the same value.
Group B) PS, Ai, Chrome and Opera also color pick the same value - but a different value to Group A.

FF0000 has always been FF0000 in all browsers for me when color picking an online or local color (visually and digitally) until now.

So I was trying to understand what makes the decision.. or what has screwed up the usual decision maker. For arguments sake the color picker app, the monitor gamma settings, the GPU driver, the monitor driver, my mental health, Chrome or Opera standards, Windows settings, etc. Something appears to have changed.

Anyway, I appreciate all of your great advice which I'll follow, and I enjoy trying to improve this, and I'll look into getting a better monitor in 2018.

(I really like the Surface Studio, but it's out of my price range at the moment, and I'd only want the actual monitor anyway, although the Surface Studio hardware surely compliments the monitor nicely, better than my hardware seems to at the moment.)

As a consolation, my U2410 are at least late revisions. I usually keep it (I mostly use just one) on Standard setting, although it does offer Adobe RGB and sRGB settings too. (All of which don't affect the digital picking of color anyway.)

Thank you and have a Happy New Year.

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