Photos look completely different when imported onto other devices

[Nature.magnified]

Hi all, I am trying to help my friend set up her Lightroom and have pretty much finished except for one problem, when she exports the photos, and downloads them on her phone and other devices, the colours are way off, contrast and exposure too. I am trying my hardest to fix it (from another country) as she is such a passionate photographer and this is very frustrating for the both of us! 

In my mind it was down to two things, 1. either her laptop screen isn't calibrated so it's causing the incorrect edits, or 2. it's caused by the colour space or colour profiles. I don't quite understand colour spaces and profiles just yet either.  

I thought as a test to see if it's an uncalibrated monitor, I asked her to export a untouched raw file from lightroom and onto her phone. I thought in theory this should look the same as on camera at least. But nope completely different. So Im guessing that leaves the cause to be colour profile/space related.

we have tried exporting them in both ProPhoto RGB and sRGB IEC61966-2.1. But nothing is making a difference. 

is there something i'm not doing? Any help would be greatly appreciated. 

for more context, raw files look the same on the laptop as on camera, until she exports them and they turn much much darker with less contrast. And those files are very large at 61 megapixels. (Thanks sony). Being exported as Jpeg, full size. 

[Per Berntsen]

Without seeing screenshots and having no information about your friend's computer and phone/other devices, hard to tell.

Most phones do not use color management, and can not be expected to display correct colors.

iPhones are supposed to be color managed, but I have no experience with them.

But the first thing I would advise your friend to do is to calibrate her monitor.

I get the impression that this is a Windows laptop, which usually comes with a monitor profile created by the manufacturer. These profiles are very often defective out of the box, and might also be installed by a Windows update.

Dell and Asus (and others) are notorious for delivering bad profiles.

To determine if the monitor profile is the culprit, see this post:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/i-cannot-see-thumbnails-and-images/m-p/...

we have tried exporting them in both ProPhoto RGB and sRGB IEC61966-2.1. But nothing is making a difference. 

If you view a ProPhoto image in an application without color management, it will usually display dark, desaturated, and with a greenish cast. sRGB is the safe choice.

[Nature.magnified]

Thank you for getting back to me, sorry about my late reply! Here are two example images of what is happening, the darker one being the undesired version that appears on our other devices. The laptop is an old Dell Inspiron 3593, so I get the impression that It needs calibrating anyway despite this problem, but Is there something more going on than an uncalibrated screen? We even exported an untouched raw file and it still looked incredibly dark and different on our phones. She has an Iphone 6 and I have Iphone 11, so I assume at least my phone screen is pretty reliable. 

I will test if the monitor is the culprit by doing what you explained in the link provided, as soon as I can.

[dj_paige]

You say the colors and contrast are way off, but I don't see that. I only see exposure being different.

On your friends computer, how does the exported photo look compared to the appearance in LrC? Does it match? If so, then it could be the lack of calibration on phone screens that is the problem. And of course on phones, you can alter the brightness of the screen so that could be the problem. Or perhaps your friend's computer monitor brightness has been turned way up, and then your friend darkens the image to look good on the computer screen.

She has an Iphone 6 and I have Iphone 11, so I assume at least my phone screen is pretty reliable.

I would not assume that.