Photos become desaturated when viewed and downloaded to phone

Question

Hi I have an issue that despite hours and days of trying to fix I can't seem to work out

I recently bought a new laptop and switched from Lightroom to Lightroom CC

sonething really odd is going on in that when I download the photos to my phone (whether this is pictime ,Lightroom mobile ,even emailing) they become really desaturated in both orange and yellow in particular

it is more than just viewing from a different screen (I have checked my laptop screen is calibrated to SRGB)

I did a test where I looked at the photo on Lightroom mobile and went through all the sections and I discovered that just for orange and yellow the saturation is being dramitalky reduced

so for example on the laptop it is +7 in orange and then on the mobile it's -30

this is so bizarre and even not in Lightroom mobile even if I just view the photos on a mobile through emailing it's still the same -really desaturated in orange and yellow

I don't know what to do as clients obviously want to view photos and share them using there phones

im wondering if it's a compression issue

definitely not screen related as it's actually physically changing the saturation

if anyone can please help!

Charlie.D · Answer

I've read this a few times, and it's not totally clear what the workflow is, but let me make some guesses.

Are you possibly enabling HDR in Lightroom on your desktop? (this can be enabled image by image in the Edit > Light panel, or enabled for all imports in the Lightroom app preferences)
...And then when you share via email or export from the Lightroom mobile app, are you exporting JPG or some other file format other than AVIF or JXL?

AVIF and JXL are relatively new file formats Lightroom uses to preserve HDR tonal image quality. However these file formats are not yet universally understood by all devices or software.

When exporting HDR images as JPGs, Lightroom will embed a ISO gainmap that contains HDR metadata. However, this is also new in the world or software and HDR display, and not all apps or devices know how to process and display this.

...So, if your images have HDR toggled on, do they display as expected when you disable HDR (in Edit > Light) and then export?

Other than this, I can't think of what else would cause images to look OK in Lightroom, but bad outside of Lightroom. Maybe others who are more familiar with the desktop app will chime in with their insights.

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