Participating Frequently

Question

Color profiles: What's the professional workflow when working with iPhone photos?

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
August 13, 2021
6 replies
9312 views

Hello professionals,

I (not a photo pro) recently ran into problems when working with iPhone photos as source material:
A record artwork I designed appeared washed out on Spotify and such. So I searched & learned that iPhone pictures use and contain a non-standard extended color profile called "Display P3". I had done the design work with Affinity Photo, which simply carried that profile over to the final export and never gave a warning. Very annoying. Spotify only accepts sRGB and converted the file into a hazy blargh.

So now I bought a Photoshop subscription, hoping to get closer to "industry standard" results. But it's not immediately clear to me at what point you should do the conversion, and if you can (ideally) make it a standard preference? How do you do it in your day-to-day business?

Thanks a lot for your insights !

macOS

This topic has been closed for replies.

NB, colourmanagement

Community Expert

Hi

you’ve read the chat here, I hope, about sRGB and "lowest common denominator" working, where it's often the presumed profile for browsers dealing with images without embedded profiles. Maybe the originator didn't embed, maybe the website stripped the profile.

iPhones are actually pretty consistent -one to the next - and do quite a good job with images in the P3 colourspace. (mine does an OK job of matching my Eizo Coloredge screen when both display the same image).

iPhones also manage OK with sRGB images, which is what most users place online.

Why not try this [display P3] image on your phone in Safari:

https://tinyurl.com/mobiletestimage-jpg

Now try this screen version in Photoshop on your computer:
https://www.colourmanagement.net/downloads/CMnet_Pixl_AdobeRGB_testimage05.zip

You seem to have an issue with the difference between the phone screen and your display screen, you've written that your own system is not (and may never be) colourmanaged, hmm.

What that means is that your own display could possibly be set way over saturated and contrasty and / or too bright. In the circumstances, if your own device my potentially be out of control, it's not really reasonable to expect it to match any other device unless all devices are a well controlled. Colour management was designed to provide a reasonable match in appearance between differing devices.

Everyone needs it.

I hope this helps
neil barstow, colourmanagement net :: adobe forum volunteer
google me "neil barstow colourmanagement" for lots of free articles on colour management
[please only use the blue reply button at the top of the page, this maintains the original thread title and chronological order of posts]

Conrad_C

Community Expert

It was not necessary to buy a Photoshop subscription to solve this. You can take care of this in Affinity Photo as well as in Photoshop. In either software you can convert to sRGB from whatever the current color space is. And both let you do it either at any time, or on export.

To convert at any time:

In Affinity Photo, choose Document > Convert Format / ICC Profile.
In Photoshop, choose Edit > Convert to Profile.

To convert at export only:

In Affinity Photo, in the Export options, click More so you can set the ICC Profile menu. Or, if you are using the Export persona instead, set the ICC profile in the Export Options panel.
In Photoshop, select the Convert to sRGB option, available in both Save for Web (Legacy) and Export As. If Convert to RGB is not available in the export method you choose (such as File > Save a Copy), use Edit > Convert to Profile before exporting.

ShotophopAuthor

Participating Frequently

Yes, I understand that this is easily possible in Affinity Photo as well...

But the whole experience was a bit annoying. After I converted the ICC profile to sRGB and unchecked "include ICC profile", the Finder file info box would still show the profile used. As a result the record label didn't trust my Jpeg (because they wanted the field empty, as they know it from their own Photoshop exports) and re-encoded it instead. And suggested I should leave artwork to a professional next time 😕😕

Later I discovered the option to set a standard color profile and enable a warning whenever a file you open doesn't match that standard. Why is that warning not checked by default? Who wants to export a "Display P3" type file when it's not going to look right in the end?

So I was kinda annoyed and suspected it's all a bit "safer" in Photoshop. And was on the fence anyway between buying Affinity - which I liked, by and large - and PS, which seems to be way ahead in smart "new school" tools.

Conrad_C

Community Expert

The reason the settings don’t appear to make sense is basically Spotify’s fault. All of the concerns you raise are perfectly valid and were commonly encountered…15 to 20 years ago. The only reason you are running into them today is that Spotify is using a workflow from that era, based on how the submission requirements were described. Their system is set up to only work with one color space (sRGB), and, their system is apparently not set up to recognize ICC profiles and automatically convert to sRGB, so everybody has to convert their images to it before submitting.

15-20 years ago, things were still like that in the printing/photo industry, so people generally wanted things set up the way you do now: Wanting a warning, so that a manual conversion could be done. But things are much easier now, it’s taken care of in several ways. First, most current graphics applications understand color management and profiles, so if you feed in a Display P3 image, they’ll see that, and correct for it so it doesn’t look washed out. That means you don’t need a warning or a manual conversion. And that is why the default in both Affinity Photo and Photoshop is to have the warning off: Many current workflows do not need those extra manual steps.

Today, many pro workflows let you throw in images wth all kinds of color spaces, and they’ll read the image profiles to auto-convert them to the right output color space, so no warning needed. If Spotify was set up to recognize non-sRGB profiles and auto-convert them to sRGB, they wouldn’t be causing these old-style problems or needing the old warnings.

The other big problem with having the warning on is that you have to click through the warning for any image not matching the working space, which can get old real quick if you open hundreds of images a day. So people who work that way often turn on the option to auto-convert to their working space so they don’t have to see the warnings, but the images get converted properly anyway.

@Shotophop wrote:

Who wants to export a "Display P3" type file when it's not going to look right in the end?

From the explanation above, it should be clear that a Display P3 image would look right in the end…in any properly color-managed application. So it is not true that it is not going to look right in the end. Unless you are dealing with a system that requires pre-conversion because they do not handle color profiles, like Spotify. (Or an old web browser.)

You still make a good point that people should be made aware of what color space an image is in. In Photoshop, what I like to do instead of the warning is to set the status bar at the bottom to show the Document Profile (see below). You can also display the document profile in the Info panel, if you tend to leave that open. I am not sure if Affinity Photo has a similar display option; I haven’t found it yet.

D Fosse

Community Expert

<nevermind, already covered>

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

I was going to tg you if you not already in the thread Dag.

D Fosse

Community Expert

Trevor, I'm staying out of this because it's a moving target. iPhones may have a rudimentary form of color management, so that they are basically able to represent sRGB and DCI-P3 in the same way. But that doesn't mean "accurate" color and you should never mistake it for that.

Until full color management is universally implemented in all platforms and environments, the internet still operates on the least common denominator. And that's still sRGB.

Anyway, I don't have an iPhone and don't plan to get one 😉

War Unicorn

Community Expert

My favorite thing isn't the color profiles per se; it's the default exaggerated colors on the displays of most phones that drives me nuts. Totally screws the hues up. I shut that garbage off ASAP. Yeah, it may "look" pretty, but it's nowhere near accurate. I've seen images where someone thinks it's purple when it's actually blue. (They see purple because of what the device shows them and then get puzzled when you tell them the real color.)

TheDigitalDog

Inspiring

I don't see exaggerated colors on the displays on my iOS devices. But that's all subjective. It's a JPEG processed from raw using a proprietary method which is to be expected from a phone or expensive DSLR when a user sets (or allows a default) rendering.

Nothing the phone or any other camera produces is 'accurate color' because accurate color is scene referred and it is very ugly:

http://www.color.org/ICC_white_paper_20_Digital_photography_color_management_basics.pdf

Everything else is a subjective rendering; automatic or better, by the image creator.

Blues shifting magenta happens even today with proprietary color management thanks to warts in Lab color space and profiles that don't handle this well. Not all ICC profiles for output where this happens the most, are created equally.

Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management/pluralsight"

War Unicorn

Community Expert

A lot of Android phones have such a setting, which does nothing to the image itself (e.g., no color profile) but rather applies it across the board when one uses one's phone:

It's a "set and forget" thing...and in this case, it's usually terrible as, by default, the colors get so saturated they can burn a hole in your retinas. lol

The "natural" setting is about as close as I could get to what I see. (Images like this one, taken by the camera on the phone, look just like what they look like on my desktop:)

And therein lies the rub: For those that don't even know such a setting exists (and believe me, they're out there), they think their image looks great on their phone, but those viewing it on a properly-calibrated desktop monitor view otherwise. I get into it from time to time on Twitter and have to whip out Photoshop's Color Sampler Tool to prove it.

TheDigitalDog

Inspiring

Depending on the end use of the image, you don't need to convert anything but leave this embedded RGB Working Space (DCI-P3 which is 'a standard' ) as is.

If uploading to the web, you may want to convert to sRGB which is ONLY necessary for those poor soles not using a color managed browser (otherwise any tag will work).

This may help:

sRGB urban legend & myths Part 2

In this 17 minute video, I'll discuss some more sRGB misinformation and cover:

When to use sRGB and what to expect on the web and mobile devices

How sRGB doesn't insure a visual match without color management, how to check

The downsides of an all sRGB workflow sRGB's color gamut vs. "professional" output devices

The future of sRGB and wide gamut display technology

Photo print labs that demand sRGB for output

High resolution: http://digitaldog.net/files/sRGBMythsPart2.mp4

Low resolution on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyvVUL1gWVs

Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management/pluralsight"

TheDigitalDog

Inspiring

And Oh you nearly NEVER need to Assign a profile!

See: http://digitaldog.net/files/PhotoshopColorSettings.mp4

Photoshop CC Color Settings and Assign/Convert to Profile video

Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management/pluralsight"

Mylenium

Legend

If your system is properly color managed, it doesn't matter at which point you convert/ re-assign a profile, which kind of is the point. The respective defaults can be set in the colro management settings, but you may want to avoid making "weird" profiles your default unless you really only work with this stuff all the time. It may be better to create a simple action for the conversion and assign it to a keyboard shortcut. You know, you may forget about your color settings and then wonder forever if someone sends you a different photo outside the iPhone loop.

Mylenium

ShotophopAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thanks for your reply! I'm pretty sure my 'system' will never be properly color managed if I'm honest, cause I only use Photoshop on the side, for my music projects...

Let me specify, I see no benefits from iPhone photos having an expanded color range if it breaks compatibility with the destined use cases. So in the future I'd simply want iPhone photos to convert down to standard sRGB range on import. Is that a possibility and how would you do that?

Cheers 🙂

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded