Often when I upload pictures to this site the color matching especially with skin tones don't match my original well. They appear grey and desaturated. Any way to fix this.
It's due to a process called resampling which happens when images are shrunk after you've uploaded them, for the sake of file sizes and reduced bandwidth usage. Nothing that can be done, but look into "colour spaces" if you want to read more. There's been a few discussions on here about it, and there's plenty of info on the web in general.
I agree with the colorspace and resampling comments. However, the picture is slightly red. You can see it in the white of the sweater just a little bit. That's a bit of a white balance issue or can be just a Nikon issue. (I have Nikon D300 and reds are its least favorite color) Put the photo into your fave photo editor and push the red toward cyan just a tiny bit and the sweater will appear white. The baby's skin tones will lose a bit of their pinkness too. It seems Flickr is likely showing what you captured, and 365 is trying to correct it a bit.
Question: is the image that you are seeing the same dimension that you posted? Another had mentioned that the colours were not what he posted until he realized that the photos were scaled to 550 X ??? when uploaded (a function of the system). Also what @harveyzone said.
Oh my gosh! I see what you mean. I feel like I have to way over process some of my photos to get truer colors to what I photographed. Don't know the answer though.
@harveyzone thank you Tom! I tried a Nikon sRGB export setting and it made a huge difference. It is too bad I am half way through my project before I did it. I guess it would be bad to upload every picture again :).
For those who process in colour spaces other than sRGB (and then convert, or possibly not) - when you convert to sRGB (the standard ISO version) you lose colour information. In fact, you lose it regardless of which sRGB version you use, simply because the gamut is so ridiculously small - it was designed for space-saving on web applications, after all!
A solution that can help, if you do your editing in Adobe RGB, or ProPhoto or whatever, is instead of converting to the ISO sRGB directly, do it via one with a LUT built-in. LUT's are essential if you want to convert colour perceptually. Relative colorimetric etc grab a scaled colour, and that's not what you want - you want it to look as close to your larger colour space as you can. Without a LUT, the conversion is just a guess, and the perceptual option will simply not work. Adobe forget to document this, or have it greyed-out, so it pays to remember. Grab yourself one with a LUT, such as from Kodak (Kodak_sRGB.icc) and then when you convert perceptually you will get much closer to your working colours. After that, you can assign the normal sRGB IEC61966-2.1, which really just removed the LUT (thus making your file smaller and more web-friendly), thus achieving a better result.
Of course, this doesn't solve the resampling issue. But, it can remove other causes and give you a better image than you'd otherwise have.
@jinximages So, does that mean (@jinximages) that it is better to use the sRGB space on the camera before you import, AND do any processing (in Lightroom in my case) in sRGB? In other words, the image you then see at home will be closer to the image when you upload? Thanks!
@peadar That's the logical approach, but the answer is actually no. Sort-of.
If you shoot in sRGB (assuming you are shooting JPEG - if you shoot raw files the colour space you choose in-camera is completely meaningless, as raw does not contain colour space information) then you won't need to go through colour space conversions. However, you will get less colours. For basic photos of people (skin tones) sRGB is fine. But what if they are wearing a brightly coloured shirt or dress? That could easily be out of gamut, and therefore will not be colour-accurate in sRGB. Adobe RGB could be better in that case. Actually, Adobe RGB is always better, in the sense that the entire sRGB gamut fits inside Adobe RGB. That doesn't mean, however, that one should automatically use Adobe RGB.
If you're still with me... it depends on what it is you are shooting. Bright, unnatural colours (colours not found readily in nature) will have out of gamut issues in sRGB. Natural scenes, won't. But, really crazy colours, like some cars for example, can't even be helped by Adobe RGB - you need something bigger, like ProPhoto RGB. Now, if you process an image using ProPhoto, but it only has colours that are already easily contained within sRGB, you have another problem - banding. Because, while the larger colour space has more colours, when you place those colour gradations within the colour space you only have 256 shades from black to white, so if there are only a few colours, it won't show smooth gradients between similar colours if the colour space is too large. That's one reason why so many people use Adobe RGB for processing - it is bigger than sRGB, but not so big it causes problems (usually) with natural colours.
Now, you should save an image, for print, in the smallest colour space that comfortably fits the colours. This ensures smooth gradients, and prevents gamut clipping. But for web, you need to use sRGB. If sRGB is too small for your image, you just have to convert it carefully, to maintain as much apparent colour as possible. sRGB will never be perfect in those instances, but if that's the last step you do to the image, you will have preserved as much colour information as it is possible to preserve in sRGB. If you start in sRGB, and process, you will lose colour information (if anything is out of gamut) and the end result will be poorer.
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Here is the orig link. http://365project.org/scottmel/365/2012-02-12
and here is the sRGB link. http://365project.org/scottmel/other/2012-02-12
@buttercup @eking2007 give it a try and let me know how that works for you.
A solution that can help, if you do your editing in Adobe RGB, or ProPhoto or whatever, is instead of converting to the ISO sRGB directly, do it via one with a LUT built-in. LUT's are essential if you want to convert colour perceptually. Relative colorimetric etc grab a scaled colour, and that's not what you want - you want it to look as close to your larger colour space as you can. Without a LUT, the conversion is just a guess, and the perceptual option will simply not work. Adobe forget to document this, or have it greyed-out, so it pays to remember. Grab yourself one with a LUT, such as from Kodak (Kodak_sRGB.icc) and then when you convert perceptually you will get much closer to your working colours. After that, you can assign the normal sRGB IEC61966-2.1, which really just removed the LUT (thus making your file smaller and more web-friendly), thus achieving a better result.
Of course, this doesn't solve the resampling issue. But, it can remove other causes and give you a better image than you'd otherwise have.
If you shoot in sRGB (assuming you are shooting JPEG - if you shoot raw files the colour space you choose in-camera is completely meaningless, as raw does not contain colour space information) then you won't need to go through colour space conversions. However, you will get less colours. For basic photos of people (skin tones) sRGB is fine. But what if they are wearing a brightly coloured shirt or dress? That could easily be out of gamut, and therefore will not be colour-accurate in sRGB. Adobe RGB could be better in that case. Actually, Adobe RGB is always better, in the sense that the entire sRGB gamut fits inside Adobe RGB. That doesn't mean, however, that one should automatically use Adobe RGB.
If you're still with me... it depends on what it is you are shooting. Bright, unnatural colours (colours not found readily in nature) will have out of gamut issues in sRGB. Natural scenes, won't. But, really crazy colours, like some cars for example, can't even be helped by Adobe RGB - you need something bigger, like ProPhoto RGB. Now, if you process an image using ProPhoto, but it only has colours that are already easily contained within sRGB, you have another problem - banding. Because, while the larger colour space has more colours, when you place those colour gradations within the colour space you only have 256 shades from black to white, so if there are only a few colours, it won't show smooth gradients between similar colours if the colour space is too large. That's one reason why so many people use Adobe RGB for processing - it is bigger than sRGB, but not so big it causes problems (usually) with natural colours.
Now, you should save an image, for print, in the smallest colour space that comfortably fits the colours. This ensures smooth gradients, and prevents gamut clipping. But for web, you need to use sRGB. If sRGB is too small for your image, you just have to convert it carefully, to maintain as much apparent colour as possible. sRGB will never be perfect in those instances, but if that's the last step you do to the image, you will have preserved as much colour information as it is possible to preserve in sRGB. If you start in sRGB, and process, you will lose colour information (if anything is out of gamut) and the end result will be poorer.