Poor picture color quality in Firefox/Windows Photo Viewer

[JimmiG]

I've had this strange problem for some time - when I open a picture in Firefox or the default Windows Photo Viewer, the color quality is poor. It looks almost like I'm using 16-bit mode or displaying a .gif image. It's especially apparent in pictures that contain a lot of skin tones.

However if I open the same picture in Nero Photosnap Viewer or Paint.net it looks fine. It also looks fine in Internet Explorer and Chrome.

I've made sure my display is set to 32-bit and I've checked that there's no color/gamma correction going on. I also tried disabling Aero. I do have a TN panel, but if that was the reason for the poor quality, how come it looks fine in some programs?

Any ideas?

Edit: here are two pics, a 200% zoom (nearest neighbor resampling).

First the image opened in Paint.net, cropped and resized:


This is a printscreen of the original image as displayed in Firefox, pasted in Paint.net, cropped and zoomed to 200% and then saved. The picture looks exactly as it did on my screen, it's not the printscreen command that's failing to capture all the color data:


If it's hard to tell the images apart, then maybe Firefox renders poor pictures for you too? Try opening the thread in IE or Chrome... for me, the above images actually look nearly identical in Firefox, but there's a big difference between them in IE or Chrome, which seem to use some other image rendering function or whatever, bypassing this issue.

 

[shangshang]

I tried viewing them in IE and FF. They look very similar in both browsers. Whatever differences I notice in one browser, they also carry over to the other browser too.

btw, is this the girl next door?

 

[JimmiG]

Just some random picture from google

Look especially at the arm/shoulder, it's much more yellow/brownish in the second pic. The hair also looks different. Kind of over saturated in the second pic. I'm surprised you can't see the difference. I'm looking at them right now in Chrome and the difference is noticeable. It's not like night and day but the first picture clearly looks better than the second.

Edit: Here's another one I found where I think the difference is even more obvious.
Left is Windows Photo Viewer, right is Chrome (or how the image looks in everything except Photo Viewer and Firefox)

Look especially at the ground and trees in the lower left - they're reddish and saturated in Photo Viewer, much more balanced and detailed in the right image.

It's only with those particular color tones I notice the difference. I looked through 10-15 pics containing mostly greens and blues, and they looked nearly identical across all programs.

 

[shangshang]

lol in your 2nd send of pictures, I notice even less differences than the girl set! I looked at the 2nd set in both IE and FF again, and now they all look almost identical.

If you had not tell me what to look for, I wouldn't find it in a million years!

However, I do know that different applications do render pictures differently and as a result you'll see them differently.

 

[tweakboy]

Looks same to me, no quality issues.. Or maybe Im 10/20 vision LOL

 

[Fox5]

My best guess: Something to do with window's built in color profiles. (ICC profile)

Some programs obey it, others don't, and sometimes the profile can be incorrect.

My samsung monitor automatically picked up an ICC profile that was blatantly incorrect, at least compared to the calibrated settings of my monitor. Things that didn't use ICC looked fine, things that did had a yellowish tint.

I have two monitors though. On the one that doesn't have ICC profiles, both pictures look the same. On the one that does, the pictures look different. I'm using firefox.

 

[WelshBloke]

lol in your 2nd send of pictures, I notice even less differences than the girl set! I looked at the 2nd set in both IE and FF again, and now they all look almost identical.

If you had not tell me what to look for, I wouldn't find it in a million years!

However, I do know that different applications do render pictures differently and as a result you'll see them differently.

Looks same to me, no quality issues.. Or maybe Im 10/20 vision LOL

WTF.

I'm pretty insensitive to things like this, but the differences are pretty obvious here (especially in the second set).

You could try setting your graphics drivers to override the application settings.

 

[Outrage]

type about:config in the address bar

change "gfx.color_management.enabled" to 0, it's probably 2 now

edit:
this is so firefox dont use the embedded ICC profiles.

everyone should be able to see the difference in the pictures. Paint.net saved them without the profile, so they are different.

 

[JimmiG]

type about:config in the address bar

change "gfx.color_management.enabled" to 0, it's probably 2 now

edit:
this is so firefox dont use the embedded ICC profiles.

everyone should be able to see the difference in the pictures. Paint.net saved them without the profile, so they are different.

That worked! I didn't have a "gfx.color_management.enabled" string, but I created it and set it to 0.

How do I disable it globally, though? The images still look wrong in Windows Photo Viewer and possibly in other applications.

 

[fffblackmage]

I was always annoyed how windows had applied a crappy color profile that made everything orangey yellow, which most noticeable in Photo Viewer.

I was able to fix it in the Color Management options.

Here's how to get there:

Right click desktop and click "screen resolution." Click "advanced," go to Color Management Tab, click Color Management.

There, I have selected "Use my settings for this device" and removed the craptastic color profile Windows has been using by default.

Hope that helps.

 

[JimmiG]

Thanks a lot, now the pictures look fine in Photo Viewer too. Why would it default to such a crappy preset? Not only do the colors look wrong, but it also introduces banding and splotches of weird colors...

 

[VirtualLarry]

Glad you guys figured it out. The two pictures of the girl didn't look any different to me when I was looking at them on my laptop in low light, but now that I'm on a desktop with a Dell Ultrashard LCD, I can see that the bottom pic is a bit more reddish, for some reason.