Color Management for Online Photos

[bran8]

I am looking for some help with managing colors on photos I post online. My photos are basically all of landscapes and when I post them to some online competitions the colors look horrible and muddy. I have a calibrated monitor and my prints turn out well for the most part, but I don't know what to do to make sure the colors look right when they are posted online.

Any tips? Thanks in advance.

[ahab1372]

I suppose you use a different working color space (like AdobeRGB). Even if your setup is correct, make sure you export in sRGB. Some browsers (Chrome is one example) ignore embedded color profiles and always assume sRGB, and some websites seem to ignore or remove color profiles altogether, especially the ones that process the uploaded files to create different sizes (like flickr).

[Mt Spokane Photography]

You haven't mentioned what computer and what software you are using.  Someone might be actually able to help rather guess in generalities if you tell us.
 
I use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4.3, and as noted above, my exported files are JPG and SRGB.  I've seen some files posted in other formats that don't look all that great,
Photoshop will let you export Gif, PNG-8, and PNG-16 as well as jpeg tiff, etc.  It also has much more sophisticated adjustments of colors for export, a great opportunity to mess things up, or correct individual colors if you are expert.
 
Unless you have a specific reason, use JPEG and SRGB. 
 

[bycostello]

unless you can get everyone to calibrate their monitors etc.. colour balance will never be 100%

[picturesbyme]

a page, a sample, a link ?

[Drizzt321]

I suppose you use a different working color space (like AdobeRGB). Even if your setup is correct, make sure you export in sRGB. Some browsers (Chrome is one example) ignore embedded color profiles and always assume sRGB, and some websites seem to ignore or remove color profiles altogether, especially the ones that process the uploaded files to create different sizes (like flickr).

I'll second this. Unless you specifically know your end-user(s) will be needing AdobeRGB (like if they are printing), then export as JPG/PNG with sRGB, it's just so much easier and well supported.

[helpful]

unless you can get everyone to calibrate their monitors etc.. colour balance will never be 100%

This is exactly right. There is nothing you can do, even with all the embedded profiles in the world, to make your pictures look the way you want them to look on other people's monitors. That is the way the internet is. Just like web pages do not define "page numbers," color on the internet is a relative thing.

There is a way that you can see how it will turn out when posted into contests, etc., at least on your own computer screen. First, make sure you export your jpegs using sRGB color. Then use something like the jpeg/png stripper: http://www.steelbytes.com/?mid=30 to remove all non-image data from your exported jpegs. Use File > Open to open the jpeg files in your browser. The result, except for compression, will be same as the images will look when viewed online in a photo contest, etc.

If your pictures are looking that bad when entered into a photo contest, it would help to know what you mean by bad. Are they looking dark? Sometimes images created on Macs with a gamma of 1.8 look dark when viewed on Windows with a gamma of 2.2.