Ask HN: Why do images look different in Firefox and Chrome?

Posted by shocks on Thursday February 02, 2012 @03:22PM
from the ask-hn dept.

A friend recently drew to my attention that Chrome and Firefox render images differently.

Images in Firefox look much more vibrant, with more detail and colour. Here are a couple of example images that show the difference very well:

https://secure.flickr.com/photos/jikklor/5804669752/in/photostream https://secure.flickr.com/photos/jikklor/6204745249/in/photostream

Images in Chrome just seem flat and washed out in comparison.

Can anyone explain this? Why does this happen?

( 11 comments | 8 points | on HN )

Re:Ask HN: Why do images look different in Firefox and Chrome? by wmf on Thursday February 02, 2012 @03:51PM (#3544395)

I'm betting this has to do with color correction.

http://www.gballard.net/psd/go_live_page_profile/embeddedJPE...

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Re:Ask HN: Why do images look different in Firefox and Chrome? by shocks on Thursday February 02, 2012 @05:02PM (#3544719)

Wow thanks for this, so Chrome is not colour managed? That seems a shame, since it virtually cuts out all photographers as users...

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Re:Ask HN: Why do images look different in Firefox and Chrome? by wmf on Thursday February 02, 2012 @06:53PM (#3545134)

Experts say (and I agree) that all images posted to the Web should be sRGB with no ICC profile (the profile is not needed since sRGB is the default on more or less all systems); AFAIK such images should appear the same in different browsers. If you post an image using a low-dynamic-range format (e.g. JPEG) with a non-default colorspace (e.g. AdobeRGB), it will either be displayed wrong (in non-color-managed browsers) or it will lose color accuracy (possibly introducing banding) when the browser converts it to sRGB.

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Re:Ask HN: Why do images look different in Firefox and Chrome? by dholowiski on Thursday February 02, 2012 @10:47PM (#3545645)

That's all nice and geeky, but those images don't look as good in Chrome as they do in Firefox.

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Re:Ask HN: Why do images look different in Firefox and Chrome? by wmf on Thursday February 02, 2012 @10:51PM (#3545655)

My point is that those images were probably converted wrong, so of course they look bad.

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Re:Ask HN: Why do images look different in Firefox and Chrome? by cgallello on Thursday February 02, 2012 @04:28PM (#3544577)

Could you post a screenshot? I'm with fferen, don't see any difference.

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Re:Ask HN: Why do images look different in Firefox and Chrome? by shocks on Thursday February 02, 2012 @05:00PM (#3544710)

Sure, here is a screenshot:

https://underrun.org/~stack/colour.png

Firefox 10.0 and Chrome 16.0.912.77 m

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Re:Ask HN: Why do images look different in Firefox and Chrome? by zeynalov on Friday February 03, 2012 @05:32AM (#3546597)

Only Windows version of Chrome has some color correction and render problems. On Apple devices there is no difference.

So if you use a macbook or imac don't try to find any difference.

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Re:Ask HN: Why do images look different in Firefox and Chrome? by fferen on Thursday February 02, 2012 @03:53PM (#3544411)

I see absolutely no difference at all. I'm using OS X 10.6, Chrome 16.0.912.77, and Firefox 10.0.

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Re:Ask HN: Why do images look different in Firefox and Chrome? by dholowiski on Thursday February 02, 2012 @10:44PM (#3545635)

Windows 7, Chrome 16.0.912.77 and Firefox 9.0.1 and I DO see a difference. Not in the gradient picture, but in the motorbike picture everything seems to be slightly more contrasty, like the fire and the tent in the background... Firefox just updated to 10.0, still more contrasty. IE9 looks the same as Firefox.

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Re:Ask HN: Why do images look different in Firefox and Chrome? by chrisacky on Thursday February 02, 2012 @06:32PM (#3545057)

Nothing ever happened with WebP from what I understand though, but you can still check it out. Just Google and click on any one of the thousand of stories.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20018146-264.html

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