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Previews, Color Spaces, and Slideshows
Last weekend I presented at the Niagara Frontier Regional Camera Council. The opening part of my session was a 10 minute slideshow. Creating a ten minute slideshow of some of my favorite images is not usually a daunting task, and indeed selecting the images in Aperture was easy. I have my previews set for close to the size I want, and simply drag the thumbnails over to Keynote. (I personally find it easier than using the Media Browser in Keynote, but either approach works.) I also selected some slides from a Keynote show that I created last fall. The show looked great on my monitor.
Being a bit compulsive (thankfully), I connected my projector and ran through the slideshow at home and I nearly fell over in horror. Some slides looked OK, but the colors in others were way off. I mean off as in, “You’ve got to be kidding!”
I started thinking about the fact that Aperture 2.1 creates all previews using Adobe RGB and wondering if that was the culprit. Sure enough most of the slides from my older Keynote show were in sRGB. To make matters worse, there was even one in ProPhoto and one was untagged. Honestly, I’m not sure how that happened - but when I thought back I recalled that the color was off in a couple of slides in that show last fall. But the main issue I faced was that I needed to make all the slides sRGB since that’s what my projector handles best. In fact, except for a few top end projectors that can handle Adobe RGB, most do best with slides in sRGB.
My solution was to export the images from Keynote, use the Image Processor in Photoshop to convert them all to sRGB and then create a new presentation using those slides. Had I realized the problem ahead of time I would have exported each slide from Aperture using the precise dimensions I need and sRGB. That would have saved myself a LOT of time and headache, However since the images were located in numerous projects, it was impractical to go back and search each project for the images I had selected.
The fact is that right now using Previews for slideshows is impractical for many people due to the color space issue.(Of course it would be better if we could specify” Fit Within” dimensions such as 1400 x1050 or 1024 x 768, rather than 1440 x 1440 or 1280 x 1280 too.) I’m hoping that before too long we see an option to choose which color space we want for Previews. For emails and slideshows, sRGB would get my vote. But for now, be aware of the issue - as convenient as it seems to use the previews - including the media browser - rather than exporting images, unless you can use the images in Adobe RGB, you’re much better off exporting the images.
Comments (15)
Ellen,
Have you considered making your presentations directly from Aperture? I'm a fan of Keynote, but during the current Aperture Education Tour visiting various photo programs across the country, i've had a chance to make my entire presentation through Aperture. I can show stuff Full Screen, leaving the filmstrip on the side to know what's coming up. And i make albums with music presets which allow me to almost instantly transition into AV presentations that look great. After the last slide you're back in Aperture and ready to go on to the next segment. I keep the projects and albums in order of my presentation. It's really slick, and with photo crowds it's a good chance to show off the program as well as make any changes on the fly--but you won't have any color issues or time consuming importing, exporting, re-sizing...SS
Steve, I had considered using the Aperture slideshow but opted against it for two main reasons. First, adding any text slides is far easier in Keynote. Second, I wanted to use some slides from the earlier presentation.
Aperture's slideshow feature is great for a quick basic presentation but it's not designed for fancier things such as panning a panorama or adding timed music. (In fact Keynote doesn't handle music too well either, so I'm checking out Fotomagico for the next one.) And even if I had used Aperture's slideshow, wouldn't that still be in Adobe RGB?
Ellen
Ellen,
This is very timely as I am preparing a presentation using Keynote and APerture images and I was going to use the media browser. I am glad you wrote this because you probably saved me some embarrassment and time.
For straight Slide shows I will use Fotomagico which is great! Does everything you said and more.
Thanks,
David
Ellen,
You may remember that I alerted you to the Adobe RGB issue in one of your previous posts in the context of using .Mac web galleries. Any way, you are right and you are wrong in this article. While I am not at all questioning the results that you are seeing I did want you to know that the methodology that you are suggesting to resolve this is not sound.
I am making some assumptions here but here is the bottom line. Assuming that you are using a computer (an OS X Apple to be more specific, I don't even want to get into various Windoze flaws) the color space of the image in your presentation software (Keynote) technically has no bearing on what you are seeing on the projector. OS X will use the monitor profile you select to do the appropriate "stuff" to display it "correctly" on the output device. Whatever difference you you are seeing on the projector by changing the color profile of the images embedded in the Keynote presentation and the fact that you think they are "better" is purely random and may be ok for you but is better handled by setting the monitor profile that you want to use for the output device in system preferences.
So the solution that you propose MAY work for you but is absolutely the wrong way to fix this issue on any Mac using Keynote to display on an external device.
If you have no idea what I am saying, hit me back and I will clarify. I am assuming that you know how color management works on the Mac (and yes you can have completely different monitor profiles active for every DVI port on your system.)
RB
Ps. I do agree that the whole Adobe RGB color space crap with Aperture right now is a pain but it is a pain for other reasons.
Keynote is color managed correctly, so if the images are properly tagged with their color space, it should correct the color. It always does for me. In fact I just tried it and it worked perfectly with prophotoRGB, adobeRGB and sRGB. The slides where identical. What is more likely is that you have a monitor profile issue. The profile for the projector is wrong.
Keynote is fully colour-managed, so it should make little difference what space the images are in.
It sounds more like there's a bug with the profiling of the second monitor, which is likely to be an OS-level problem, possibly related to the fullscreen colour issues on secondary displays that people have been reporting with Aperture in fullscreen mode.
Ian
RB, Jao, and Ian,
If you noticed, I commented that the slideshow looked great on the monitor - which is in fact because Keynote is color managed as you note. The issue is in outputting to a projector - in this case the Canon Realis 50 which supports sRGB but not Adobe RGB. Using a specific projector profile is an option, but in this case it was impossible. I have the Spyder3 Elite, which requires the device to be placed 1 foot from the center of the screen. The bottom of the screen in this room was more than 6 feet off the ground and it extended up roughly 10 or more feet and was 25 feet from the projector (which is a lot longer than the cord on the Spyder3.) By converting all the images to sRGB and using the sRGB space on the projector, I had consistent color. Without taking that step, whether I chose the Standard projection mode or sRGB, I had a mess. And I saw that issue at home as well using the profile that Keynote defaulted to initially.
RB you may well know more technical details of the ins and outs of color management within the Mac OS, but I assure you I am well aware of color management procedures and am anal about doing what I need to do to create output that matches what I see on my monitor. And in this case it required more than using the Aperture generated Adobe RGB previews in conjunction with sRGB slides. Ian, you could well be right that there's a bug causing the issue. All I know is that I wouldn't have wanted to have people see the show in its initial form.
Ellen,
Great. There is a ton more information in your reply than in your original article. Like even mentioning anything about a monitor profile. So let me get this strait, you set the monitor profile to sRGB and used sRGB images in Keynote and this worked for you, cool.
I would suggest that you would probably get the same results setting the monitor profile for your projector to sRGB and leaving the images in Keynote to whatever they were (Adobe RGB or otherwise), unless something is horribly wrong it amounts to the same exact thing.
RB
Ps.
Anyone having issues with a secondary display on OS X is probably not using a separate/correct profile for the second display.
It doesn't matter what the settings are on the projector, or whether you've used a stock profile or a custom profile for the projector - if images look the same as each other on one screen and not the same as each other on the other screen then there's a colour management bug - either in Keynote itself, or in the OS.
That said, I'd probably take the same pragmatic approach that you did - on short notice, getting something that looks right is the only thing that really matters! I'm also pretty compulsive about these things, always turning up earlier than expected so that I can check all the connections and run a quick 'by-eye' calibration of the projector...
Ian
RB and Ian, I set the projector to use sRGB and used sRGB images in Keynote and that worked. And no, the fact is that the initial mixture of color profiles on the images resulted in problematic colors both in the Standard space and sRGB - which are the two most usable choices for photography on this projector. While I make no claims at being technically oriented - just practically oriented - I suspect that it's the out of gamut colors that caused the issues.
Since my monitor (which is profiled) can display more colors than what are in the sRGB color space, it handles the wider gamut of the various images which were Adobe RGB or ProPhoto. The projector - according to a Canon rep I spoke with about the issue - is more limited. It had problems with some of the colors. Conceptualizing this real basically, if Device A can display millions of colors, but Device B can only display a subset of those colors, images are going to look different on Device B than on Device A unless you convert those images to use only the more limited colors of Device B. At that point the images will look the same on Device A as they do on Device B because they're just using a subset of the colors.
Ellen,
Referring to your 9:48 post. I agree with you on all things that you said in that particular post.
However...
You converting the images to sRGB is the EXACT same thing as Keynote converting them to an sRGB output space (monitor profile) UNLESS there is something wrong with your system. Either way you are outputing a wider gamut to a potentially smaller one (depends on the specific image).
I have used Keynote extensively on dozens of Macs and countless output devices and can tell you there is not a general problem that everyone will have with it or OS X. I would suggest you look into the possibility that you have something very specific to you wrong with your setup/profiles/whatever, rather than give general advice that everyone in the universe has the same problem and your proposed solution is appropriate. It is not. Especially for a blog entitled "Inside Aperture".
If I sound too critical I apologize I am just trying to provide information that will be useful.
RB
I'm with Ellen on this. I vote for (and already sent feedback about) an option to switch preview-generation to the sRGB profile. Adobe RGB is one of the banes of my existence. I don't know how or why this stuff works or sometimes doesn't work — don't even care, really — but I can say that when it doesn't it's nearly always related in some way to Adobe RGB or Adobe in general. If I drag an Aperture preview into iWeb and place it beside the same image exported from Aperture, they look identical — Your Color Management At Work, I guess — but if I publish the page and view it in Safari or Firefox, the two images look very different. And that's just beyond lame. No it's worse — it's misleading.
Color management should never be an issue. If the previews were generated with the sRGB profile, that'd go a long way towards making it so.
Mark
If you view your iWeb page in Safari, it should still look fine - Safari is colour managed. Firefox is not.
In any event, I vote for sRGB previews. I would love to be able to use the drag and drop feature of previews more (for basic printing, or emailing to friends, or for my wife to post on Facebook), but the Adobe RGB issue makes it more difficult than it should be.
Adam
If you view your iWeb page in Safari, it should still look fine - Safari is colour managed. Firefox is not.
Yeah, but it doesn't:
http://web.mac.com/marsviolet/mark/Mark_Thomas_-_Miscellaneous_-_sRGB_vs_Adobe_RGB.html
For some reason the Adobe RGB sample loses its profile completely. Is this an iWeb bug? Maybe. But I can say my dealings in the past with Adobe RGB have been similarly, inexplicably problematic, and I have learned to avoid it at all costs. So I have disabled (and deleted) previews completely in Aperture. They're basically worthless to me until I can configure them to use sRGB.
But that's why this stuff is so infuriating. It should never be an issue. The second color management becomes an issue — a puzzle needing to be solved — it has failed.
Really, Adobe RGB should be abolished from the face of the earth. It annoys me almost as much as Flash video.
Don't get me started.