Hello everybody, hope you're having a great week.

For those of you who don't watch John =kkart and read his journal, he raised a really interesting point last week. The issue of colour management in web browsers.

Have you ever noticed how images seem to have different colours on the web to the way they appear in Photoshop, Lightroom, or other applications?
This is connected with an images embedded colour profile, and different application's ability to “honour” that profile.

Basically, a colour managed browsers will respect the embedded colour profiles in an image and display it accordingly. If you're not using a colour managed browser, then an image with an embedded profile (like sRGB or Adobe RGB) will not be displayed properly.

So for example, if you’re working in a particular colour space in Photoshop, your image may have different colours on the internet in certain browsers.

At the moment, the only colour managed browsers are Apple Safari, and Firefox version 3. MS Explorer isn’t colour managed.

You can read a little more about it here in these articles

[link]
[link]
[link]

How does this affect you? Welll if you are not using a colour managed browser, then you are not seeing a lot of the images here on DA in the way they should be seen…even if your monitor is calibrated.
For example, I work exclusively in sRGB from camera to web output, and a browser without colour management won’t recognize these embedded profiles. So my photography looks different in IE or Firefox v.2(which doesn’t show them how they should be) and Safari or Firefox v.3 (which display the colours correctly).
This is true of any image that has an embedded profile.

So if you’re not using a colour managed browser, then the chances are you’re not seeing other people’s images, (and maybe even your own) in the way they are supposed to be seen on the web, so it might be worth considering changing browser.

It’s also worth noting that colour management in Safari is automatic, but in Firefox it has to be enabled. Unfortunately enabling it isn’t a matter of ticking a box in Preferences, you have to dig a little deeper than that…although it’s still very easy and quick to do.
There’s an article by Rob Galbraith which outlines how to do it

[link]

_________________________________
Silver Efex Pro

This week I’ve been playing around with Silver Efex Pro, from Nik Software

[link]

It’s a plug in for both Aperture and Photoshop for black and white conversions.
It’s gives fantastic control of contrast and tones, and is really easy to use. In the past, I’ve tried so many different ways of converting images to black and white, from the channel mixer, to using the lightness channel in PS, but for me this is the best thing I’ve ever seen. It gives global, and also very localized control over the image, and when you get used to using the U.Point control points, it’s incredibly effective.
It’s the same kind of thing as Viveza, which is another excellent plug-in.

_________________________________
D3 & D700

Last night I finally got my hands on both a Nikon D3 and a D700 at the same time at a local dealers. I still wasn’t sure which to go for when I upgrade next month, and wanted to see how each felt in my hand with a range of lenses. I tried them both with the Nikkor 80-400VR and the 50mm f1.4 – respectively the heaviest and lightest lenses I’m likely to use on the camera.

The D700 feels great with the prime, but with the big zoom it did feel unbalanced in the hand compared with the D3. To be honest, I was amazed at how such a big camera could feel so effortless…it fits the hand perfectly, and the balance, even with a really big zoom feels very natural. I actually didn’t really notice the weight (although I expect that will be different when it’s in a pack and I’m hiking with it) and it felt no more cumbersome than my D80….which is incredible considering it’s twice as big and almost 3 times as heavy.
Both are great cameras, but it was the D3 I had the most trouble giving back to the dealer (who almost had to prize it out of my hands).

Some things I noticed about the cameras:

-The viewfinder is fantastic, so big and bright compared to a crop sensor camera.
-ISO 6400 REALLY DOES look amazing…about the same as ISO 600 on my D80 (a 3 and a half stop advantage)…and it’s very good at ISO 12800.
-AF works at the speed of thought with the 50mm prime
-11 fps sounds like Armageddon on the D3…an incredible noise.
-Fantastic LCD
-If you’ve used a Nikon dSLR like the D70, D80 or D200, then 90% of the controls are the same, the rest are very intuitive…I felt completely comfortable with it after a few minutes.

Now I just have to wait another month or so to get one

_________________________________
Marc Adamus Website

Any Marc Adamus fans (and if you like landscape photography, then you’ll love Marc Adamus’ work) should check out his new website, launched yesterday. Great stuff, really inspiring.

[link]

_________________________________
Other Stuff

Thanks to everyone for the comments and faves on the shots I uploaded to scraps in my last journal.
It’s actually been quite a salutary lesson to me…..Although I take all kinds of photographs, I tend to only submit landscapes here on DA, so it was interesting to see the reaction to other kinds of images, like the cow photo, or images that I would previously not thought suitable for my DA gallery. In future I think I’ll try to submit some different kinds of work every now and then..starting with my next submission

Finally, some clouds in Lisbon…I think I might try and get out shooting later this evening…

_________________________________
Weekly Features

_________________________________
Links

My Website [link]
Neutral Density Magazine [link]

_________________________________
Some of my work





Take care everyone