Spotted on Joi Ito’s blog: quick and dirty directions on how to “hack” Firefox 3 into delivering richer, brighter colors more faithful to the original photograph (or graphic).
Snip:
I think that the esoteric discussions about color are interesting, but for most people, the bottom line is, if you turn color profile support “on” on Firefox 3, many images will end up appearing much closer to the color of the original and less washed out. You do this by typing “about:config” in the address bar of Firefox 3. Click thru confirmation page and find: gfx.color_management.enabled. Double click that until it says “true”. Then restart Firefox 3.
There are a number of monitor color calibration gadgets and software packages like Eye One Match which will allow you to calibrate your monitor (and camera and printer). If everyone actually did this, we’d all be seeing the same colors.
Downside: you void your warranty (browsers have warranties? who cares) and apparently this tweak causes a non-insignificant performance hit.
Whatever, I’m just thrilled that favorite snaps I shot, caressed lovingly in Photoshop, then uploaded to Flickr don’t look so anemic anymore. Like “Daniela,” above, an aging camioneta cooling her heels on a beach along the Pacific coast of Guatemala. Or these women from the Gaddi tribe in Northern India, at bottom, climbing a mountain to reach a shrine.
Source: DRIA. Gina at Lifehacker just blogged about it, too.
