Why do my pictures turn darker when I upload them?

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Permalink Reply by Terry Waggoner on January 23, 2013 at 10:08am

Your computers monitor probably needs to be calibrated. Myself, I use Spyder4 Express by Datacolor.

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Permalink Reply by Benito on January 23, 2013 at 11:28am

Okay, thanks. I know, I need to. But it is also something that has to do with the different color profiles. I figured something out, when I use Photoshop's Save for the web and uncheck "Convert to SRGB" then I don't have this problem. These two version better explain the problem I am having. "Bad Version" is the one that gets dark and the color look smeared in the clouds and "Good Version" is the one that looks right and how It looks on my monitor. They both look the same on Lightroom and Photoshop. But after I upload them to the web, one gets darker and weird looking.

Bad Version

Good version

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Permalink Reply by Benito on January 23, 2013 at 11:48am

Well, something interesting happened. On some pictures I need to leave the "Convert to SRGB" clicked so they won't have this problem and others don't.

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Permalink Reply by David Hoefer on January 24, 2013 at 8:23am

Benito, I think it depends on how much the colors vary from RGB to SRGB. Some photos don't have much of a difference because  most of the colors are within like boundaries of both profiles, while some photos have a lot of their color outside the range of SRGB and lose a lot when uploaded and/or   printed, depending on the printer. I always try to remember to convert to SRGB before I do any correcting.

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Permalink Reply by Benito on January 26, 2013 at 1:21am

Disregard this!! The pictures are good. It is my computer at this time. The bad picture do not look bad on other computers as it does on mine. Only slighty darker but it is just as I uploaded it.

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Permalink Reply by Benito on January 26, 2013 at 1:17am

Thank you all for your replies. Here is what I discovered. For some bizarre reason, Microsoft Explorer is the only browser that is working correctly and using color management on my computer. So since I was using Chrome, when I view the pictures I upload to the internet, the colors look weird and bunched up. The shades appear black. But it only happens to the pictures I upload and when I click on "view full size" All the other pictures by other people stay the same color when viewed small to full size and my pictures do as well as long as I use Microsoft Explorer. Can't use other browsers on this PC to view pictures I upload. How strange. When using my laptop, I can use any browser with no problem. So it has something to do with my drivers and my color profiles for my monitor. Still working on it. :)

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Permalink Reply by Benito on January 27, 2013 at 1:23am

I need to. I am shopping around for one. :)

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