Enable Richer Color Profiles in Firefox 3
If you think the color in your web photographs has been looking a little dull, Firefox 3 has an answer. Whereas previous versions of Firefox did not support color profiles, now you can manually enable color profile support right in the browser. According to Deb Richardson of Dria.org:
There are two ways to turn on color profile support in Firefox 3. The easiest is to install the Color Management add-on (which will work with Firefox 3 Beta 5). After you install the add-on and restart Firefox 3, color profile support is enabled, and you can specify a custom color profile by going to the Tools menu, selecting “Add-ons”, and clicking the Color Management add-on “Preferences” button. If you do not specify a color profile, the system default profile will be used, which should be OK for most people.
The second way to turn on color profile support is through the about:config page, which is a special page where a huge number of different (and usually hidden) Firefox options can be tweaked. This is not a recommended method for most people — about:config options should only be edited if you are very aware of what you’re doing. That said, if you do want to edit the options there, they are gfx.color_management.enabled and gfx.color_management.display_profile.
--Aric A.
[image via Dria.org]
[EDIT: Reader "tony" has correctly pointed out that enabling color profile support may cause a 10-15% performance decrease in Firefox. If you don't have a fast computer, be aware that your mileage may vary.]
tony on June 23, 2008 at 12:43 PM
WARNING! The good folks at Mozilla warned that this is not enabled by default because it results in a 10% to 15% drop in performance for FireFox. I think it's pretty irresponsible to post this tweak without mentioning that -- it's been posted by Mozilla and every other web site I've seen this tweak appear on.
Sterling on June 23, 2008 at 12:48 PM
I understand why creative products (such as Adobe products) offer color profile management, but for most applications shouldn't the display properties be handled by the OS, not the application?
analytika on June 23, 2008 at 01:00 PM
It's also a slightly less than complete report, because it fails to explain *why* profile support enhances the photograph above. That's because the original (best guess) is Adobe RGB rather than sRGB, which is rare. The tweak would improve the appearance of only a small fraction of images.