Jacken’s Blog

I had this problem of all my pictures looking really washed out in some web browsers. The problem is that a lot of browsers don’t support color profiles, so even if include a profile it will be ignored. Instead the sRGB color profile is used. This makes pictures that look good in Photoshop look bland in your browser (unless of course you use Safari on Mac that use included color profiles)

Here’s a picture that originally has a the Adobe RGB(1998) which has a larger color gammut than the more used sRGB. But if you export the image without any modifications using “Export to Web…” in Photoshop, this is how it looks.

Compare the left one that’s exported without doing anything to it to the right one that has had color profile settings changed. The left one looks a bit bland and missing information?

How to fix this?

I did a lot of experiments, and this works for me. There’s probably a better way of doing this, so please feel free to correct me in the comments.

Open the picture in Photoshop and do the normal stuff like changing size and other adjustments.

When you are finished and want to export it, first do this:

I’m going to convert the image to my profile for my screen and as you can see my calibrated profile name is “New Profile (2009-01-13 04-43), but If you don’t have a calibrated screen, use “Color LCD”.

Under the Edit menu, select “Convert to Profile…”

Select your screen profile under “Destination Space”, in my case New Profile (2009-01-13 03-43) and press return.

Now it’s time to export for web.

Try to upload to the web and see if it makes a differense. It should.

To get the best result you really should get a screen calibrator. This is a device that makes sure that the colors on screen is correct. Here’s a couple.

“ColorVision S3P100 Spyder3 pro” (ColorVision, Inc.)

I have this one, and I’m very satisfied.

“GretagMacbeth Eye-One Photo – Colorimeter / color calibrator” (GretagMacbeth AG.)

Now we’re talking more money but also more exact results.

I’ve installed MAMP on my Mac to do some changes to my blog. I tried to set the WordPress wp-config.php file to connect to localhost:8889, but got an error that It could not connect to the database. After replacing localhost:8889 to 127.0.0.1:8889 it works. My quick guess is that permissions for the root user is set to allow connections 127.0.0.1, but not localhost. Anyway, it works now.

My wp-config.php file looks like this:

Yes! Finally a plugin for displaying PDF in Firefox 3 for mac. It uses PDFKit.

Get PDF plugin for Firefox here

Nobody talks about the fact that all the companies that  will now start making programs for the  iPhone  will first  learn how easy it is to program with Cocoa. Then suddenly you have a lot of new programmers that know how to program for the Mac as well. Yes, it’s that similar. What would stop them, now that they have inhouse knowledge to make a Macintosh version of the software? Nothing…

Everytime (well, last night actually) when I need to do something with Applescript I shudder with horror. The syntax is actually something you forget all the time. There must be better alternatives for Apple to use as a scripting language. I agree with this article, but Python or Ruby would be a better alternative I think.

I have had this annoying problem with my Macbook Pro. Sometimes when waking the machine from sleep, the machine can not connect to the selected Airport network and then hangs with spinning pizza of death.

Apples next update to 10.5.3 looks like it will fix it. Hopfully Apple will release it soon…

From Fixed list of Mac OS X update 10.5.3
- Joining AirPort network after wake issue resolved

Here’s a nice bug for ya. One of the users at work has a Word document, and when she uses “Save As…” to save the file to another location everything looks normal. But Word never saves the file! It’s non existant! This is only if the setting for compatibility with Office 2004 is set.

This isn’t the first time something like this happened, you also have the infamous “Let’s delete the Powerpoint file before saving and then crasch“-bug where users where left without a document after saving.

You see a lot of reviews of Office 2008, but it feels like no one has the guts to call the pig a pig…

So i’ve upgraded some of the users to Microsoft Office 2008 at work, just to see if we have less problems with it. But It seems like the geniuses at Microsoft still can’t program. The classic “you are out of memory” dialog pops up in Word, and it’s impossible to save to any volume. My attempt to move users to another program has been unsuccessful.

But I guess it keeps the support industry going…

I just bought a new Mac Mini Core Duo2 as a media player in my bedroom. I connected it an old 23″ Cinema display that I don’t use. First I was a bit annoyed that I needed to use the keyboard and mouse, but then I found Remote Buddy. What a relief! I can now do almost anything with Apples lovely simple remote. I’m going to use it for playing back my CD collection that’s been ripped to a large hardisk. Watching DiVX, DVD, MPG films on it. And watch TV with my EyeTV kit.

So the next step was getting the audio out of the mini. Well, let’s face it, the output quality from line-out isn’t something you can call great. So I’m about to order an Zhaolu DAC 2.5 and mod the crap out of it! I’m thinking of installing a ZapFilter, better clocking etc. I’m then going to use mini-spdif connector to get the digital data out from the mac to the DAC.

Now I just need to get my home built amp finished.

I’ve been switching over almost all computers at work to new black Macbooks. But there’s a lot of problems with Microsoft Office 2004 crashing all over the place. Powerpoint hangs, sometimes destroy files (this problem isn’t new, had the same problems with the old machines) and generally misbehaves. Word and excel sporadically crashes. Trying to explain to people who is used to Windows, that a mac is a very stable operating system doesn’t go to well. If a program misbehaves, it must be Apples fault. Very annoying. I don’t use any Microsoft products on my machine and generally don’t have any problems. I’ve tried to get people to switch over to Keynote, but that’s not easy. The worry that they will not be able to share documents with Powerpoint users is the main reason. But also the effort of learning a new program.

It’s amazing how little discussion there is about problems with the Office suite on macs, and not knowing if Microsoft is going to to something about it eventually.