I've noticed lately that some of my uploads to Flickr seem to be desaturating. Anyone know why this might be. It seems to be taking place on and off over the last 4 or 5 months. Some photos are much worse than others. See this example between the same Flickr photo and Zooomr photo to see what I'm talking about. http://www.flickr.com/photos... and http://www.zooomr.com/photos... - Thomas Hawk from Bookmarklet

I've never noticed it but it's really obvious when comparing those 2 URLs. I tend to over saturate anyway so maybe it's a good thing :P (kidding!) - Benjamin Golub

It seems kind of hit and miss with Flickr lately but it is super annoying. I've actually had to go in and use some of their piknik tools to try and correct it in some cases. Anyone know why this is happening? - Thomas Hawk

TH: I noticed the same thing and Mathias Pastwa told me it was Safari's fault. I haven't checked in FFox yet, so don't quote me on that! - Mona Nomura

I found a thread on Flickr help about it but there don't seem to be any answers yet: http://www.flickr.com/help... - Thomas Hawk

I just did a quick glance at the 2 photos in Firefox. I am not a photo-guy, but I can definitely see a difference in clarity even with my untrained eyes. My best guess is that Flickr is recompressing images for size purposes, causing the images to look a little "flat". - Rob Diana

I noticed this several months ago. I drove me crazy. I didn't notice until I uploaded this photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos... and complain but I don't think anyone believed me. I had to alter the picture and uploaded it again here: http://www.flickr.com/photos.... - Kol Tregaskes

Just read the thread, I'd be interested in a fix or a reason why Flickr does this. - Kol Tregaskes

My bat-sense says it has something to do with color profiles. Web designers go crazy with this issue. If the photo goes into Photoshop, be sure to set the color profile to sRGB and export from EXPORT TO WEB. Not save as. - stretta from twhirl

It's not Flickr; it's your browser. And it is indeed color profiles. Depends on which app you're exporting from but you can easily select profiles in, say, Lightroom (and likewise, the default may cause havoc...) - Peter Kirn from twhirl

WOE I'm not alone. - DAVE ID

Peter, if it's the browser then why does it look fine in Zooomr but not flickr? - Thomas Hawk

As Peter Kirn says one should always make sure that photos destined for the Web are exported in sRGB. Safari does well with other color profiles and I believe the latest version of Firefox addresses the issue, but I think sRGB is still the only safe profile for the Web. That said, the photo in question is sRGB according to its Exif so that should not be the problem. I do agree that in comparing the Flickr and Zooomr versions in Firefox the Flickr version is noticeably more flat. - Tom Harrison

Maybe flickr is altering color profiles? I've definitely noticed it. - Jason Wehmhoener

When I first saw this photo (it was smaller) I thought the guy in the orange shirt was Kevin Rose - Mattb4rd

I've had the same issue but mostly with browsers. Firefox always makes Flickr images looks de-saturated, more so than say Safari. My assumption is that the upload process to Flickr probably strips or adds a color profile that your browser can't render. I did a side by side comparison here: http://www.flickr.com/photos... and the only thing I've found to fix this as someone else had said was to assign and sRGB color profile to any jpgs I'm saving out of photoshop. - Tsega Dinka

Bump for saeba - Sorry TH. - Mona Nomura

I noticed that too. Which threw me off, because I spent so much time adjusting them in Lightroom. - Derrick

It's really annoying. Is Flickr still doing this? :-( - Kol Tregaskes

Seems to me it's the resizing that's doing it. Resizing the original in CS2 gives an apparent drop in saturation (using any of the algorithms available). Zooomr has a better resizing algorithm than Flickr by the look of it. Has it really got anything to do with profiles? I can't see any evidence of that. Looking forward to a colour gamut expert coming along and explaining it ... - Matt Jones