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Level 1

6 points

Safari 6 color shift issue

With the new Mountain Lion release of Safari 6, is anyone else experiencing strange color shifts? For example, a webpage may look normal but opening another tab and viewing the site again the color goes slightly darker. One major issue with this is JPGs and GIFs go darker but the html colors remain the same so there is a color shift between background html colors vs the equivalent color in the image.

Attached is an example of the color shift on Apple's website. Notice the green on the left is slightly darker than the right.

I have tested this on 2 macs running Moutain Lion. Do you see this issue as well?

To replicate, open Apple's site, then Command Click the Apple icon on the website to duplicate the tab and create a few of them. Now switch between the tabs and refresh one and you will start seeing the color shift where 1 becomes darker than the rest.

Posted on Jul 27, 2012 12:14 PM

52 replies

chumtarou Author

Level 1

6 points

Aug 23, 2012 11:21 PM in response to seasterling

Appears you're seeing the same issues I'm seeing Seasterling. You'll notice that when you view the less contrasty page and hover over the menu, the color will shift. Hope it gets fixed.

greeart

Level 1

10 points

Sep 12, 2012 3:19 PM in response to chumtarou

I had those problems described by others which appeared after new ML installation . I have two machines, each of them is connected to different display. the one with the apple display connected didn't have any problems, but the second which I recently bought with yama display had..... After display calibration which i did using spider the problem in Safari disappeared . I guess spider did reset the video card and did tune it all up, did something to the card, dunno.....

chumtarou Author

Level 1

6 points

Sep 12, 2012 3:23 PM in response to greeart

Hi Greeart, would you mind doing the same test:

1. visit apple.com

2. command click the Apple logo on the site 2x to open 2 more tabs

3. then, click on each of the 3 tabs to see a comparison of color between the 3 Apple sites

It might be very slight but do you see any shift in colors especially when you hover your mouse over the navigation. I find this shifts the color to it's normal or darker version.

If you don't see the shift, this is good news and hope to find a way to reset my card (it's a brand new 2012 MacPro with 2 led cinema's and 1 older cinema)

Thx

greeart

Level 1

10 points

Sep 13, 2012 12:47 AM in response to chumtarou

ok i took some screenshots , unfortunately haven't done that when had those problems. Anyway first remember the link http://www.brookes.ac.uk posted by pagetoscreen. As I remember there was a dark green triangle near the logo which isn't there anymore, please refer to this picture

http://www.flickr.com/photos/greeart/7981890347/in/photostream.

Earlier chumtarouasked me to do a comparison of color between the 3 Apple sites, here are 3 differet pages

http://www.flickr.com/photos/greeart/7981896045/in/photostream

http://www.flickr.com/photos/greeart/7981901159/lightbox/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/greeart/7981906630/in/photostream

I haven't noticed any colour/contrast problems, all seem ok.

chumtarou Author

Level 1

6 points

Sep 13, 2012 11:27 AM in response to greeart

Hi Greeart, Thanks for the photos. I see each one is opened as a new page - I find that new pages don't show the shift as clearly. However, if you open the 3 in tabs, and switch between the tabs, 1 of the 3 will have the shift - or not hopefully in your case.

Here are 3 tab as an example. (Note that moving the window or resizing may reset the color)

Tab 1: note this color

Tab 2: darker than 1

Tab 3: darker than 1 (same as 2)

Here is one page I recently was on that shows the shift very well:

greeart

Level 1

10 points

Sep 13, 2012 12:20 PM in response to chumtarou

ok check this out

http://www.flickr.com/photos/greeart/7983368488/in/photostream/lightbox/

chumtarou Author

Level 1

6 points

Sep 13, 2012 6:40 PM in response to greeart

Hi Greeart - this is great! Looks like all 3 tabs are exactly the same. I wonder if there is a way to calibrate my LED Cinema displays... Would you have any suggestions?

chumtarou Author

Level 1

6 points

Sep 19, 2012 10:51 AM in response to greeart

10.8.2 update on Macbook Air:

If I use the default color settings in the Displays > Color the color shift disappears.

If I create a new profile, the color shift reappears.

It definitely seems as though the color profile and Safari does not sync up properly. If anyone recalls, this was an issue with iTunes a year ago where the dark background and the shadow of albums did not matchup. The shadow was either darker than the base background or lighter as if they were using different color profiles.

Looks like Safari needs a bit of catching up still.

Sep 19, 2012 11:10 AM in response to chumtarou

I also found that by switching back to the default color settings (on my iMac Intel) that the color problem resolved -- AND when I returned to my custom color profile the color shift had either disappeared or gotten much better. Odd.

Sep 19, 2012 11:54 PM in response to chumtarou

After a couple of experiments with a dummy site, I *think* that the problem is—as suggested prevously—to do with saving colour profiles in images.

My test was simple: A 'warm' dark background (hex #330000) with a set of images of the same background, created in Photoshop, saved in various formats. I also experimented with foreground vs. background images.

Here's what I've found so far:

1. Using PNG (24): colour shift when the same image is used as a foreground over a background

2. Using JPG with colour profile embedded checked: Slight color shift, foreground & background identical.

3. Using GIF (exact): No colour shift evident when used as a foreground, but as a background image, the effect was apparent.

Not sure what the conclusion is, except that Safari *seems* to be honouring colour profiles. This most certainly is not a bug, it's a feature. i.e. when using photography, the colours will be displayed as they should be based on the embedded profile.

Not sure how this will get resolved!

greeart

Level 1

10 points

Sep 20, 2012 1:18 AM in response to anandaguy

Bassically when you use a third party calibrator (DataColor Spyder or Eye-One Match), the calibration process should reset your hardware (display and video card) to a standardized output. Next you build a monitor profile that describes how well the display actually performs after it has been calibrated.

The monitor profile sends instructions to the video card to fine-tune the display.

The graphics card is what drives the display, it processes all the pixel information and converts it to draw a colour image on the screen.

chumtarou Author

Level 1

6 points

Sep 20, 2012 11:14 PM in response to greeart

Thanks Greeart

I have upgraded to a i1 Display Pro by X-Rite and calibrated all 3 monitors connected to the Mac Pro and there are no more issues with Safari. It's unfortunate that Apple's own calibration tools seem to not be working perfectly unless you are using the default profile.

I've marked this thread solved for my part but I hope Apple still comes around to fix the issue for their built-in calibration tools.

Oct 17, 2012 2:34 AM in response to chumtarou

I don't believe this is a screen calibration issue.

Laptops are showing this color shift issue in safari too.

It's only affecting safari, could this mean that safari is to blame, specififcally webkit2 implementation...?

Probably.

Oct 17, 2012 2:37 AM in response to Matt Hardy

Nothing to do with calibration devices. Even on a stock install, brand new Mac Pro, still does the same in Safari 6.

Oct 17, 2012 2:38 AM in response to chumtarou

I noticed this problem immediately in safari6, as well as the radius css render problem.

It is most likely a webkit2 implementation that has gone horribly wrong, and the engineers at apple seem to be trying their hardest to force people on to Chrome, where the issues don't exist.

Problem is, chrome is all upside down... ie. tabs are wrong, it's not easy to use like the safari UI, except for my other comment about non-UI standard single click cursor placement in URL bar. Since when does a single click select an entire row of text? Since IE said so...

So what we need, is: more customisation of behaviour, + better webkit2 implementation - easy 😉

Ok, well, problem exists, we have confirmed it, now we wait...

(a great pity safari is not open sourced, we'd have a fix by now)

Safari 6 color shift issue