Can you have control of the colors in your images on the World Wide Web ?
The truth is that Windows browsers are as color-clueless as they come. To my surprise even the new Internet Explore 8 does not recognize imbedded profiles. They simply throw the raw RGB numbers at the screen with no interpretation. Most monitors have a color range that is somewhere in the vicinity of sRGB. There have been several discussions in different forums regarding color management for web images. Here are some of the comments:

Ethan Hansen wrote once, in Rob Galbraith´s forum: "with some work, you can tame the web for folks who use calibrated monitors and some browsers. On the Mac end, both Safari and IE honour embedded profiles if the correct ColorSync settings are made. On the Windows front, you can use the ColorInfo tag to specify a color space for IE viewing (really only practical for sRGB)."

In the same forum he wrote already 2004-09-24."If you have ColorSync enabled, there is a difference between how Safari and IE handle untagged images on OSX. IE assumes all untagged images are sRGB - a smart choice. Safari assumes that all untagged images are in your monitor color space - no less dumb than using your monitor profile as the default RGB space in Photoshop."
I have, myself, applied this method of Color Management in IE4, using the ColorInfo filter, on the 2 images and the two logos below. In this example, I can, in my own monitor, see a colour difference between the images (can you?), which suggests that Ethan Hansen's method for colour management in Internet Explorer V4+ does work, although the difference is not as big as I expected. This technique cannot be employed with Mozilla 1.5. Perhaps, this is a little academic but maybe a hint what we can expect in the future

NOTE: To be able to colour manage images in this way you must have the "sRGB Color Space Profile. ICM" file in your \Windows\System\Color folder, \winnt\system32\color, or system32\spool\drivers\color like for XP, if you have a PC system. With Mac's, colour management should happen automatically.

But still the big stumbling block to effective colour management is an uncalibrated/unprofiled monitor, which means you really cannot be certain, how colour will be represented..

Vincent no color management
NO filter: ColorInfo(ColorSpace=sRGB, Intent=0)
1 pixelimage
Vincent with color management
Filter used for Explorer 6.0 : ColorInfo(ColorSpace=sRGB, Intent=0) which maintains contrast - used for photographs and natural images.

NO filter for my Explorer 6.0: ColorInfo(ColorSpace=sRGB, Intent=1)
W3logga
Filter used for my Explorer 6.0: ColorInfo(ColorSpace=sRGB, Intent=1) Maintain colormetric match. Used for graphic designs and named colors.

One problem with embedding a profile in a small web image is that the size profile can be significant resulting in larger files and longer download times. This is rarely a problem for print, where multi-megabyte files are the norms, but for 30-50k files, the overhead can be non-trivial. Not talking about Thumbnails with a size 4-5 K

With above Microsoft technique you don't have to embed a profile, but instead you are relying that the viewer has the sRGB profile installed on her PC. Maybe one can call it semi-colour managed? Better than nothing if you care for your colors

Note: Are you aware that when you "Save for web" in Photoshop , the software might strip out the profile. Unless you check the "ICC Profile" box when saving out a jpeg to preserve ICC profiles in the Save for Web dialog. At least in my PC 7.01 this option is available. In versions prior to PS7 you do not have this option which means that, when using the option "Save for the web" there will not be any ICC-profile embedded.
Safari 3 brings color-managed web browsing to Windows Tuesday, June 12, 2007 | by Rob Galbraith Apple's release of a public beta of Safari 3 makes practical the color-managed viewing of photos within a Windows web browser for the first time. In a workout of Safari 3 within Windows XP and Vista here, the new browser properly displayed pictures with embedded ICC profiles, just like Safari 3 (and earlier) does on the Mac. For that reason alone, Windows users may want to take the Safari 3 public beta for a spin, especially if you visit websites (like this one) that publish pictures with profiles embedded. Since than Safari 3 is no longer a beta version. Below you can download the official version

Safari 4 , also availiable for Windows XP or Vista. Safari has, fore many years, been the only browser that could provide color-accurate viewing of pictures on web pages. When testing if my system is ICC Version 4 ready it proves it does.
It now seems that the new browser Firefox 3.0 also can handle color management? At least they state so in " What's new in Firefox 3.0"
Unfortunately Firefox 3 currently needs colour management enabling - see this article for instructions and download links.

(Or try this to enable color management: (set gfx.color_management.enabled on in about: config and restart the browser to enable.) That are prefs. that you can find on the about:config page. You can open that page via the location bar like you open a web site. Type about:config in Firefox 3's address bar and press Return ). However in Firefox 3.5 it seems thar this browser supports ICC version 2 profiles only ? . The gfx.color_management.enabled element has been removed. Now only gfx.color_management_rendering_intent and gfx.color_management.mode are listed. (The new QCMS color management system introduced in Firefox 3.5 currently only supports ICC version 2 color profiles, not version 4. This may result in images being too dark.)


Updated Oktober 14, Year 2009 by Lars Ekdahl , Comments on this page appreciated!