No automatic sRGB conversion for Google Street View

Post Reply
User avatar
swedVR
Posts: 17
Joined: Wed Apr 05, 2017 6:21 pm
Location: Sweden, Stockholm
Contact:

If you have experienced that your SV tour looks weird with too vivid colors or very low saturation. Then there's a good chance your pano photos has another color space than sRGB.

When uploading to Google Street View it's EXTRA important that you check this because Pano2VR doesn't convert the tour to sRGB like it does with a normal virtual tour by default.

It's a problem because different applications use different color space when displaying its content. If you choose Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB when exporting from Adobe Lightroom. You will end up with a tour looking very differently depending on which viewer the user is using. It's bad enough that everyone are using different displays.

My monitor has a really vivid color profile which came with the monitor. The monitor is a really good DELL Ultrasharp UP2516D with 100% Adobe RGB and sRGB @ Delta-E < 2. Its wide color range and standard (super vivid) color profile can be a problem if I'm not aware of what color space a certain app is showing.

This is why I've made you a list of the applications I've experimented with and what color space they seem to display.

1. The Pano2VR viewer: Show different color spaces but they don't look correct. It might be that it mixes the color space of the image with the monitors color profile.
2. The Windows 10 "Photos" app: Converts any color space to "Monitor RGB" (your monitors color profile).
3. Chrome (both desktop & android): Converts any color space to sRGB
4. Android Google Street View App: Shows the panos original color space
5. Android Google Maps App: Shows the panos original color space
6. Microsoft Edge web browser: Converts any color space to "Monitor RGB".

I'm curious to know why the Pano2VR viewer can't display the colors 100% correctly? I also hope there will be an option to convert panos to sRGB when uploading to Google Street View (which is enabled by default) for those who have accidentally chosen another color space.
User avatar
thomas
Chief Gnome
Posts: 2611
Joined: Fri Sep 01, 2006 3:56 pm
Location: Vienna, Austria
Contact:

Ohhhh... Thank you for the hint. I will add the automatic conversation with the next version. It is odd that Google doesn't handle this correctly.
MfG, Thomas
Post Reply