Camino colour space

UPDATE: 6^th Feb 2009: Problem solver perhaps? For the time being anyway.

Over the last few months I’ve come across articles claming Camino (a browser on the mac) to be the bees knees of speedy browsing on the mac. Sure enough its brisk baby as Om Malik puts it Not many come close to the speed performance of Mozilla’s Gecko 1.8.1 rendering engine, but I still wouldn’t use Camino as my default browser for my everyday use. One major annoyance being rendering colour profiles.

Most sites have some form of graphic image, design, pattern or even a gradient. In fact its hard to find a site doesn’t use a photo or colour of any form. What was your last visited site that had no photos or colour? Hard to spot one isn’t it? When browsers donot render colour appropriately it means that the photos you see or the colours you view are less life-like. They are in most cases a flatter, less charming less punchy version of the real thing. Technically they are less saturated, less contrasty and the blacks do not converge at #000. They appear washed out. See the image below. The same picture viewed in 2 browsers (left is Camino, on the right is safari)

Camino colour space
Caption: Venice sunrise, shot by lewishamdreamer, courtesy flickr

Camino still in its new version 1.5 released doesn’t address this gaping bug. It is brisk baby but really flat too. Luckily there are other choices on the mac. Safari, ~~Webkit~~ and Omniweb($).

Ah big deal! Who cares?

I do. Lots of people who deal with photography and imagery on an everyday basis do. Lots of good designers and creative artists do. But speed is all some people need too and not a lot fussed with good quality.