For about two hours last night, and an hour and a half this morning, I have been trying to figure out why colors are not represented the same way on DA as they are in PS, lightroom, Windows pic/fax viewer (ick), etc. At first, I thought it was a problem with the tiff/jpg file formats, and while that does present a problem, EVERYTHING we view on DA is jpg. DA converts it when you upload. I'm not sure how they convert, but I have a feeling Photoshop would do a better job - so all of you hogging disk space with TIFF files for dA may as well make them jpgs

Here's what I have found out from my research:

Web Browsers (except Safari) use sRGB color profiles.
Most printers and computers use RGB (or Adobe RGB) by default because it is considered more accurate and better for printing.

Because of this, there are a few things we can do to make sure our colors are accurately represented after uploading.

(All instructions are for Photoshop CS3. I use Lightroom for most edits, but I can't find a way to accurately do this ALL in Lightroom)

1. Ensure your monitor(s) are calibrated - if they are not, no matter what you do, everything is going to look different! There are several tools to use for monitor calibration, some are free, some are not. Check out: [link]

2. Select View> Proof Colors

3. Ensure View> Proof Setup is set to Windows RGB or Monitor RGB (mine are identical - see what works for you)

4. Check Image> Mode. When I started this quest, all of my images were set to CMYK instead of RGB. Make the computer do as little conversion as necessary.

5. Edit>Color Settings will give you a lot of options. Tick "More Options" and set your settings. I use North America Web/Internet. Make sure Working Spaces RGB is set to sRGB IEC61966-2.1

6. Resize your image however you like it. If you don't resize now, you may get an error stating "You are trying to save a file larger than Save for Web was designed for. You may get memory errors if you continue." I powered right on through that, since I have 2.6gB RAM, but if you're running an older machine, you might get problems.

7. Finally, instead of doing a regular save, go to File>Save for Web and Devices. Save as a JPEG with maximum quality. Check the ICC Profile box and save.

Now, when you upload, your colors should be accurately represented. If you want to see the differences, here is an edited version of "Goon" [link] and here is the original file with the wrong color profile. [link]

If you have benefited, or find errors, please leave me a comment

Conflicting information:
Some sources I looked at said browsers use sRGB, some said no color profiles at all. However, after converting to sRGB, I found the colors looked accurate.