“Annoying Color Space Issue in Firefox”

Jim Correia and I spent a little time talking about this a few months ago, but I just noticed the problem again. Look at the following image:

The image on the left is how Firefox 2 and 3 render it. The image on the right shows the same image in Safari. (You won't see any image if you're reading this in email, you'll have to go to the link above.)

If you don't see the difference immediately, look at Lauren's face. The color in the one on the right is really good, and is why I marked this image as one of my favorites in both iPhoto and Safari. The color in Firefox is terrible. She's darker, and the skin tone is way off.

This is really annoying. I think I understand the basics of this problem, but I'm told that the root of it is the cost of licensing the colorspace technology (from Adobe?). Mozilla has more money than they know what to do with right now, and they have a lot of really smart people. I hope they solve this soon.

(Note that the picture looks pretty good in Internet Explorer, also. Of the three major browsers, Firefox is the only one with this problem.)