Some of my photos look darker on the Dropbox website.

[jamesgarvin]

I just uploaded photos, and they are much darker than they should be. Meaning, something in Dropbox darkened my photos from their original appearance. Anyone know what is going on?

[Ed]

Hi James
Dropbox won't alter your photos. You may be looking at a preview of it. If you install the desktop client - https://dropbox.com/downloading you should be able to sync the original files and match the quality. If you are on your phone, click to save it offline or export it so you can see the original resolution.

[jamesgarvin]

The problem exists on my desktop. I insalled from the link below, and uploaded the files again, and the same problem exists - the photos are not the same as my originals. Whether dropbox is altering the photos, I cannot say, but I can say they are not the same as the originals. This is a new problem, and I've not experienced it before. My new computer has Windows 10, and this was never a problem with Windows 7, so I don't know if that has something to do with it. 

[jamesgarvin]

Here is the link to the file: [link removed]. You can clearly see the last five photos are demonstrably different from the prior uploads, although they should look exactly the same.

[Ed]

Hi James

Please do not share personal info or photos here on the forum. When you upload them from your desktop, are you opening them on your desktop or on the web (to see the 'darker' version)? If web - you're looking at a preview of the file, as said. If you open from your desktop you should see the original file.

[kimbob]

I'm having the same problem, images look normal while viewing on computer, but when I upload them they are darkened. I'm having a similar problem with images printing darkly, so maybe these two things are connected. It's strange and I'm at a loss for where to look for answers

[Jane]

Apologies for getting back in touch with you in delay kimbob, I’d happily have a closer look on the matter! 

For starters, does that happen with all your files or just some? I’m interested in checking the file extension, the filesize & how it appears on the browser you’re using. Could you please try your browser’s incognito/private mode or even a different browser than your standard? Do your photos still look darker than what you’re seeing on your desktop? 

I'd appreciate it if you included a shared link to the file in question in your next post here, in order to check back the results I'm getting across devices on my end.

Thanks in advance for taking the time to gather this info for me kimbob & once I have these details, I’ll check back with you in a bit more depth. Happy Friday! 

[kimbob · Accepted solution]

Hey! 

Thanks for getting back to me about this, it turned out that the reason they were dark was because the images were saving in a different mode or profile when I edited them in Photoshop. This problem left me confused for days! Here is how I solved that problem: in the Adobe Photoshop program I went to Edit > Convert to profile > then in the dropdown menu chose sRGB IEC61966-2.1 then I saved the file. And that cleared up my whole problem! I dont know how common that problem is or if the OP was having that problem, but I hope this can help somebody.

Thanks again!

Best,

Kim

[Jane]

Thanks a lot for circling back to us here Kim with this update! I’ve made sure to accept your last reply as a Solution, since you mentioned that this has now been fixed for you with this workaround. This way, other users experiencing the same behavior will find your post easily. 

I appreciate your contribution & it’ll be a pleasure to check back with you in the future in case you have any questions or you’d like to share your thoughts. Wishing you a lovely weekend ahead! 

[joonebug]

Thank you SO much for this. I've been dealing with this for a few years now and had no idea why or how to fix it. I always had to tell my clients that the images would appear way darker than they actually were on the Dropbox website. Once they are downloaded they look as they should. But this solution allows the black and white images to not appear darker than they are!