This extension could make Firefox the ideal browser for content creators

Mozilla has released a new extension for Firefox that allows users to manage color calibration in its browser across devices.

By default, Firefox uses color management from Windows, macOS, Linux and other operating systems to optimize and render colors and images to enhance users’ browsing experience. However, with its new Extended Color Management Add-On, users can disable color management and then restart Firefox so that the colors of graphics and videos are consistent across devices.

By doing this, media engineers and content creators can make consistent and reliable assumptions about the color pipeline between content shown in a browser and the actual pixel values sent to a computer’s display.

While most users are completely unaware of this, different monitors, operating systems and browsers vary in color output. In order to ensure each workstation is able to see consistent color output across images and video, color management applications need to be calibrated to the same specifications which can be quite tedious.

While creative applications like Photoshop allow you to disable color management, most browsers don’t allow you to do so. This is why Mozilla’s Extended Color Management extension can be very useful for those that need to have material reviewed by another party remotely through a browser on a well-calibrated display.

Extended Color Management

In a new blog post, Mozilla’s Extensions and Add-Ons team revealed that some of the world’s leading visual effects studios including Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) use Firefox as part of their creative process when making movies and TV shows.

As visual effects studios and their vendors began working from home during the pandemic, color calibration became especially difficult when compared to how easy it was to manage in-office. This is why Mozilla worked with ILM over the past year to develop its new Extended Color Management add-on.

With the company’s new extension, Lucasfilm and its remote partners are now able to see the intended colors and view ‘dailies’ more easily than ever before, especially when working remotely.

Global imaging supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic, J. Schulte explained how the company worked with Mozilla to make it even easier to view content with color accuracy in Firefox, saying:

“At ILM we want to ensure that all content is as color accurate as possible no matter where we view it. The updates to Firefox have allowed us to increase the color accuracy of content viewed in a browser further than any other browser. When we identified a new use case for Firefox, their team was responsive and updated their browser to fill the need.”