Are my colours off? (question for people with calibrated monitors)

[Egg Salad]

I have just seen my first picture printed - and it looked very different.

Edit: I just compared the picture on here with "my" version and the colours are wrong. So there must be an issue with IrfanView - Windows' Photo Gallery and pic-upload.de shows it exactly like it looks here.

Unfortunately I can't show how IrfanView displays them - but they are way warmer, with stronger and brighter reds and more "pop"
So this is how I see it:
slightly yellowish tint, with a hint of rose on the inner petals, greenish yellow on the inside and red parts which only show some pink tint on the bottom (base of the pistill?) and overall pretty bright.

This is my monitor: Toshiba 42 XV 635 D 42 Zoll / 107 cm, Full HD, 100 Hz: Amazon.de: Elektronik Doesn't exist on the U.S. page

[causey]

They look yellowish to me--pretty much fitting your description. But the hint of rose is just a hint of rose... a weak hint of rose. (I've just calibrated my e-IPS Dell, and I'm interested to know whether colors look good. Maybe we should create a special 'check your calibrated monitor' thread.)

[flyer]

Nobody can tell, since we have nothing to compare it to.

[David Glazebrook]

maybe consider shooting with a graycard.

[Egg Salad]

flyer, that's the reason I summarized my perception here. I know colours are pretty subjective but I tried to be accurate.

And no, a greycard wouldn't here here since it's not the WB that's the issue but the colours themselves.

My actual problem was that I thought my monitor's colours could be off but like my edit says it seems to be more of an issue with IrfanView or colour management in general than with my monitor.
If I open pictures in Windows' Photo Gallery it looks like the picture on here. So the question is now: Which program has the true colours?
If I compare my pictures in SilkyPix with IrfanView they are absolutely identical so for me that was the benchmark. And yet any other program I've tried displays them differently - and unpleasing to me - for this certain picture the yellow tones are more like green and the reds are dull.

[Parallax]

Do you have Irfanview set to use the embede color profile?

[causey]

I like Silkypix's colors--and I use SP for final processing. They seem 'fuller' (without being necessarily more saturated) than LR's colors.

The only point where my perception might differ from yours: the pink you mention on the base of the pistil. To me it looks more like a nuance of orange, I guess because of the general warmth of the picture.

[amoringello]

So many factors affect anyone being able to tell what is or isn't right.
As stated, without something to compare to and not knowing the exact environment under which the photo was taken, no one can judge correctness.

Also, there are other actors, especially on Windows. I had a situation where five separate program all displayed the SAME image file with five different sets of colors. None matched another.
MSIE, FireFox, IrfanView, PhotoShop and ACDSeePro. (I think even SilkyPix at the time actually had a sixth rendition of the colors). The image had the embedded profile and all programs that were color management aware were set for the proper settings.

I finally got everything sorted out. I moved to Macintosh. :-)

Honestly, it took weeks and consultations with half a dozen people to sort out most of my issues on Windows and still never got 100% consistency.

1. Make sure your applications are color managed aware...
I'm not sure if irfanView handles AdobeRGB properly, at least not 100%.
I know MSIE (as of version 7) is not 100%. (especially with AdobeRGB colorspace)
FireFox is 100%, but only if you turn on the super secret about:config settings.
Photoshop obviously is. If you have Photoshop, you should be matching against its display.
Windows, well, lets just say that if you want to view an image properly use a program designed to view the image properly.

Are your images saved with AdobeRGB or sRGB color space? Try saving your image with the color space converted to sRGB and see how it compares in irfanView. If it matches with the sRGB image then irfanView is not properly displaying images for the AdobeRGB colorspace. Viewing an AdobeRGB image with a viewer that only handles sRGB can cause images to appear brighter and with shifted colors, so I suspect this might be part of the problem.
If you take the photo using Adobe RGB and save as sRGB within PhotoShop, be sure you are 'Converting' to sRGB and not just 'Assigning' to sRGB.

Of course, even if all of your local applications view the image consistently, until you calibrate and profile your monitor you cannot be guaranteed that anyone else will see the same colors. So posting them for help may not be of much use when asking for correctness -- unless you are posting a color chart that is used for precisely the purpose of validating color matching.
Even with a profiled/calibrated monitor, there is no guarantee the image will view exactly the same on another machine with different hardware.

Anyway, worry about self-consistentcy first.
In PhotoShop be sure you are working in the correct color space. If your image is AdobeRGB set up photshop to work there. Or sRGB to match your images if they are sRGB.
I would suggest working with sRGB profiles in your images to start.
When your apps seem to match, then move on to AdobeRGB.
Make sure you know what applications handle AdobeRGB and if they support it fully.
If your'e only creating images for the web, or for printing at a lab, you should probably be using sRGB in your final images anyway.

[Egg Salad]

Parallax: I have no idea. I looked to find some settings concerning colour space but couldn't find anything. But even if I did this wouldn't explain why SilkyPix displays them exactly like IrfanView.

causey: I tried to be picky here - normally I would call this simply red - but I tried to be as accurate in my description as possible. So I'm not arguing if it's a hint of pink or orange.

amoringello: Long answer...thanks.
Yeah I know. But initially I thought it was a problem of the printer - now I know it's different programs' colour management/profiles.

I don't really want to solve this issue like you did - Macs aren't really game-friendly.

I don't know about IrfanView, either but I think since it's pretty "pro" it could display Adobe RGB correctly. Displaying Adobe RGB pictures in IrfanView seems to prove that point - colours look different with darker violets different green tone and overall less contrast. Which also proves my monitor can't display this broader colour space.

AFAIK I had Firefox set to display Adobe RGB correctly - but still colours look different on here - and I'm using FF (3.5).

I tried Photoshop for some time but I don't have it now.

Usually I save my images as sRGB JPEGs. When I want to print them I go for Adobe RGB - in this case to make sure no information gets lost I saved them as .png and .bmp without any colour space specified.

Are there colour chart templates? The problem is even if there were any the outcome would highly depend on my printer.
I think I'll just switch to B&W completely - this should solve all this.