Lightroom exports too dark and contrasty when uploading to Instagram and Facebook after calibration? Here's the fix.

This is a problem that irritated me for years. It didn’t matter whether it was on a Mac or PC, the issue was the same.

Basically, when you calibrate an sRGB profile for your monitor using a Spyder calibration device and proceed to edit a photo in Adobe Lightroom, upon export everything would appear fine until uploading to the web.

Upon uploading to Instagram and/or Facebook, the black shadows would become crushed and too contrasty. I did initially abandon the Spyder calibration approach, but I have now finally come up with an appropriate solution where I can maintain all of the colour calibrations across devices and add a simple tweak to an image prior to upload online.

It’s basically an issue with the gamma curve of sRGB being stripped when uploading online and being replaced with a linear gamma 2.2 curve. The video below explains the issue and how to resolve it whilst maintaining a professional colour-calibrated environment.