825093 - 8 bit colors are corrupted when pasted into v17 emails

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 816530

(Thunderbird :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[John_Ha]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/17.0
Build ID: 20121128204232

Steps to reproduce:

When I paste an 8 bit image into a v17 email I am composing the colors are corrupted.

Reinstall a new instance of TB v17, create a new Test profile, and start TB in Safe Mode.  See attachments above for copies of all files mentioned
1  Create a red image using Irfanview and store the image as "1 red as 24 bit PNG.png"  This is a 24 bit file.  
2  Open "1 red as 24 bit PNG.png" in Irfanview and reduce the color depth to 256 colors (ie 8 bit).  Store the image as "2 red as 8 bit PNG.png"
3  Open "1 red as 24 bit PNG.png" in IrfanView and save file in GIF format (GIF only uses 8 bits so the image is reduced in colors during the save process) as "3 red as 8 bit GFI.gif".
All images appear as expected when viewed in IrfanView, Paint or any other image viewer.
4  Compose an email.  Open "1 red as 24 bit PNG.png" in Irfanview and Edit > Copy to copy it to the clipboard.  Paste the clipboard into the email with ctrl/v.  The image appears red as expected
5  Open "2 red as 8 bit PNG.png" in IrfanView and Edit > Copy to copy it to the clipboard.  Paste the clipboard into the email with ctrl/v.  The image appears black.  This is wrong.
6  Open "3 red as 8 bit GFI.gif" in IrfanView and Edit > Copy to copy it to the clipboard.  Paste the clipboard into the email with ctrl/v.  The image appears black.  This is wrong.
7  Repeat, but this time insert the three images with Insert > Image and navigate to select the respeciive files.  All 3 images appear correctly in the email.
8  Create an image in Irfanview with many colors and save it as "4 many colors 24 bit PNG.png" file.  Copy and paste the image into TB - it appears correctly.
9  Keeping IrfanView open, now reduce the color depth to 8 bits/256 colors in IrfanView, copy the image, and paste it ctrl/v into the email.  The colors are badly corrupted.  Save the IrfanView image as "5 many colors 8 bit PNG.png".  
Note that when copying an image in IrfanView above I am presumably copying a memory map of the pixels, and not copying the actual file, so the difference between the file formats should be irrelevant.  
10  Repeat the tests on my laptop - the problem does NOT appear.  I have attached Message sources for the emails from deskside (problem) and laptop (no problem) to assist diagnosis.  
11 Setting gfx.color_management.mode to 0 in the Config Editor has no effect - I still get the problem.
12  This problem suddenly appeared when I upgraded to v17.  I have been pasting 8 bit images into previous versions of TB for many years without problems.

See also http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=2622923 with images of problem and Comment 14-17 in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=817333 


Actual results:

When I paste an 8 bit image into an email being composed at the cursor position with ctrl/v, the image appears with corrupted colors.
When I insert the same image with Insert > Image, the image appears correctly 


Expected results:

The image should appear correctly when pasted with ctrl/v

Comment 1

[John_Ha]

Attachment: 24 bit gif file - pastes correctly

Comment 2

[John_Ha]

Attachment: 2 red as 8 bit png.PNG - pastes as black

Comment 3

[John_Ha]

Attachment: 3 red as 8 bit GIF - pastes as black

Comment 4

[John_Ha]

Attachment: Showing problem in Deskside PC

Comment 5

[John_Ha]

Attachment: Message source for deskside problem email

Comment 6

[John_Ha]

Attachment: Problem does NOT happen in laptop

Comment 7

[John_Ha]

Attachment: Message source for laptop to enable comparison to be made

Comment 8

[John_Ha]

Attachment: 4 many colors 24 bit PNG - image with many colors

Comment 9

[John_Ha]

Attachment: email showing many colors comparison

Comment 10

[John_Ha]

(In reply to John_Ha from comment #1)
> Created attachment 696161 [details]
> 24 bit gif file - pastes correctly

That should of course read "1 red as 24 bit PNG.png" file pastes correctly.  It is a 24 bit PNG file, not a GIF file - sorry.

Comment 11

[Karl Tomlinson (:karlt)]

Thanks.  This is probably bug 816530.

Comment 12

[John_Ha]

Karl
Thank you.  I searched for bug reports before filing but missed that one - sorry.

Additional points in case someone looks here as well.

1  TB was backlevel on the laptop which is why it worked OK - once TB was v17 it had the the problem.

2  Copying from IrfanView 4.35 gives the problem.

3  Copying from GIMP 2.8.2 or Faststone Image Viewer 4.6 works OK with "3 red as 8 bit GFI.gif" and "4 many colors 24 bit PNG.png" reduced to 256 colors.

Strangely, even so, I don't think it is a problem with IrfanView because it worked OK before v17.