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Photoshop Open/Save thumbnails oversaturated with Legacy Display ICC on wide-gamut monitor

Forum|Forum|15 hours ago
August 14, 2026
3 replies
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I am reporting a reproducible color-management issue in Photoshop on Windows 11 with calibrated wide-gamut monitors.

System:
• Two ASUS ProArt PA279CRV wide-gamut monitors in Native Mode
• Each monitor has its own Calibrite-generated ICC profile assigned as the default profile in Windows Color Management > Devices
• Windows Automatically manage color for apps (ACM): ON
• Windows Color Management > Advanced > Device profile: System default (sRGB IEC61966-2.1)

Problem:
With Windows Compatibility > “Use legacy display ICC color management” enabled for Photoshop, thumbnails in Photoshop’s File > Open and File > Save As dialogs are significantly oversaturated.

The actual Photoshop document displays correctly. Bridge, Luminar Neo, Windows/File Explorer, and uploaded images viewed online also display correctly.

The same image thumbnails displayed in Windows File Explorer and in a File > Open dialog launched from Notepad look normal.

Reproduction tests:

Legacy Display ICC ON + ProArt Native Mode = Photoshop Open/Save thumbnails oversaturated.
Legacy Display ICC OFF = Photoshop Open/Save thumbnails return to normal.
Legacy Display ICC ON + monitor switched temporarily to hardware sRGB Mode = thumbnails return to normal.
Return monitor to Native Mode = thumbnails become oversaturated again.

I also tested wide-gamut rendering in Photoshop using an Adobe RGB (1998) document filled with RGB 0,255,0. With ACM ON and Legacy ICC OFF, the green was visibly less saturated. With Legacy ICC ON, the green became clearly more vivid, indicating that Legacy ICC is necessary in this configuration to retain the wider display gamut in Photoshop.

Therefore, disabling Legacy ICC is not an acceptable workaround.

This appears to indicate that the Windows Open/Save thumbnail surface used by Photoshop is not receiving the same appropriate color-management transform as the Photoshop document canvas when Photoshop is running with Legacy Display ICC enabled on a wide-gamut display.

Expected behavior: Photoshop Open/Save thumbnails should display with correct color while Legacy Display ICC remains enabled.

Please confirm whether this is a known issue and whether there is a workaround that preserves full wide-gamut Photoshop display while correctly color-managing the Open/Save thumbnails.

D Fosse

Community Expert

OK, whatever works.

My point is that for any “traditional” SDR monitor, whether it’s wide gamut or not, Windows auto color management is a solution in search of a problem. Color management and display profiling on Windows has worked perfectly and reliably at least since Windows 2000 and xp when I started, precisely because the model is so simple: Windows makes the display profile available to the application, which then uses it to do the actual profile conversion.

If an application doesn’t support color management, like Windows Explorer, just don’t use it. Find something else, or ignore the oversaturation. It has never bothered me.

HDR displays obviously complicate things, so maybe it’s needed there, I don’t have that and don’t know.

D Fosse

Community Expert

I keep Windows auto color management off, it’s been known to cause problems. You don’t need it; display color management is fully handled between Photoshop and your profiling software. You don’t need an extra layer here complicating things.

Photoshop converts to your custom display profile on the fly, as you work, and these converted numbers are sent to the display. That’s all that is needed.

Open and Save dialogs are Windows Explorer functions, called by Photoshop. Windows Explorer is normally not color managed, so oversaturation is expected on a wide gamut monitor. Windows Photos, however, is fully color managed and will display correctly and identically to Photoshop.

It’s possible that Windows auto color management affects Windows Explorer (and other non-color managed apps) and tries to impose an extra layer of color management. I haven’t tested that. To me that’s not worth the extra complication. I need Photoshop to display correctly, and I don’t really care about Explorer.

B

bill wakeleyAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thanks, that makes sense. I did test ACM off with Legacy ICC off, and Photoshop/Bridge looked correct, but web images became oversaturated on my wide-gamut monitor. With ACM on and Legacy ICC enabled for Photoshop, Photoshop, Bridge, web images, all match. So for now I’m sticking with the setup that gives me consistency everywhere.

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