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Skiesmdb
Known Participant
October 17, 2026
Open for Voting

Quick PNG export color shift

If I choose “Quick export as PNG” the colors SHIFT depending on the Windows color profile, which is a custom calibration profile!

What…. huh… Nooooooooooo…… In WHICH universe is this what should happen…...

After testing I can confirm that good'ol "Save For Web" does NOT do this. We're in the middle of a project and this will be dozens of hours of extra work.


And then some.. In this forum, I click "describe your bug" to edit the title AND THE POST VANISHES AND I HAVE TO TYPE IT ALL AGAIN.

😭

    6 replies

    D Fosse
    Community Expert
    D FosseCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 17, 2026

    Quick Export does not support embedding the icc profile. There’s no way to get an embedded profile. You can convert to sRGB, but there’s no help in that when the profile itself is missing.

    In other words, there’s no way to get accurate and consistent color using Quick Export. Because of this shortcoming I never use it.

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    SkiesmdbAuthor
    Known Participant
    October 18, 2026

    So as JEL pointed out in the reply, in edit>Preferences there are settings for quick export, including color profile embedding. I disabled it now because I don't want PNG’s to have color profiles anyway.

    But the bug is in the “convert to sRGB” which gives different colors depending on the windows color profile settings, which is a huge problem if you’ve calibrated your screen, and thus have a custom color profile running.

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    D Fosse
    Community Expert
    D FosseCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 18, 2026

    ​@Skiesmdb 

    No, there is no setting to embed the profile in Quick Export, and that’s the problem.

     

    Without an embedded profile, colors are undefined. They are not “wrong”, the numbers are what they are; they are just undefined and can mean anything at all, depending on whatever the display’s native color space is, and whether any special policies are set in the viewing application.

    The profile takes all of those factors out of the equation and defines the numbers as actual specific colors. Windows has nothing to do with this.

    Convert to sRGB works as it should. But again, there’s no help in that if the profile isn’t there.

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    J E L
    Community Expert
    J E LCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 17, 2026

    Hi ​@Skiesmdb, I’m not seeing a shift in color from PSD to PNG using Quick Export. I didn’t test any other formats though. Do you have “Convert to sRGB” checked in Preferences? (Windows 11 Pro; Photoshop 27.11 Release)
     

     

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    SkiesmdbAuthor
    Known Participant
    October 17, 2026

    Thank you 😉

    The fact that the export colors change based on the windows color profile is something that should never happen regardless any other settings. Same file, same sRGB profile, different colors depending on the selected Windows color profile…

    Edit: Quick export was set to not include a color profile. I’ll take a look at the other settings now.

    Edit 2: Convert to sRGB was on, even though it was already sRGB so that should not make a different export. Yet it does. It’s like it takes a screen capture instead of exporting the actual image. Conclusion: Horrific eye-watering bug 😭

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