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Help me out please! Colors seem to show wrong after monitor calibration?

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
May 6, 2019
3 replies
4864 views

Hi folks,

maybe somone with more knowledge when it comes to color management is able to help me out. I'd appreciate it a lot as I have been struggling to find correct answers on the web lately. Without much effort to be honest 😕😕 If someone could lead me to the right direction, I'd clearly make some kind of tutorial to help people out who have

been struggling as well. Now here's my problem:

I am trying to get consistent colors (and color values) in my Adobe CC programs after having calibrated my Eizo CS240 (Wide-Gamut-Monitor) with a colorimeter from

Eizo (Eizo/Spyder EX2). Something seems to be clearly wrong and I am trying hard to get consistent results.

First of all, I want to point out that when using sRGB as my default monitor profile in Windows 10, colors and color values seem to show right. I'll show you some screenshots first so you hopefully understand what I mean (I have my OS set to German language so I hope you still understand what I mean):

1. "Farbprofil" == display profile for monitor

(set to sRGB profile)

When set to sRGB (which would most likely not make a lot of sense in a color managed environment because it would propably limit a wide-gamut-monitor to sRGB I guess), everything plays out normal in the rest of Adobe programs. I have attached a screenshot of Illustrator showing what I mean:

I got this square which I colored red with values RGB = 62/27/38 and HEX = #3e1b26.

Inside Illustrator the two colors visually match (the colored square and the displayed color inside the color picker).

In addition to that, not only do the colors visually match, but the color values are matching up as well.

I have used another external color picker (YS Instant Color Picker) to show you what I mean:

So far, so good it seems. All colors do visually match and the color values do match as well between a) the colored square, b) the displayed color inside Illustrator's color picker and c) the displayed color inside the external color picker.

PLEASE remember that all this happens when seen on my CS240 Eizo Monitor (wide-gamut) when set to sRGB in the display settings of the OS.

NOW HERE COMES THE PROBLEM:

When I now close all applications which use color management (like Adobe programs for example), then set my display color settings to a profiled one (instead of using sRGB like in the first screenshot I am now switching to Eizo CUSTOM profile which was the standard setting when the monitor was shipped) and reopen my Adobe programs, I am now getting the following problem:

Now that I am using my calibrated and profiled color profile for my OS, Illustrator keeps showing me the right color inside the color picker but a wrong color

on-screen (the colored square which should be the exact same color). When inspected with the external color picker you can clearly see that not only does the visual appearance inside Illustrator differ from one color to another, but that the RGB values also no longer match:

1. color shown when inspecting color inside Illustrator's color picker (expected and intended values):

2. color shown when inspecting the actual colored square inside Illustrator ("washed out" representation when compared to color above):

Now I really don't quite understand what is going wrong here... I can no longer say which sRGB representation is the "right"...

What strikes me as especially strange is that even inside Illustrator colors no longer match up. I would have expected colors showing

wrong or different when using color-managed applications VS. non-color-managed applications BUT to get different color representations

inside the SAME color-managed application is utterly strange I think.

PLEASE SOMEONE HELP ME OUT. THIS TOPIC HAS TAKEN TOO MUCH TIME ALREADY TO GET THE GRASP OF AND I NEED HELP FROM SOMEONE

WHO CAN TELL ME WHAT EXACTLY S GOING WRONG HERE AND WHY. ANY HELP IS HIGHLY APPRECIATED

THX IN ADVANCE GUYS AND GIRLS

This topic has been closed for replies.

D Fosse

Community Expert

I'd just like to sum up what everybody here is saying.

The distinction between web and print is a false one. It's the wrong question to ask. There is no reason to treat them as separate entities.

If you have a properly color managed environment everything will display correctly, whatever the color space, whatever the destination and intended use. Web is no special case, it's like any other output.

There is no reason to restrict the monitor gamut for web work, any more than you need to restrict it for any other output. The monitor color space doesn't need to match anything else, it can be whatever it wants to - as long as you're using software that remaps the data into that color space. That's the key to the whole thing. Use color managed software, end of story.

---

One more thing: marketing has created this dichotomy between standard and wide gamut monitors. It isn't real! There is in fact nothing special about so-called wide gamut monitors. All monitors are different, and some are just a little more different. But for marketing reasons they have been lumped into these two camps, as if a monitor had to be one of those two. You could make a "medium gamut" monitor of any shade, and it would work just as well.

A standard gamut monitor requires color management too, if you want it to reproduce correctly. Most of them just happen to be close enough to sRGB for most people not to object too much to what they see, when it's fed sRGB data. But no monitor is ever made that reproduces sRGB correctly all by itself.

D Fosse

Community Expert

kain, can you please keep this in one thread? Having this spread over three separate threads is completely impossible to keep track of.

Please state which of these three threads we should respond to.

kain19406534Author

Participating Frequently

Hi D Fosse,

i am sorry, I am new to making forum posts. I would appreciate it if we could use this new thread if that is ok with you, as I think some problems I am encountering are differing from the other posts.

Thank you!

rob day

Community Expert

The problem with your testing is the color picker app is not color managed.

The Adobe apps use Lab as an intermediate, device independent color space to make the translation into your monitor‘s RGB profile, which is created by the hardware calibrator. So sRGB wouldn‘t likely be an accurate profile of your display, and using it would defeat the purpose of hardware calibration and monitor profile creation.

With Adobe apps the conversion for display goes from your editing space to Lab to the monitor profile—it might be AdobeRGB>Lab>MonitorRGB RGB, or sRGB>Lab>Monitor RGB, or US Web Coated SWOP CMYK>Lab>Monitor RGB etc. Your color picker app can’t deal with different editing and display RGB color spaces—it’s assuming there is a single RGB space.

kain19406534Author

Participating Frequently

Hi,

thanks for the fast reply!

Now I get what you mean. I have contacted the customer staff at Eizo and he also replied saying that my external color picker app might not account for being color-managed.

STILL, how is it possible that the colors displayed inside Illustrator differ from one another?

(colored quad VS. the color shown in Illustrator's color picker)?

I would highly assume these two should be the same visually if viewed in the same program (Illustrator)?

Thanks for every advice in advance!

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