Color management problems MacOS Mojave 10.14.4

Question

I am using a BenQ SW320 display on a Mac Pro. I recently updated my OS to 10.14.4 from 10.14.3, then updated my Adobe apps to the current versions. Later, in an attempt to solve this problem I updated Pallet Master (BenQ dedicated calibration software) to 1.3.3.

Upon launch, Photoshop (CC 2019 20.0.4) says the "display profile appears to be defective”. If I tell it to use it anyway the image displays correctly.

I do not get that message using Lightroom (Classic CC 8.2.1) or Adobe Camera Raw but the color and contrast are very wrong.

Capture One v11 runs and displays normally. CameraBag RAW runs and displays normally. Apple Photos displays and runs normally. Iridient Developer 3.1.1 displays and functions normally.

I have run ColorSync Utility on my profiles. It says there are some issues with unsupported characters in the name, which it says it corrected.

I recalibrated eliminating any potentially unsupported characters. I have recalibrated numerous times trying large and small patch sets, and producing version 4 and version 2 profiles, all with the same results.

If I select a profile made with other software Lr displays more or less correctly. This is a new problem since updating the OS and Adobe apps. I updated the calibration software in the hope that it would solve this problem, but obviously it didn’t.

Any ideas?

D Fosse · Accepted Answer

Thanks for checking it. That is indeed the behavior I have been seeing on my Mac.

This display is a 32 inch, 4k, large gamut display and has been a pleasure to work with until this problem arose. I'm certain it is not as uniform or consistent as the Eizo, but then it cost about 1/3 as much as the 32 inch Eizo and less than half the cost of the NEC. It has 10 bit internal LUTs set by the cal software, and the difference between that and having it all happen in the 8 bit video card is significant.

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Mark+Muse wrote

It has 10 bit internal LUTs set by the cal software, and the difference between that and having it all happen in the 8 bit video card is significant.

Oh, absolutely, it's a different world.

BenQ really need to sort this out. In the meantime, you need workarounds. As long as the calibration part works, and it's correctly loaded to the monitor LUT, you can leave that and stop using the software for now. The calibration will remain.

Then you can use other software to build the actual profile. What you need then is software that can be set to profile only and not calibrate. I think DisplayCal can be set to do this. It's a free download, and by all accounts well regarded.

The downside to this is that you can't easily recalibrate/reprofile. You'll need to do the whole procedure again. And you can't easily switch target and associated profile. But as a workaround, it'll work.

DisplayCAL—Open Source Display Calibration and Characterization powered by ArgyllCMS

D Fosse · Answer

You need to use wetransfer, dropbox or similar. Send to yourself and post the link here. The forum doesn't accept attachments for security reasons.

I'm not equipped to analyze icc profiles, but it does sound like the profile is not written to spec. I'm not familiar with the BenQ software, but judging by some previous posts here it has been buggy and unreliable. BenQ is pretty new to this market segment and they'll probably figure it out by and by.

One thing you can do is make sure your profiles are version 2 and matrix-based - not version 4 and/or table (LUT)-based. The latter two are known to be problematic in some scenarios. (If you don't see these options in the software it's probably hardcoded to v2 and matrix).

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