Color is different when exported from Lightroom to other applications

Question

I am trying to solve an issue I have had with Lightroom for some time - images exported from Lightroom look darker and more contrasty when viewed in other apps or web browsers - i.e Chrome, Edge, Firefox, DaVinci Resolve, One note.... I am exporting as sRGB and embedding profiles. I have also tried export as Adobe RGB with the same results.

There is something wrong with the way Lighroom and Photoshop are handling colors - if I export from Lightroom to my Photoshelter account, the image looks dark when viewing in Chrome. However, if I download the uploaded image from Photoshelter and open it in Photoshop it looks like it did in Lightroom, normal. I have two high end calibrated monitors and are running a newish window desktop. I still get the same results previewing on a Macbook Pro.

I am tempted to try Affinity photo to see if I get the same result, and perhaps switch my entire workflow away from Adobe. But I'm stumped as to why the adobe apps seem to be handling colour differently to other apps and browsers.

I have attached a screenshot that shows the exported image in a browser next to the image as it appears in Lightroom. Any help much appreciated.

D Fosse · Answer

One thing needs to be ruled out first, since you say you have two monitors: None of those web browsers have multi-monitor support. They will use the monitor profile for your main display, even if the application is on the secondary display. And that will be wrong and it will display incorrectly.

Photoshop and Lightroom, OTOH, will use the appropriate profile for each display. But they have no control over the profiles as such - they just use whatever profiles they get from the operating system.

Generally, if a color managed application displays incorrectly, it's usually a monitor profile problem. The profile may be bad or inaccurate, or it may be the wrong profile. If the profile is good, the data are converted from the document profile into the monitor profile, and it will be correctly represented on screen. There is, in fact, nothing Photoshop or Lightroom can do to prevent correct display.

Are those monitors BenQ by any chance? BenQ's calibration/profiling software is known to be very buggy and unreliable, and the most common symptom is that the profile simply isn't loading correctly. You wouldn't be the first.

If not, what calibrator are you using?

The point I'm trying to make is that this is usually down to factors outside the application, i.e. the monitor profile (or the video driver).

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