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Question

Color Management Issue Photoshop

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
January 8, 2024
2 replies
5334 views

I have a very peculiar color managment issue I thought might be intersting to discuss, I am thankful for all the intel I may get.

I recently calibrated my monitors, a BenQ SW270C and A BenQ 2700 with my SpyderX5.

Afterwards the display of the same image in different applications was varied.

Whilst my Adobe RGB Masterfiles looked flat in Photoshop their sRGB Files (no color manegment saved) looked as saturated as they where supposed to in PS and Firefox. In Chrome I had to force the monitor profile to make them appear as intended. However I was bummed out by the fact that there was a difference between the master file and the saved sRGB export which never had been distinguishable before I did the monitor calibration.

To wipe the slate clean I simply deleted the monitor profiles. Now the problems have sort of reversed. Without the monitor profile Photoshop seems to oversaturate my sRGB export files whilst the Windows Preview, Firefox and Chrome show the image the same and alike what Photoshop shows my masterfiles to look like. Interestingly enough, when I export one of my masterfiles into sRGB and then open the file in photoshop the colors again look oversatureated. I wonder how to fix this so that at least all the files look the same again for starters.

Slowly, I am starting to confuse what the files are supposed to look like in the first place.

Oh, I use PS 25.0.0 and Win10.

Windows

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c.pfaffenbichler

Community Expert

Just to make sure: What are the Edit > Color Settings?

Nicolas Alexander OttoAuthor

Known Participant

Here you go, I think this is the correct managment for editing in Adobe RGB on Wide Gamut Screen and then export in sRGB later.

davescm

Community Expert

Change RGB to 'Preserve embedded profiles' and check Missing Profiles 'Ask when opening' that way you will get a warning if you download an image from your website with no profile embedded.

That does not change any of the advice given earlier though

Dave

D Fosse

Community Expert

I suspect the Adobe RGB file displayed in Photoshop, which you describe as "flat", is in fact the correct representation.

Everything else can be explained by missing color management on a wide gamut monitor which the SW270 is.

On a wide gamut monitor without color management, sRGB will be oversaturated. That part is normal. It's also normal that the same thing happens if you delete you monitor profile, because it then gets replaced by sRGB. That's the wrong profile for that monitor. Same result.

Never, ever, save a file without an embedded profile. Never.

But that's what you did. In that case Firefox will, at default settings, display without any color management at all - oversaturated.

To sum up: when you have a wide gamut monitor, you must have full color management at all times. You must embed the profile, you must have a valid and correct monitor profile - and you can only use applications that have full color management support. That's the long and short of it.

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(At first I thought this was the usual buggy BenQ software - because it is, and has been for a long time, unless they've fixed it recently. There's been a flood of reports of problems with the BenQ software over many years. I've also noticed that Spyders have a somewhat poor reputation, but I'm not so sure about the validity of that. I take that with a grain of salt. I don't have any direct experience with either.

Anyway, when I read closer, it occurred to me that this all sounds like expected behavior. You just mistakenly assume that the oversaturated version is how it should be. But I don't think so.)

Nicolas Alexander OttoAuthor

Known Participant

"On a wide gamut monitor without color management, sRGB will be oversaturated. That part is normal. It's also normal that the same thing happens if you delete you monitor profile, because it then gets replaced by sRGB. That's the wrong profile for that monitor. Same result."

Well, both monitors are currently set to Adobe RGB. And other than Photoshop the sRGB Files look correct now (or at least like the Adobe RGB Files does in PS), which puzzles me.

"Never, ever, save a file without an embedded profile. Never."

I remeber doing that because if I did not all apps and browsers would display the colors differently compared to my Photoshop Masterfile or the sRGB in PS - my assumption was because they don't have the monitorprofile I used to edit it, so they look different in say Instagram.

"But that's what you did. In that case Firefox will, at default settings, display without any color management at all - oversaturated."

Currently, after deleting the profiles the color display of Firefox does match the Adobe RGB masterfile, which is also something that really puzzles me.

"To sum up: when you have a wide gamut monitor, you must have full color management at all times. You must embed the profile, you must have a valid and correct monitor profile - and you can only use applications that have full color management support. That's the long and short of it."

Well, before I re-calibrated my monitor (I simply let it slide for half a year) everything worked just fine the way I rolled. Meaning using monitor profiles editing in Adobe and outputting in "Internet Strandard sRGB" via "save for web" without color managment - as previously mentioned when compared to my phone or even my latop the colors looked alike without color managment but with the colormanagment selecting "Screen Colors" it looked odd and washed out.

"(At first I thought this was the usual buggy BenQ software - because it is, and has been for a long time, unless they've fixed it recently. There's been a flood of reports of problems with the BenQ software over many years. I've also noticed that Spyders have a somewhat poor reputation, but I'm not so sure about the validity of that. I take that with a grain of salt. I don't have any direct experience with either.

Anyway, when I read closer, it occurred to me that this all sounds like expected behavior. You just mistakenly assume that the oversaturated version is how it should be. But I don't think so.)"

Yeah the problem is that at this point I don't really know what it is supposed to look like. I try to make it look like the files do on my other display devices like my phone essentially because I figured I never complained about colors there so yeah.

Now my question is what to do. I will recalibrate my screens again I guess and see what happenes. Because as it is now it's really weird and I woulnd't know what to rely on.

D Fosse

Community Expert

Wow, now that I take a look at the images, the oversaturated Image in the export dialogue looks like what I see in Photoshop and the others look way desaturated in comparison to the screenshots of PS. Either I am loosing it completely now, or the snipping tool does something weird with the colors as well. Maybe it is simply not the correct way to illustrate something as subjective as color perception. My question remains though. Since FF and Chrome are calibrated and PS is the correct source everything should look this same, right?

1. Firefox (and probably most other browsers) doesn't have multi-monitor support. It will use the profile for the primary display regardless of what display it's actually sitting on. This in contrast to e.g. Photoshop which will use profiles separately for each screen.

2. A screenshot is not in the original document color space! It has already been converted into your monitor profile, and those converted numbers are sent to screen and recorded in the screenshot.

This means that for a screenshot, you need to first assign your monitor profile, then convert to a standard color space like sRGB. Then they will match perfectly.

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