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Chillstice
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May 20, 2019
Question

Insane Color Management Issues Photoshop CC + DisplayCal

  • May 20, 2019
  • 12 replies
  • 4211 views

I've been researching this for tens of hours, but something is severely wrong.

Goal

My ultimate goal is to have calibrated and consistent colors across all hardware and software on my Windows 10 machine. This includes a calibrated monitor using an i1 Display Pro + DisplayCal, correct color management in Photoshop, and all images should appear with correct colors across Windows, browsers, and Photoshop. I don't want the situation where an image imported into Photoshop doesn't look anywhere remotely near the original or an image exported from Photoshop doesn't look anywhere remotely near the preview.

Alas, these are the issues I've been having.

Specs & Versions

Windows 10 Pro 64-bit 10.0.17763

Adobe Creative Cloud 4.8.1.435

Adobe Photoshop CC 20.0.4

DisplayCal 3.8.1

ArgyllCMS 2.1.1

i1 Display Pro

ImageGlass 6.0.12.29 (Color-Managed Image Viewer)

QuickLook 3.6.4 (Another Color-Managed Image Viewer)

Firefox Nightly 64-bit 68.0a1

Google Chrome Canary 76.0.3799.0

Monitor Profile: VG248 #1 2019-05-19 18-16 D7500 2.2 VF-S XYZLUT+MTX.icm

Symptoms

I've been having various issues with color in PS for a while now, but now I've identified that it's not because of the way I'm viewing the images or the way my monitor is calibrated. It has to be something with PS.

Sometimes opening images or PS documents yields a document preview that looks awful and doesn't represent the original file at all. Other times the preview is perfect, but the exported file doesn't represent the preview in PS at all. I can't seem to find a combination that keeps the colors correct and consistent.

I've conducted a few practical tests and listed the results below. I created a standard rainbow gradient on a new 1000x1000px RGB file, compared the preview to a reference, and compared the exported PNG to the preview. Restarting PS after changing settings.

RGB Working SpacePS Preview
Exported File
Export Size
sRGB IEC61966-2.1Awful preview (Not accurate)Correct Colors (accurate)Small file size
Monitor ProfilePerfect Preview (Accurate)Totally Wrong Colors (How?)Huge file size from embedded profile

Screenshots

Here are my Color Settings for the most part. I've been playing around with different Working Spaces and RGB Policies. I would like to keep everything else.

Here are the Color Management settings in Windows. I'm letting the DisplayCal app load the profile automatically.

The monitor profile is recognized in Photoshop

Color-Managed Viewers

Both ImageGlass and QuickLook are color-managed and load embedded color profiles. I tested this with the WhackedRGB test images. Also - to a lesser degree - both Firefox and Chrome can load color profiles embedded in images, but images with missing profiles can still be problematic. The stock image-viewer in Windows is NOT color-managed.

Things I've tried

  • Restarted
  • Re-calibrated display using DisplayCal
  • Dumping profile, embedding, and converting profiles with varying degrees of failure
  • Re-installed PS
  • Changed some settings in DisplayCal
  • Using the Proof Colors with the Proof Setup on Monitor RGB fixes the wonky preview with the sRGB Working Space; however, this is not a permanent solution.

What it could be

I have a feeling that DisplayCal or Argyll updated in such a way that PS can't automatically load the display profile and display a proper preview. Or perhaps PS is having a hard time with the .icm file compared to a regular .icc?

Being able to import, preview, and export images with consistent and accurate colors in Photoshop must be possible. Something must be broken here and I don't know exactly what. If you have any suggestions for things you'd like me to try, I'll be watching this thread. Don't hesitate to ask if you need any more information either.

Many other people have run into issues similar to this with varying effectiveness of solutions. Let's get this solved for good.

This topic has been closed for replies.

12 replies

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davescm
Community Expert
davescmCommunity Expert
Community Expert
May 20, 2019

Hi

Your assumption seems to be that Phoshop colour management is broken. It isn't.

There are three stages to correct colour in Photoshop.

1. Ensuring that your document uses a document profile:

Looking at the screenshot of your colour settings looks fine and shows that you will use sRGB for new documents and use whatever profile is embedded for opening documents.

2. Calibrating and Profiling your monitor

There are two steps in monitor set ups, both addressed by teh profiling software. The first calibrates the monitor by setting the white points, black points and loading a LUT onto the video card. The second is profiling, which is used by colour managed software to describe that calibrated monitor. The calibration data for loading the LUT can be held separately or is more commonly built into the profile file so that it is used by the system.

So on startup the system (or a small loading application in startup) has to take the calibration data and load it into the LUT, then the system is set to use the profile whenever colour managed software is using it. Your screenshots  are not showing the monitor profile section of Windows calibration so I can't see what you have as your Windows default. It should be your monitor profile.

3. Embed the profiles when saving - this is the default on saving but not on Export - so you need to check it in the export dialogue.

Dave

T
Test Screen Name
Legend
May 20, 2019

"My ultimate goal is to have calibrated and consistent colors across all hardware and software on my Windows 10 machine. "

Well, that's an impossible goal. Most Windows apps are not colour managed.

A realistic goal is

1. Calibrated and consistent colour across all colour managed apps.

2. Subject to the monitor in use, acceptable colour in other apps.

To achieve this is simple

1 (a) calibrate the monitor

(b) use the good calibrated monitor profile for the monitor

(c) use display profiles consistently, and embed as appropriate.

2 (a) don't use a wide gamut monitor

(b) use sRGB as the space for saving all graphics to be used on non-colour managed apps (it doesn't have to be your working space)

(c) embed that profile

(d) fix or avoid the apps which do half hearted colour management (that is, they neither ignore it nor do it right, eg FireFox by default in Windows).

It's easy to waste endless time on this trying to follow advice on the internet, as so much of it is completely wrong and contradictory. Among the traps you have been lured into: NEVER use a monitor profile as a working space or embedded profile. It can give the illusion of solving things, but more worms keep appearing. Any site giving this advice is not to be trusted for a second, because they know no-thing.

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