Photoshop Not Accessing the correct Monitor Profile

I just came to this thread, a year on. It's the first coherent explanation I found, apart from unnecessary some noise about not setting your monitor's color space as your working space (!) For anybody else who happens to stumble here by search ......

I was having this issue on a Windows 10 laptop with an external monitor, and by extension, the same question with my Mac laptop and its (own, different) external monitor. I was having trouble confirming that the correct profile was being applied to the external monitors. (On which Photoshop is used on both machines)

First off - it turns out that Windows does not apply the monitor profile to the desktop background. Mac does. So, you can see the colors change right on the (likely) grey background as you click on different profiles on the Mac but not on the Windows machine. Ouch.

Then, in Photoshop, Color settings > Working Space > and the RGB pulldown, there's a (read-only, I-presume) listing for the monitor profile for the primary monitor. Doesn't matter what monitor you have the Photoshop window on, it shows the selected profile for the primary one. Ouch again.

Yes, as stated in this thread, Photoshop does appear to use the right profile for whatever monitor Photoshop's window appears on. And, yes, if you set a crazy profile for one monitor and drag the Photoshop window from one monitor to the other, you will see the colors change as you cross the midpoint of the window. In my Mac's case, dragging the image back to the monitor from whence it came yielded posterized colors. Closing the image and reopening it fixed matters.

So, once you have confirmed via the operating system that the right profile is set for each monitor and satisfied yourself via crazy-color-dragging that Photoshop is correctly understanding which on which monitor its window sits, you should be able to be confident that you have things set right.

Phew. What a bunch of unnecessary wounds inflicted by Adobe and the !@#$%^&* operating system manufacturers! 

Setting the display gamut to "native" is definitely the right approach. As long as the calibration software works right, in this case maybe it does. "knowing"your screen is "right"is hard to do, its easy to se its wrong in many cases as it'll be way off but how to tell its right? You need an unequivocal reference - an ISO standard proof is ideal.

se http://www.colourmanagement.net/products/icc-profile-verification-kit

There's no good reason to try emulate Adobe RGB, it may only be offered there for marketing purposes.

Native should allow the entire display capability to be used and it'll be calibrated and profiled as such. 

I hope this helps

thanks

neil barstow, colourmanagement.net

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I posted this in a similar thread but I figured I'd share here too.

I have had this same issue and I think I have found a solution not previously mentioned 

Background:

I have a desktop Mac, BenQ2700pt and a i1 profiler. I had this same problem recently with the lightroom develop module (basically ACR) looking oversaturated relative to the print module. Disabling the graphics accelrator fixed it.

I now have the problem in Photoshop going between the regular PS window and ACR (camera raw filter). The ACR image is way oversaturated and high in contrast.

I tried everything. Uninstalling and reinstalling PS (including older versions). I did the same with palette master elements. Nothing worked. I checked all the settings mentioned in these forums. I found that switching the BenQ monitor profile to the Adobe RGB profile got rid of the problem, but of course I want to use my caliberated profiles. 

The solution: I caliberated my monitor using Palette master elements, but I switched the RGB primaries from adobe RGB to panel native. This solved the issue.

I'm a complete novice at this and discovering this was essentially a wild-ass guess. I really don't know what "panel native" means. It may very well mean that with this profile I'm not getting the full color display (i.e. 99% adobe RGB). Anyone have any insight as to why this solution may have worked and what exactly i've done to my monitor with this profile? I did notice that the delta-E was higher across the board (but still less than 4) on the validation report...for what that's worth.

Hi

this can be frustrating, and it IS important to know that Photoshop does "see" (and, thus, use for image display) the right monitor profile in that list. 

It seems the only way to be sure is to first set the display profile correctly in Windows then, because that's how PS picks up the display profile, Photoshop needs to open on the relevant display screen. 

If it opens on the other screen drag it to the colourmanaged one, quit it and re open PS, with luck PS will now open and you'll see the right monitor profile listed there under available working spaces 

Anyone reading this thread should be sure to note that the display system colour space (profile) is not to be set as the working space in Photoshop - that could lead to all sorts of problems

I hope this helps

neil barstow, colourmanagement.net

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Your working space is completely separate from your monitor profile. The monitor profile should only be set in the operating system.

Forget that you only see one of the monitor profiles in that list, it is irrelevant. If you want to check that Photoshop is using the correct system set profile for each monitor - set a profile in the operating system for one of the monitors that is completely inaccurate. The purpose is to throw off the colours on that monitor in a very visible way (I made an RGB Linear profile to test this).

Now drag the document window from one monitor to the other. You will see the profile switch for that document window when it gets past 50% content on that monitor. Drag it back and it will switch back. Now that you know it works put the correct profile back on the second monitor in Windows settings.

Dave

One thing to note, though - and on second thought this is probably the explanation in this case:

The BenQ software is known to be very buggy, and failure to load the monitor profile correctly is one of the most frequently reported problems. There's a lot of threads about it here and in the Lightroom forum.

The first thing I'd do is try something known to be more reliable, like DisplayCAL. That should give you a baseline to troubleshoot from. I'm suggesting DisplayCAL just because it's a free download, but other good calibrators like i1Profiler should work too, if you have a sensor that is supported.

Your working space should NOT be the monitor profile. Use sRGB or AdobeRGB for most use cases, and the artwork should use the profile of the printer it is being printed on.