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hurodal
Known Participant
January 26, 2023
Question

Ps doesn't embed ICC profiles into PNG files when saving, saving as or Quick export.

  • January 26, 2023
  • 5 replies
  • 1886 views

Hi,

This is a bug that lasts for many years: if oyu have a PNG file opened, assign an ICC profile and just save or Save as.., the profile is lost. I believed that Ps behaves like with TIFFs and JPEGs on which it always embeds the profile once the file is tagged, but there's no option to embed it in the Save as dialog.

Same bug occurs when doing a Quick export in PNG

 

When exporting with the good old Export for Web (inherited), surprisingly it works well.

 

Steps to check it:

  1. Open a PNG file.
  2. If it has no profile, assign one, like sRGB
  3. Save as or Save, overwriting. Or do a quick export in PNG. The ICC profile should be embedded now.
  4. Close the image.
  5. Open it again, and Ps will probably ask you what profile do you want to apply, but this depends on your Color configuration. To see the this dialog, go to Edit > Color settings and Check the "missing profiles: ask when opening".

 

Hope this helps fixing it.

This topic has been closed for replies.

5 replies

D Fosse
Community Expert
Community Expert
January 27, 2023

Right. For some reason the box is unchecked by default, no idea why.

 

Profile embedding in PNG has a long and weird history in Photoshop. For a long time it would be possible to embed in Save but not in Export and/or SFW. Then it switched and you could embed in Export and/or SFW but not Save. It was pretty chaotic.

 

For a while there was even a special twist: Export allowed all profiles to be embedded except sRGB. There was no way to embed sRGB. Any other profile would be fine. There was a bit of head-scratching over that one 😉

 

But now we can embed the profile in all the different output modules, PNG or otherwise. Except Quick Export.

 

 

hurodal
hurodalAuthor
Known Participant
January 27, 2023

ok, you are right about the Save as, there is indeed a checkbox to embed, and it works; I overlooked it. But the weird thing is that it doesn't behave like JPEG or TIFF files, where if the image is tagged, then the checkbox is automatically on and if the image is untagged, it's off. With PNG seems to stay as you leaved the last time, ignoring the actual state of the image.
Anyway, when saving, if the PNG is tagged the ICC is not embedded. Not sure if this is linked to the last state of the checkbox in the save as window.

I'm using v24.1.0

Hugo
Stephen Marsh
Community Expert
Community Expert
January 27, 2023

What version number and build are you running? Older versions had this issue, later ones finally added the feature.

 

2019 Version – Save As:

 

 

 

2023 Version – Save As:

 

hurodal
hurodalAuthor
Known Participant
January 26, 2023

Thanks for your comments.

I haven't tested the Quick export, only the Quick export as PNG.

However, I can confirm that Save and Save a copy does NOT embed profiles in PNG files as I stated. It indeed does with JPG, TIFF and PSD but not with PNG as I said. In fact there's no option to select anything related to ICC profiles in the dialog box for PNG files...

Best regards,

Hugo
D Fosse
Community Expert
Community Expert
January 26, 2023

There's no way to make Quick Export embed any profile in any format. It's a major bug/shortcoming/flaw, which has always rendered it useless to me.

 

Export and Save For Web both embed the profile correctly. Save For Web can be actioned, which makes it effectively a "quick export" and that's what I do. Export can still not be recorded in actions.

 

Save/Save A Copy both embed the profile correctly, but you need to check the box in the Save dialog.