Color Management Issue: Dull and Desaturated Colors in InDesign 20.0 (Windows 11)

[Nico Kobel]

I have some strange color rendering / color management issue with InDesign. All colors within the document and UI are dull and desaturated and don't respond to any color settings. The colors within the color picker and in all exported files are perfectly fine. The screen is calibrated and properly color managed. The issue is only appearing in InDesign, not in any other program. What I have tried so far:

• Reinstalled InDesign, tried different versions
• Created new document using a web preset (probably doesn't matter, but still tried)
• Added just one single square, no images, no copy-pasting from other documents
• Colored the square using an RGB color swatch
• Working space set to sRGB IEC61966-2.1
• Transparency blend space set to RGB
• Proof colors turned off
• Overprint preview turned off
• Additional manual conversion to sRGB color profile
• Reset Windows color profiles 

Specs: 

• Windows 11 23H2
• InDesign Version 20.0.
• Dell XPS 17 1910, Intel Core i7-11800H, 64GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060

Any thoughts? What did I miss? 

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[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @Nico Kobel,

I'm sorry to hear about the color management issue you're experiencing in InDesign. It sounds frustrating, especially since you've already taken several troubleshooting steps. Here are a few additional solutions that might help:

1. Backup and resetyour user preferences for InDesign. To do this, close InDesign, then relaunch it while holding down Ctrl + Alt + Shift (Windows) or Cmd + Option + Shift (Mac). Reference: https://adobe.ly/48hJBij
   
2. Since you mentioned that your screen is calibrated, double-check the calibration settings in Windows. Go to Settings > System > Display > Advanced Display Settings and ensure that the display profile matches your calibration settings.

3. Ensure that your NVIDIA graphics drivers are up to date. You can do this through the NVIDIA GeForce Experience application or by visiting the NVIDIA website.

4. Try creating a new user account on your Windows machine and launching InDesign from there to see if the issue persists.

Let us know how it goes. Thanks for your detailed information, and I hope this helps!

Best,
Abhishek Rao

[Nico Kobel]

Hi @Abhishek Rao 

Thanks for the quick response and suggestions. I went through all your steps (and some more), but without success. 

To investigate further, I wanted to compare the behavior in the other programs, and it seems, that all of them are a bit desaturated. So either all of them share the same issue, or it is the other way around and the color picker is just oversaturated. Interestingly, the color picker in Photoshop does actually match the content, while in InDesign and Illustrator it doesn't:

Screenshot from InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop (f.l.t.r.) displaying the same color with the color picker open.

Why are they displayed differently? Is it possible that the color picker in InDesign and Illustrator isn't colormanaged and in Photoshop it is? 

Best regards, 

Nico

[Nico Kobel]

Hi @Abhishek Rao 

I just poster an other (maybe related?) issue about totally wrong colors within the color picker. Maybe you have some good inputs there? Could those issues have the same cause?

Best regards,

Nico

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @Nico Kobel,

Thank you for your detailed response. To help us investigate this issue further, could you please share a screen recording of your workflow demonstrating the color discrepancies? Additionally, if you have a specific affected file, it would be helpful for us to test the issue on our end.

Also, could you let us know if this problem occurs with multiple files or just a specific one? This information will assist us in pinpointing the cause.

Looking forward to your reply!

Best,
Abhishek Rao