Colour Difference between Lightroom (bright) Photoshop (Duller)

[BHSnapper]

MacOS, Mac Mini, Colours, Dell  S272H, Lightroom, Photoshop

In Lightroom (latest version) the colours of a simple shot obviously brighter compared to Photoshop (latest version). Colours most affected seem to bright yellow/yellow greens.

The colour profiles are identical (set all to PRoPhoto). If I check the same image in Bridge, again brighter than PS.

Tried all on sRGB. No change.

Similarly in Serif's Affintity v.2 colours pretty well the same as LR.... 

All 3 much better than PS!

(And I'm partially colour-blind too!)

Using Mac Mini and a Dell  S272H, reprofiled using a Spyder X Pro

Even printing via (gulp) Epson Easy Photoprint on my old iMac are good!

[GoldingD]

One image is against a black background, the other against a gray background. That effects perception. You need to compare with the same background.

[BHSnapper]

Hi there, thank you for your comment.  Unfortunately there was only a marginal improvement. I took the image and increased the canvas to fill pretty well all of the surround of the of the iamge with pure black. Oh well. in the end it's the print that counts.

[Per Berntsen]

I can see the difference, the Lightroom image has more saturated colors.

When two (or more) color managed applications don't match, it's usually caused by a defective or incompatible monitor profile, or a bug in the GPU driver.

For troubleshooting, start by disabling the GPU in LrC.

If LrC and PS now display identically, updating the GPU driver to the latest version might fix the issue. Since you're on a Mac, you'll have to wait for an OS update to update the driver. (Windows users can update drivers anytime)

To check for a defective monitor profile, try setting it to sRGB. You do this in the OS, but I'm a Windows user, and can't tell you how to do it on a Mac. Close all color managed applications before doing this.

If this fixes the issue, the monitor profile is the culprit.

I had a look at the manual for the Spyder X Pro, and the calibration software seems to be quite basic, and some important options are missing.

There is no option for saving a version 2 or version 4 ICC profile, and no option for LUT or Matrix profile.

If the software uses version 4 and/or LUT, it could be causing the issue. Version 2 and Matrix is the safe choice.

You could try using DisplayCal instead of the Spyder software. It has several options for profile type, and it only saves version 2 profiles, version 4 is not even an option.

DispalyCal has an overwhelming number of options and settings, and it's probably best to stick with the defaults for most of them.

[JohanElzenga]

DisplayCal seems to be very old (2019). I doubt it will run on a modern Mac.

[Per Berntsen]

A quick Internet search confirms this, but there seems to be a workaround.

https://www.reddit.com/r/colorists/comments/18dnp8w/displaycal_and_macos_sonoma_issues/

[Per Berntsen]

This is the link I meant to post:

https://github.com/eoyilmaz/displaycal-py3

[JohanElzenga]

Well, this is two years old as well, and without a proper installer I would not recommend this to anyone except geeks.

[BHSnapper]

Ha ha! This is all very helpful, but I'm not a geek. Perhaps I just bought the wrong monitor?  I'm loath to spend out even more on a new monitor even one with (claimed) 100% sRGB proflle! it looks as though I'm going to have to use LR for actual rating and printing. I only use PS for adjusting skin tonwes as I (as I said above) I'm R-G colour blind and have been known to give ppls' skins a lovely shade of green. 

Thank you to EVERYBODY who has taken the time and trouble to try to help - the failure is mine.

PS Before I got my mini mac I used a very elderly iMac (2008) and never had this problem! 

[Per Berntsen]

So did you try disabling the GPU and setting the monitor profile to sRGB?

Buying a new monitor is not going to fix the issue.

According to Dell, the color gamut of your monitor covers 99% of sRGB, so if you have an incompatible monitor profile, sRGB should be a good fit.

[BHSnapper]

Hi Per Berntsen, yes I tested that again today. However I realised that LR uses a fixed profile for photos, which appears to be ProPhotoRGB, and converts them into Adobe RGB for printing. Which means I'm always going to have unmatched profiles.

So I have played around with curves, and settled on a gentle S-curve for curves layer to lift contrast and brightness, and coupled it with a layer applying slight tweak to vibrance and saturation. Whilst someone with perfect colour vision may not agree, it gives me a closer end result and the prints look even better too!

Again, thank you for your interest. I've learned a lot.

[Per Berntsen]

The LrC Develop module uses a variant of ProPhoto as an internal working space, but this does not cause images to display differently from PS.

The LrC Print module does not convert to Adobe RGB, it uses whatever printing profile you have chosen under Print Job > Color management. (if you let the printer manage colors, the printer driver will do its own conversion)

The colour profiles are identical (set all to PRoPhoto).

Document profiles and working spaces do not have to match. When color management is working correctly, images will display identically across applications. If they don't, it's either caused by a buggy GPU driver, defective/incompatible monitor profile, or you are working with untagged images (that don't have an embedded profile).

If you are using ProPhoto for files you send to PS for editing, read the post by D Fosse here:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-discussions/which-color-space-should-i-use-locked...

Adobe RGB is a much better choice. It gives you some editing headroom, but colors outside the sRGB gamut will not be visible on your monitor.  (they may be visible in prints)

The Photoshop working space only affects new files that you create from scratch in PS, and untagged images.

The embedded profile will override the working space as long as Color settings are set up correctly.

Please post a screenshot of your PS color settings.

Do not attach the screenshot, use the Insert Photos button in the toolbar to embed it in your post.

[BHSnapper]

Thank you again! I do have a slight (!) problem. I'm using an old Epson printer, 1500W, which is not compatible by the latest MacOS; as far as I can find, Epson haven't updated the drivers to run on Sonoma.

So I suppose, interesting as it all is I'm a bit stuck, as the 1500W still works OK and I can't justify the cost of a new A3 photo printer. 

But I have changed everything to sRGB as being the best available.

Again, thank you for your interest and advice, 

Howard