Background color is permanently stuck as an off white color.

[krystalR4369]

Hi. I'm having a really frustrating issue. In photoshop, my background color isn't pure white. When I try to change it to pure white, it automatically resets itself to an offwhite. It refuses to let me keep it white. I noticed that it's especially like this when working in CMYK profile. When I switch to RGB it does let me change it to pure white. 

Also, when printing, my computer has a warm hue, but when I print everything has a blue cast to it. Is this because my computer or printer is trying to correct the background color to pure white? When the printer preview comes up, the off-white color that I'm stuck with in photoshop goes away but in return for the background being white, my photo is blue-tinted.

Iv'e tried changing my monitor & color presets in every fashion I can think of- in Photoshop, in my computers settings itself and nothing seems to fix it. I don't know if the photoshop off-white issue is linked to the printing issue, but it seems like it might be. 

Then again, once the image is actually printed, the background isn't white. The printer not only casts a blue tint on the enite photo, thoriwng the white balance off, but it also prints on what should be the white boarder of the paper and makes it a light blue color. 

I'm so frustrated because I can't print anything that looks right & I can't even rely on Photoshop when editing images now because I don't know if any of the colors are even correct & how they will translate to any printer. 

[denbykev]

What happens if you change your RGB profile to AdobeRGB (1998) or sRGB? 

[D Fosse]

First of all, your first screenshot shows you have turned color management off. Don't ever do that! It's a recipe for disaster.

Policies should always be set to preserve embedded profiles:

(This should IMO have been hardwired like it is in Lightroom, and the other options permanently removed. They cause nothing but damage and confusion.)

Next, make sure there actually is an embedded document profile. If there isn't, you need to assign one, and make sure it's the right one.

If you're getting a general color cast in CMYK, you're probably using the wrong profile. You need to ask the printer specifically which profile to use. This is crucial information and if they can't or won't answer, ask someone else. What you need to realize here is that there is no such thing as a generic "CMYK". Every CMYK profile corresponds to a certain print process, and you can't know which one until you ask.

Generally, CMYK is for advanced users and there are many pitfalls. But at least if you have the profile, you should be able to deliver an acceptable result.

If you have any proof settings on, turn them off.

[c.pfaffenbichler]

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Policies should always be set to preserve embedded profiles:

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It seems difficult to even imagine a scenario in which it would make sense to disregard embedded profiles; maybe if one could be absolutely certain all images are of the Working Space anyway and size is a true concern? 

[D Fosse]

There might be a case for web icons, UI design, games and so on - but you'd still need to create the file in a known color space, if only for reference. Then you could use Export/SFW to strip the actual profile. Normally 3kB doesn't make a significant difference to the total file size, not even for smallish web images - but for a tiny icon I can see the point.

Other than that, I can't see any legitimate reasons. If there are any, they are far outweighed by the potential damage, and sometimes it's more important to protect users from destroying their work, than catering for obsolete past-century workflows.

I'm just being realistic. We see this all the time here in the forums. The first thing people do when they see inconsistencies between color managed Photoshop and other non-color managed applications, is to go to Color Settings and turn everything off. And then they are really getting into trouble, if they weren't before, because now they risk permanent damage to the files, as well as disconnection with other people who might be receiving their work.

[krystalR4369]

 never intentionally turned off embedded profiles. I don't know how that happened. I usually never touch my color profile settings at all because I don't know what I'm doing. Someone tried to help me fix the problem the other day though, and I just changed all my settings to match whatever his settings were.

[c.pfaffenbichler]

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I just changed all my settings to match whatever his settings were.

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Then you might want to have a talk with that person about whether they understand what they are doing Color Managemant-wise. 

[krystalR4369]

That's odd because when I go back into photoshop & look at my settings, all of the "Preserve Embedded Profiles" are turned on, not off. I don't know what made I was in or how that happened when I took that screen shot but it's not like that now. Unless the template I was using or something had that preselected.

And by printer, I just mean my home printer. How would I figure out what color profile it needs assigned to?

Also, yeah I didn't realize there wasn't just one generic CMYK. I don't understand much about color settings or anything at all. All I know is that you're supposed to print in CMYK & RGB is for the web. Iv'e never had issues with this in photoshop before, and Iv'e never touched my settings. I just use it & it's worked in the past, so now that it's not I'm lost because I don't even understand any of this. 

[D Fosse]

And by printer, I just mean my home printer.

By @krystalR4369

That changes everything. CMYK is for commercial offset presses only, books and magazines to be printed in large runs. Inkjet home printers are RGB devices that expect RGB data. There are usually more than 4 inks anyway, and the final conversion into individual inks happens internally in the printer driver.

But you still have to pick the correct print profile in the Photoshop print dalog. It still has to correspond to the actual printer/ink/paper combination. The principle is the same as for any color management operation: source profile (sRGB, Adobe RGB etc) converted into destination profile (print profile), and then sent on to the device in question.

These profiles will be installed when you install the printer. They are paper specific and are usually called <printer model><paper quality>.

Next, go into the printer driver and turn off the printer's own color management. You don't want double profiling.

Finally, you need to also set the paper quality in the printer driver. This controls total amount of ink (while the profile controls the proportions).