Calibrated Laptop Monitor not showing the correct colors in Photoshop

ozan5E19

There are so many possible variables here

How many displays connected?

Soes the image you are viewing have an embedded ICC profile? 

Is your main display (the one you use for Photoshop calibrated and profiled)?

I suggest you download and open this test image in Photoshop https://www.colourmanagement.net/downloads/CMnet_Pixl_AdobeRGB_testimage05.zip

How does it look in Photoshop? DO skintones look natural? 

ONLY colour managed applications will give you correct colour.

Windows PHOTOS program is NOT colour managed, don't ever use it for accurate viewing.

Setting Photoshop proof colours = display profile] basically switches off all colour management,

that’s why Photoshop matches Windows PHOTOS when you set Photoshop proof colours = display profile.

Color managed applications are the only way to view colour accurately.  

However, they can only do that with a GOOD monitor display profile

Could it be this issue, its very common - please read on:

Windows display profile, display profile issues on Windows

At least once a week on this forum we read about this, or very similar issues of appearance differing between colour managed applications.

Of course you must not expect accurate colour with programs such as Windows "Photos", because colour management is not implemented there so such programs are incapable of providing accurate image display.

Unfortunately, with Microsoft hardware: Windows updates, Graphics Card updates and Display manufacturers have a frustratingly growing reputation for installing useless (corrupted) monitor display profiles.

I CAN happen with Macs but with far less likelihood, it seems.

The issue can affect different applications in different ways, some not at all, some very badly.

The poor monitor display profile issue is hidden by some applications, specifically those that do not use colour management, such as Microsoft Windows "Photos".

Photoshop is correct, it’s the industry standard for viewing images, in my experience it's revealing an issue with the Monitor Display profile rather that causing it. Whatever you do, don't ignore it. As the issue isn’t caused by Photoshop, don’t change your Photoshop ‘color settings’ to try fix it. 

To find out if the monitor display profile is the issue, I recommend you to try setting the monitor profile for your own monitor display under “Device” in your Windows ‘color management’ control panel to sRGB temporarily. 

You can ADD sRGB if its not already listed. 

And be sure to check “Use my settings for this device”.

(OR, if you have a wide gamut monitor display (check the spec online) it’s better to try Adobe RGB here instead).

Quit and relaunch Photoshop after the control panel change, to ensure the new settings are applied.

Screenshot of Color Management Control Panel 

Depending on the characteristics of your monitor display and your requirements, using sRGB or Adobe RGB here may be good enough - but custom calibration is a superior approach.

If this change fixes the issue, it is recommended that you should now calibrate and profile the monitor properly using a calibration sensor like i1display pro, which will create and install it's own custom monitor profile. The software should install it’s profile correctly so there should be no need to manually set the control panel once you are doing this right. 

Still got problems?

If you want to try a method that’s proved successful to rule out many an issue we see with Photoshop, you can reset preferences:

To reset the preferences in Photoshop: 

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/preferences.html

Note: Make sure that you back up all your custom presets, brushes & actions before restoring Photoshop's preferences. Migrate presets, actions, and settings

I hope this helps

neil barstow, colourmanagement net :: adobe forum volunteer

google me "neil barstow colourmanagement" for lots of free articles on colour management

[please only use the blue reply button at the top of the page, this maintains the original thread title and chronological order of posts]

Do you shoot in Raw?

What are your in camera settings?

If you're a Raw shooter, its best to set your color in camera as Adobe RGB

Then also in your LR & PS be sure all of the settings possible are all set to Adobe RGB

And when saving, also as Adobe RGB

Or make everything sRGB, which is even more reliable across devices

That's the most important thing to do for compatibility across devices and platforms

Otherwise Adobe applications will interpret the raw data differently from your OS & 3rd party image viewers

Whew, these test images always make me dizzy...couldn't they make them a little simpler...?

If the top half really was not color managed at all, then they would all look the same regardless of what monitor profile - it would't be used anyway. And yet they're different. And I've no idea what you mean by "viewed on web" in that context.

We really need to eliminate all the irrelevant variables here.

• Keep the document profile sRGB.
• Set sRGB as display profile too, restart Photoshop, make a screenshot.
• Change the display profile to the i1 profile, restart Photoshop, make another screenshot.

In the first case, the document and display profiles are the same, no change in that conversion. The original values are passed straight to the display - so that simulates no color management reliably. In the second case, you have a standard color managed display chain. This will establish how the display differs from sRGB. I'm not interested in accuracy here, just the difference.

Here's my theory so far:

This laptop has a standard gamut display, but with a gamut a little smaller than sRGB. This is quite common in laptop displays, and usually it's the red primary that doesn't extend to the sRGB red primary. It's a little less saturated.

In Photoshop, and all other color managed apps, the colors are remapped into the display profile so that everything reproduces correctly. You'll just hit red clipping a little sooner.

In nonmanaged apps no such remapping happens, and the document RGB values are just distributed over this narrower range. The net result is lower red saturation on screen.

Your friend's iMac has a display that matches sRGB much better, so you won't see that much difference. But in fact the Photoshop versions will be similar - it's just the direct comparison that fools you into thinking you have more red on your end.

In short - there is nothing wrong here. This is the expected behavior. And a nice way to illustrate what color management does.

The panel specs indicate standard gamut, which is consistent with your screenshot. Then everything in fact behaves in the normal and expected way.

The Acer website says it's wide gamut, or at least that this is available. That's what threw me off at first.

Again: you need to disregard applications that are not color managed. OK? Are we clear on that? Throw them out and bury them for now. They are irrelevant and wrong regardless.

So the next question is to find out if there is a problem with the display profile made by i1 Profiler. That could well be, but we need firm ground to stand on. This is where it would be extremely useful to know what type of display your laptop has.

Standard profile trouble-shooting is to temporarily replace the profile with a known good one. That would be sRGB for a standard gamut display, or Adobe RGB for a wide gamut one - but there are exceptions. Some laptop displays have smaller gamuts than sRGB, and in that case your screenshot is what it would look like.

So if you still can't figure out what display you have - try both. I don't know which one.

Go into Windows Control Panel > Color Management > Devices. Relaunch Photoshop when done because it needs to load the new profile at startup:

Judged by the screenshot here, the Photoshop version looks healthier.

I'll look more closely at this later, but just to get it established right away: you should not, and can not, expect color managed and non-color managed applications to display identically. They never will, and they're not supposed to.

If two color managed applications disagree, however, something's wrong.

So what are you comparing to?

And to answer your questions specifically:

Is there any way I can have Photoshop and Lightroom show the correctly calibrated colors on my laptop screen so I can edit them properly?

Would a better option to buy a separate monitor that already comes pre-calibrated?

I'm basically just looking to get calibrated colors that can be viewed across all programs.

That will never happen, and especially not with a wide gamut display. There will always be a difference between color managed applications and non-color managed ones. The former is right, the latter is wrong. The difference is usually small enough to often go unnoticed, but a wide gamut display makes the difference very obvious and impossible to ignore. The color managed version is still the right one.

EDIT to note: It might be worth checking that your x-rite profile hasn't been overwritten by a laptop manufacturer profile distributed through Windows Update. That can happen (and these profiles are often broken). Under Control Panel > Color Management > Devices, the x-rite profile should be the one marked (default).

Have a look at this straight-forward online video tutorial from Lynda.com: InDesign Insider Training: Color Management

(it includes Photoshop)

You can get a 10-day free trial.

That laptop seems to have a wide gamut display, their website states "100% Adobe RGB". That changes the ordinary rules a bit, and the most important implication is that these displays can only be used in a fully color managed environment​,​ such as Photoshop and Lightroom.

Applications that don't support color management will never display correctly on such a display, except occasionally by pure accident (if the file is created in Adobe RGB and has Adobe RGB numbers).

Wide gamut displays must be calibrated and profiled. The i1 Display Pro is the best third-party option currently on the market for this.

You need to realize that calibration and display profile are two different things. People usually mix them up, probably because the calibration correction tables are often stored inside the profile for convenience. But the two serve different purposes.

The calibration is just a simple, low-precision, linear adjustment to the display's response. It affects everything globally, but is not part of the color management chain.

The display profile is a high-precision, three-dimensional description of the display's characteristics in its calibrated state. It is used by color managed applications only, in a standard profile conversion from document to display. This conversion is performed by the application on the fly, and the result sent to the display.