Color issues in Photoshop CS6

[JorenR]

A few days ago my Photoshop installation began muting all of the colors. Nothing I've found has been able to change it. Color Settings are set to North America General Purpose 2, I even tried deleting Photoshop's preferences file and letting it recreate it to return everything to default, no change. Here's a perfect example of what I'm talking about http://i.imgur.com/EpFgI.png

On the right is a website pulled up within Chrome. On the left is a screenshot taken (via Print Screen) of that exact same web page and then pasted into a default web RGB settings file. It's easy to tell the difference when you look at the blues. This is happening to everything I load in photoshop, color profiles or settings don't make any difference, and no other applications have this problem (including other Adobe applications). Any ideas?

If it matters, I'm running Windows 8 with 2x AMD 6950's in Crossfire.

[Guest]

Try disabling one of the video cards.  PS prefers one and you gain little if anything with 2.  Since they are both the same card it  is less of a conflict however.

[Chris Cox]

Sounds like your display profile got changed - you need to fix that in the OS settings.

[JorenR]

Thanks, I found where my color settings were and there is a profile in it for my Dell U2410, but I cannot change or remove it. Coincidentally, I just happened to get a Spyder 4 Pro for Christmas. I'll be giving that a shot in the next couple of days, maybe it'll fix the problem with new color profiles. If not, I'll report back on here 

[JorenR]

Ok, a new color profile didn't do the trick. Photoshop is still (and is the only application) having this problem. I can paste the same screengrab into Fireworks CS6 and it looks perfect. Help  :[

[gator soup]

try Edit> Color Settings> Color Management Policies

(all three PRESERVE, all three boxes CHECKED)

that should give you a warning in Photoshop that points to the problem and asks how you want to proceed

the problem, more than likely, is Photoshop is applying a different Source Profile than the other apps (your other apps are either not color managed and/or you are feeding them untagged documents)...

[JorenR]

Thanks. I checked all of those (everything was already set to preserve), closed and reopened and pasted the screenshot again but got no errors/responses.

[gator soup]

EDITED:

okay, since you didn't get a mismatch or missing profile warning Pasting pixels into Photoshop with my settings - that means Photoshop is using the correct ICC profile (your copied Source pixels are tagged the same as your Destination Source Document)

at that point - if you feel Photoshop is not displaying your Pasted pixels properly - i would be stumped and would return to the basics (get a known good file like the Getty-PDI test set and ensure the monitor profile is okya and that Photoshop is functioning properly)

you may also want to troubleshoot your monitor profile for known bugs/issues

[JorenR]

It switched to Custom after checking those boxes, not North America General Purpose 2, so... I don't understand your last response.

I can read up on that later, for now I just want to get photoshop back to default settings and have it not mess with color at all. There must be some sort of keyboard shortcut I accidentally hit to be causing this - I've NEVER messed with color settings in Photoshop, and it just all of a sudden started doing this a few days ago without any other changes to my PC at all.

EDIT: Guess you can ignore this one now, since you completely changed your last response haha, looking at your edit now..

[gator soup]

you completely changed your last response

yeah, i caught that

I just want to get photoshop back to default settings and have it not mess with color at all.

that's going to be a real challenge (if that's what you are trying to accomplish you will definately need to understand how Photoshop uses profiles)

[JorenR]

Thanks for helping. So I downloaded the Whacked RGB file and opened it in photoshop, I get this message http://i.imgur.com/xQ8VV.png and the file looks perfectly normal if I open it with the embedded profile or if I convert it to the working space. Discarding the embedded profile makes it blue. Does this help at all? The link you sent says "In conclusion, if your setup is displaying the WhackedRGB file at least okay, then the problem points to your "problem" files — they either have profile issues or the actual problems Photoshop is showing you. Period." when this is the case.

I also found another quirk while messing with this, the color actually looks fine in my other monitors. If I drag the photoshop window over to my primary monitor, the colors stays perfectly fine until I actually drag my cursor over the file, then it changes. I recorded a screenr to showcase this http://www.screenr.com/FFC7 so you can watch it in real time, just keep your eyes on the blue. It must be a monitor profile issue specifically with photoshop, I'm just not sure how to fix it.

[gator soup]

that second monitor is a wildcard that i don't think i can help you much with troubleshooting as i think it may be a bug, but now i have a better understanding what you are talking about

[Chris Cox]

Color changing as the cursor goes over it sounds a lot like a video driver bug.

The hardware cursor should have no effect on the color appearance of the image data below it.

[JorenR]

Well, I haven't updated video drivers since AMD's last release of 12.10 in October, so that didn't change. I also did make sure to revert Catalyst settings to default, didn't help either.

[Chris Cox]

12.10 has some problems, you probably want to revert to 12.8.

[JorenR]

Thanks, but I also use the PC for gaming so I'd prefer not to revert that far back. I updated to 12.11 beta drivers for the heck of it, didn't make a difference. 12.10 ran fine for a month and a half prior to this problem occurring.

[JorenR]

Never saw this happen in my 12 years of using photoshop in fact, heh... ugh.

[Chris Cox]

It's not yet fixed in 12.11.  We are working with AMD to get the issues resolved.

[JorenR]

Well, I hate to burst your bubble, but 12.8 http://i.imgur.com/EUjt5.png doesn't fix this particular problem. Same issue

[JorenR]

Finally figured it out, it WAS a photoshop setting. View -> Proof Setup -> Monitor RGB did the trick.

[lelijk123]

I had the same problem for SO long, awesome job for figuering it out. --> proof setup -> monitor RGB also worked for me

THANK YOU

[Chris Cox]

That just means that your display profile was bad, and now you are temporarily avoiding the display profile.

You still need to go fix the display profile to accurately match your current display.

[particlepat]

I absolutely love the internet. In case you were wondering your simple reply is helping people 4 years later.

[D Fosse]

And this is still true 4 years later:

Proof to Monitor RGB disables Photoshop's display color management. Your monitor profile is still bad. It doesn't fix anything, it just sweeps the problem under the carpet.

[particlepat]

Really? So how do I correct my monitor profile?