Color Management Issue Photoshop

[Nicolas Alexander Otto]

I have a very peculiar color managment issue I thought might be intersting to discuss, I am thankful for all the intel I may get. 

I recently calibrated my monitors, a BenQ SW270C and A BenQ 2700 with my SpyderX5. 

Afterwards the display of the same image in different applications was varied.

Whilst my Adobe RGB Masterfiles looked flat in Photoshop their sRGB Files (no color manegment saved) looked as saturated as they where supposed to in PS and Firefox. In Chrome I had to force the monitor profile to make them appear as intended. However I was bummed out by the fact that there was a difference between the master file and the saved sRGB export which never had been distinguishable before I did the monitor calibration.

To wipe the slate clean I simply deleted the monitor profiles. Now the problems have sort of reversed. Without the monitor profile Photoshop seems to oversaturate my sRGB export files whilst the Windows Preview, Firefox and Chrome show the image the same and alike what Photoshop shows my masterfiles to look like. Interestingly enough, when I export one of my masterfiles into sRGB and then open the file in photoshop the colors again look oversatureated. I wonder how to fix this so that at least all the files look the same again for starters.

Slowly, I am starting to confuse what the files are supposed to look like in the first place.

Oh, I use PS 25.0.0 and Win10.

[Nicolas Alexander Otto]

Thanks for the intel and your assessment.

I guess the way forward is to accept simply that so far something has gone wrong with my calibration (although I am still trying to wrap my head around why this never occued in 8 years, thats when I first used a Spyder and Wide Gamut Monitor) in the editing and simply cut my losses i.e. having to reedit my images and embed the profile from now on, switching to the correct method and fix Chrome and accept that my images might look oversaturated in Powerpoint or IG - meaning I need to reedit images according to output media. Phew, that is indeed a bitter pill to swallow after all these years. Sounds like the only option though. 

[Nicolas Alexander Otto]

Maybe one more question for clarification.

In Win10 you can see the Color Managment for the OS. Mine is set to sRGB (never even looked into that before). Shouldn't that be Adobe RGB as well if I am working in a color calibrated wide gamut monitor? 

Sorry for the German screencap.

[davescm]

That setting is fine an just an OS default. What is important is the Devices tab (to the left of those three tabs) which should show your default display profile and be the one you created with your Spyder.

Dave

[Nicolas Alexander Otto]

Yep that is what I did for both monitors. Just came across and figured I might ask. Thanks!

[Nicolas Alexander Otto]

'Okay, so I still have some questions if you can bear with me a tad longer. 

I set everything as it should (adobe RGB Monitor calibrated, converted to sRGB and embeded document Profile) and now I get the same results on my aRGB screen (only Powerpoint still acts up as it is not color managed) - however if I set my 2nd screen to sRGB and try the same Firefox shows the file way more flat than the other whilst on the aRGB Monitor it shows no difference at all. I am just trying to make sure that most people will see what I see at least to a certain degree. And I guess most users run sRGB and some firefox. 

Another thing that astounded me is that when I use export it oversaturates the image as well. But I can't seem to replicate that oversaturation under any circumstance. 

[Nicolas Alexander Otto]

Wow, now that I take a look at the images, the oversaturated Image in the export dialogue looks like what I see in Photoshop and the others look way desaturated in comparison to the screenshots of PS. Either I am loosing it completely now, or the snipping tool does something weird with the colors as well. Maybe it is simply not the correct way to illustrate something as subjective as color perception. My question remains though. Since FF and Chrome are calibrated and PS is the correct source everything should look this same, right? 

[D Fosse]

1. Firefox (and probably most other browsers) doesn't have multi-monitor support. It will use the profile for the primary display regardless of what display it's actually sitting on.  This in contrast to e.g. Photoshop which will use profiles separately for each screen.

2. A screenshot is not in the original document color space! It has already been converted into your monitor profile, and those converted numbers are sent to screen and recorded in the screenshot.

This means that for a screenshot, you need to first assign your monitor profile, then convert to a standard color space like sRGB. Then they will match perfectly.

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Just to make sure: What are the Edit > Color Settings? 

[Nicolas Alexander Otto]

Here you go, I think this is the correct managment for editing in Adobe RGB on Wide Gamut Screen and then export in sRGB later.

[davescm]

Change RGB to 'Preserve embedded profiles' and check Missing Profiles 'Ask when opening' that way you will get a warning if you download an image from your website with no profile embedded.

That does not change any of the advice given earlier though

Dave

[Nicolas Alexander Otto]

Done! Thanks! 🙂