Colour Shift - Such A Weird Issue!

[Iain_Blackwood]

I have a Dell UP2516D monitor, that I am using in the AdobeRGB colour space. However, when I bring my images into Photoshop to edit and then export, the exporting image looks a lot more saturated than the image in Photoshop. An example can be seen here:

The image on the left is the image seen in Photoshop whilst it is open, and the image on the right is the exported image opened side by side.

My colour settings in Photoshop are:

I am importing the image into Photoshop from Lightroom (Right Click > Edit In > Edit In Adobe Photoshop CC 2018...) and then closing the image once edits are made and clicking save. Then I go back into Lightroom to perform the exports. Export settings are:

What can I do to fix this so that what I see when editing, is what will be exported? It's messing up my work as I have to keep going back to make changes and it can get frustrating!

[davescm · Accepted solution]

Hi Iain

There are two things here.

1. You are using a wide gamut monitor. so you need to operate throughout with color management.
After exporting you need to view your image in a color managed application / color managed browser. That means an application that uses the embedded color profile when converting it to send to your monitor. Not all Photo viewing applications, or web browsers do this.

You also need to ensure that the profile set in your system is the correct profile for your monitor (preferably following measurement with a hardware profiling device).

2. I would also recommend that you change the color space on Lightroom export of jpegs to sRGB.   That is the safest color space for viewing on the web if viewed on a non color managed browser and a standard monitor.  It will look oversaturated if an end viewer views it on a wide gamut monitor with no color management - but you have no control over that. ProPhoto will always look wrong (under saturated and shifted on a non color managed system).

Dave

[Terri Stevens]

sorry Dave didn't see your response

[davescm]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Terri+Stevens  wrote

sorry Dave didn't see your response

No problem Terri - the more perspectives added the better

Iain - glad to help. Your wide gamut monitor does have benefits - it just brings with it the need to operate with color management. Of course that was always the best way even with narrow gamut monitors - but the impact of not doing so could be reduced with sRGB images. Hence the advice to send images out into the big wide internet world converted to and embedded with the sRGB profile.

Dave

[Terri Stevens]

what application are you viewing the image on the right in-the more saturated one? I think the Dell UP2516D is a wide gamete monitor and will only give consistent results when images are viewed in fully color managed applications. The person to give a definitive response to this is  Dag Fosse who unlike me is a color specialist, but for now try previewing your exported images in color managed apps only.

[Iain_Blackwood]

Thank you guys for your input, I hooked up a non wide colour gamut monitor and I can see the difference. I never understood the use of colour managed applications - I just assumed they all were! My mistake and a new lesson learned.

Thanks again for the help - I can finally stop tearing my hair out!

[D Fosse]

[Sue.Martin.1]

Hi Iain,

Your Dell is one of the monitors I'm considering purchasing for use with Photoshop.  May I ask how you like it?  How has your experience been with calibrating it?  I'm curious about the Dell UltraSharp Colour Calibration software that ships with it.

Thanks

Sue

[D Fosse]

Dell monitors is a lottery. You may be lucky and get an acceptable unit, but a large proportion of them have color shifts from one side of the panel to the other. You can't calibrate your way out of that.

This, among other things the spec sheet says nothing about, is why a Dell costs a third of what it should cost.

[Eddie Tapp]

In your export module choose sRGB as the color space. It's great working in a large color space but you can't use that outside of your own workflow... so always us sRGB when exporting from Lightroom... that will in effect "bake" the color you have created into sRGB...