Colours not displaying correctly.

[nadines34322301]

Apologies, as I'm sure this question has been asked many times before, but I just can't seem to find an answer that solves my issue.

I recently factory reset my laptop, so I had to reinstall Photoshop.  Now my RAW images won't display correctly when I open them, especially when using the Camera Raw feature.  I'm very much a novice at using Photoshop, so I'm not clued up on colour profiles - I'm assuming there's a mismatch somewhere but don't know how to go about fixing it.  I've followed some steps that I found on here to no avail.  The picture below illustrates the problem - top image is what I see on Windows Photo Viewer (which is pretty much what I see on the LCD screen on the camera) and the bottom image is what I see in Photoshop.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[davescm]

Hi

Photoshop is color managed. It uses the monitor profile (which is a file describing the way your monitor displays colors when sent digital numbers) to correct the numbers sent and ensure the color displayed is the color in the image.  This relies on the correct monitor profile being set in Windows.

Windows photo viewer is not color managed. It just sends the monitor the uncorrected numbers and the monitor displays them (i.e. incorrectly).

Can you get two pieces of info so we can advise what to do next:

1. What monitor profile are you using. If you are using Windows 10 - go to Settings >System >Display and check what color profile is being used for your monitor.

2. What laptop are you using (so we can see if it has a wide gamut display or not).

Dave

[nadines34322301]

Hi Dave,

The colour profile says: sRGB display profile with display hardware configuration data derived from calibration.

My laptop is an ASUS X555L

Nadine

[davescm]

Hi

I am puzzled by the profile "sRGB............................derived from calibration"

Have you run any hardware calibration on your PC?

Dave

[Per Berntsen]

davescm  wrote:

Windows photo viewer is not color managed.

I don't use Windows 10, but I believe that the Windows Photo Viewer is color managed, while the Photos app is not.

Maybe someone ( D Fosse​ ?) can confirm this.

[davescm]

Hands up... I was thinking of the Win 10 Photos app  (the old viewer is no longer installed with a clean install of Windows 10).

Dave

[nadines34322301]

I calibrated the colours when I was trying to fix the problem, using the colour calibration option that was on my laptop.  I didn’t really change much though, apart from trying to neutralise the grey tones.

I’ve now switched the monitor profile to sRGB iec61966-2.1 (which is very blue!)

[D Fosse]

Yep, the reason for this difference is the fact that Photoshop is color managed, but Windows "Photos" is not.

It's fairly typical for laptops that they will be substantially different. This is not a simple question of color balance - this is about using the monitor profile or not. It's the position of the three primaries that affects how individual colors are reproduced. Photoshop corrects for this, with the monitor profile, and displays the file correctly within the limitations of gamut.

However - in addition to this there can be a general color cast. This can be corrected with the Windows calibration tool, based on the standard sRGB profile. I believe this is what the OP had done, and he can probably continue to use this.

All this illustrates the difference between calibration and profiling that a lot of people get so confused over. When you use a calibrator, both are performed in sequence, but it's all rolled into one operation.

In short - there is nothing wrong here. This is all normal and expected behavior.

[Per Berntsen]

But the OP says that she's using the Windows Photo Viewer, which is color mangaged, right?

[D Fosse]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Per+Berntsen  wrote

But the OP says that she's using the Windows Photo Viewer, which is color mangaged, right?

Yes, The old "Windows Photo Viewer" from Windows 7 is color managed, but it's pretty hard to find in Windows 10. You really have to want to find it.

Anyway, nadine, if things suddenly changed, we're probably looking at something else here. Probably a defective display profile from Asus, distributed thorugh Windows Update. And if ACR is now different from Photoshop, there's really no doubt. They should always display identically - but with a bad display profile, anything can happen. That often affects applications differently.

Bad manufacturer profiles is a huge problem, and Asus is notorious for it, along with Dell, Samsung and a couple of others.

Replace it with sRGB IEC61966-2.1 like you did before. If there's a general color cast towards blue, use Windows calibration to correct that.

[nadines34322301]

Thanks for the reply; I’m still thoroughly confused though!  I had no issues before – the image I saw on Photoshop would match perfectly with the image that I saw on my camera and the photo viewer on my laptop.  Now, for some reason, the colours are all way off, no matter how I calibrate my monitor, or which colour profile I choose on Photoshop.  It’s making editing impossible, as the pictures just look horrendous.  Also, the image I see in Camera Raw is different to the image I see in the ‘main’ part of Photoshop.  I just don’t understand why everything has suddenly changed.  The pictures that I take on my camera now look nothing like the pictures I see on Photoshop.