Dark colors are clipped and displayed improperly in Photoshop 2020

[JordanCS13]

Using Photoshop 2020 on Windows 10.  When opening files with dark tones (seems to be levels around 25 or lower), they appear to clip early.  As such, pure black or near pure black is displayed as 14,14,14 instead of 5,5,5 or 0,0,0.  All dark tones are clipped to that artificial dark gray-ish color, and colors themselves appear posterized at low levels.

The files themselves are perfectly fine, as they are displayed properly in the RAW editor (both Lightroom and Capture One Pro), and also display properly when the files are opened in Photshop CC 19 (which I have installed alongside 2020). I also can export the file or such, and when viewing that exported file in another program (even Windows photo viewer), it looks perfect...it only displays improperly in Photoshop 2020.

First thing I checked was to see if Proof Colors were on, and they are not.  I can't see any setting that would cause this.  Obviously not a video display driver issue, as it displays properly in every app except Photoshop 2020.

As a sample: this image shows how the image is displayed when rendered properly:

http://www.jordansteele.com/2019/ps_weird3.png

This is a screenshot of the image as it is displayed in Photoshop 2020:

http://www.jordansteele.com/2019/ps_weird.png

This is a screenshot of how the color picker is displayed in Photoshop 2020, showing what happens to the display of colors at the low end:

http://www.jordansteele.com/2019/color_picker.png

I have tried to uninstall (and remove preferences) and then reinstall...it did not solve the issue.

Help?

[davescm]

Hi

What happens if you check Preferences >Performance >Legacy Compositing?

Dave

[D Fosse · Accepted solution]

That's a broken display profile. Are you using a calibrator? If you do, rerun it, and make sure it's making v2 and matrix-based profiles. Not v4 or table-based (LUT) - both are known to be problematic in some scenarios.

Bad monitor profiles can often affect applications differently (if they are color managed and actually use the profile).

If not, you have probably received a bad manufacturer profile through Windows Update. That happens surprisingly often.

In the meantime, you can use a generic profile - sRGB if your monitor is standard gamut, or Adobe RGB if wide gamut.

[davescm]

I thought that Dag, but then saw the comment and screenshot showing that CC2019 displayed correctly, but CC2020 did not. Both should use the same display profile

Dave

[JordanCS13]

Sure enough. 

That's bizarre....why would a profile only break one application?  I reset to the default manufacturer profile and it looks fine now.  Switched back to any of the calibrated profiles I've used over the past two years and they all go nuts in PS 2020, but display fine in any other application. 

Will try rerunning in v2 matrix based.  Thanks!

Edit: a v2 profile works fine.  So, perhaps 2020 has a bug that deals with v4 profiles poorly (that it didn't have in 19?)  In any case, thanks so much for the help!

[D Fosse]

It could be a bug in 2020 - but it could just as well be the other way round: the profile was never written correctly to icc specification in the first place. One difference in v2 vs. v4 is added functions for white point and black point mapping, and Photoshop may well have "tightened ship" in this regard.

Anyway, in Photoshop the actual profile conversion is executed in the GPU these days, using the video driver to do so, so the whole thing is rapidly becoming an equation with two unknowns. Is the monitor profile itself bad, or is the video driver messing up the profile conversion - or is it both?

But the prime suspect in any display inconsistencies is the monitor profile. That's the first target in any troubleshooting. It's pretty common that different applications, or versions for that matter, react differently to a broken profile.

The document profile can also play a part. ProPhoto (or its ACR variety with linear gamma) is usually more prone to exhibit problems by nature, because the huge gamut and inverse compression of useable data tends to amplify and exaggerate problems in the conversion from document profile to monitor profile.