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Dull / washed out colors across programs

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
June 14, 2023
8 replies
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I'm suddenly having an issue where the colors in all of the Adobe programs I use (Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign) are dull and washed out. The only program that seems to display the colors correctly is Acrobat. I work almost exclusively in CMYK because my work is all print work.

I have not changed any settings and I checked to make sure my color settings were the same as they have always been: North America General Purpose 2. It also says that setting is synchronized across CC programs.

I believe this is a bug on how the programs are just displaying the colors because all of my settings seem correct and the colors are the same ones I've used before, they just look duller. I can simply save a file out of Photoshop or Illustrator as a PDF, and it displays perfectly when opened with Acrobat. I also haven't had an issue with the colors once they are printed.

I've tried a few fixes I found while searching online, like resetting colors in Bridge (which I never use), turning off the GPU performance, and updating or reverting the programs to different versions. All to no avail. All programs are currently up to date, but the problem persists. Any suggestions?

Windows

Correct answer davescm

Hi

Changing to the sRGB profile is not showing accurate colour but it is not as inaccurate as your previous, broken, profile. Yes , sometimes broken profiles are delivered with system updates.

The monitor profile is a description of the way your particular monitor with its current adjustments (such as brightness and contrast) display colour. Colour managed applications use that profile to translate the colour values in the document to those being sent to the display, in order to show as accurate colour as possible within the limitations of a particular monitor. If the monitor profile is incorrect then the display colour is incorrect. So whilst using the sRGB profile looks better than before, and confirms the old profile was indeed broken, accurate colour display requires a monitor profile that describes your particular monitor in its current state. The only real way to create such a profile is with a hardware calibration and profiling device such as those made by Calibrite which have superceded the older i1Display devices.

Dave

I

Irakli Topuria

Known Participant

In Photoshop: Edit > Color settings > Settings > and choose "Monitor color"

This worked for me. In Photoshop, colors will be displayed the same way they are displayed in other programs on your PC.

davescm

Community Expert

@Irakli Topuria 'In Photoshop: Edit > Color settings > Settings > and choose "Monitor color"'

That is not good advice at all. What it does is produce a document using your monitor colour space as the document colour space. The monitor profile is not meant to be a document profile, it describes the colour space of your monitor.

If you do what you suggest:

Photoshop will produce a document albeit restricting the document to those colours which can be seen on your monitor. If your view it on none colour managed applications on your PC only, it will look OK.
If you embed the profile in the document and view it on other PCs using colour managed software then, if they can read the profile it will look OK, if they cannot read it, or if they are not colour managed it will look incorrect.

Short version - use a monitor profile for your monitor only, use a print profile for your printer only, use a document colour space for your documents.

Longer version:

Digital images are made up of numbers. In RGB mode, each pixel has a number representing Red, a number representing Green and a Number representing Blue. The problem comes in that different devices can be sent those same numbers but will show different colours. To see a demonstration of this, walk into your local T.V. shop and look at the different coloured pictures – all from the same material.

To ensure the output device is showing the correct colours then a colour management system needs to know two things.

1. What colours do the numbers in the document represent?
This is the job of the document profile which describes the exact colour to be shown when Red=255 and what colour of white is meant when Red=255, Green = 255 and Blue =255. It also describes how the intermediate values move from 0 through to 255 – known as the tone response curve (or sometimes “gamma”).
Examples of colour spaces are (Adobe RGB1998, sRGB IEC61966-2.1)
With the information from the document profile, the colour management system knows what colour is actually represented by the pixel values in the document.

What colour will be displayed on the printer/monitor if it is sent certain pixel values?
This is the job of the monitor/printer & paper profile. It should describe exactly what colours the device is capable of showing and, how the device will respond when sent certain values.
So with a monitor profile that is built to represent the specific monitor (or a printer profile built to represent the specific printer, ink and paper combination) then the colour management system can predict exactly what colours will be shown if it sends specific pixel values to that device.

So armed with those two profiles, the colour management system will convert the numbers in the document to the numbers that must be sent to the device in order that the correct colours are displayed.

So what can go wrong :

The colours look different in Photoshop, which is colour managed, to the colours in a different application which is not colour managed.
This is not actually fault, but it is a commonly raised issue. It is the colour managed version which is correct – the none colour managed application is just sending the document RGB numbers to the output device regardless without any conversion regardless of what they represent in the document and the way they will be displayed on the output device.
The colour settings are changed in Photoshop without understanding what they are for.
This results in the wrong profiles being used and therefore the wrong conversions and the wrong colours.
If Photoshop is set to Preserve embedded profiles – it will use the colour profile within the document.
The profile for the output device is incorrect.
The profile should represent the behaviour of the device exactly. If the wrong profile is used it will not. Equally if the settings on the device are changed in comparison to those settings when the profile was made, then the profile can no longer describe the behaviour of the device. Two examples would be using a printer profile designed for one paper, with a different paper. A second example would be using a monitor profile but changing the colour/contrast etc settings on the monitor.
The monitor profile is set in the operating system (in Windows 10 that is under Settings>System>Display >Advanced) which leads to a potential further issue. Operating system updates can sometimes load a different monitor profile, or a broken profile, which no longer represents the actual monitor.

Colour management is simple to use provided the document profile is correct, always save or export with an embedded profile, and the monitor/printer profile is correct. All the math is done in the background.

I hope that helps

Dave

NB, colourmanagement

Community Expert

@Irakli Topuria great replies from @D Fosse and @davescm

you wrote

" In Photoshop: Edit > Color settings > Settings > and choose "Monitor color""

that’s terrible advice, unfortunately, for many reasons as explained - That is not at all how colour management is meant to work, please study those replies and think it over

I hope this helps
neil barstow, colourmanagement net - adobe forum volunteer - co-author: 'getting colour right'
google me "neil barstow colourmanagement" for lots of free articles on colour management
Help others by clicking "Correct Answer" if the question is answered.
Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here. "Upvote" is for useful posts.

Zesty_wanderlust15A7

Known Participant

[Win 10] I've had a similar [cursing removed] some days ago after calibration, so calibration is not the magic trick...

A red car would look orange in PS.

Whatever I did did not fix it, or only for seconds.

There are many reports about this on the internet. Anything I tried didn't work.

What eventually worked is to keep at least two profiles in this view. I first added the sRGB, then my new and a previous one I know had worked. If I select the correct one last (and set as default), it sticks and looks correct. Should I remove the other two or the sRGB, I'm probably[cursing removed] again, which doesn't make sense.

D Fosse

Community Expert

What calibrator are you using? You should normally not need to go into that Windows dialog at all, much less "add" any profiles. The calibrator will set it all up - if it doesn't, it's not working.

If you do go in to check, only one profile needs to be there, and that's the one describing the actual and current response of the monitor. The profile is a map, and like any map it needs to describe the actual terrain.

Most problems people get with calibration, is that they do something when they shouldn't.

Note that if the profile is changed on system level, you have to relaunch Photoshop. It loads the profile at application startup, and keeps using that profile for the remainder of the session.

Zesty_wanderlust15A7

Known Participant

Re. "You should normally not need to go into that Windows dialog at all, much less "add" any profiles."

Yet there is plenty room and option to add a list of profiles one may use frequently, so this should simply work for the one that is activated as the default. It now did not, even if it was the only one.

I do need a new monitor and calibrator...

I have an old X-rite i1 display 2 and tried if it still kind of did its job. (I know they recommend to replace it every two years...) As I'm mostly "tinkering around," it's not been that critical to me, but I want to have an optimal monitor soonish.

The software for my calibrator at least claims it's doing fine and it does make the profile well, I think. Yes, it puts it in the correct place, but that's how the problem started. Suddenly a red car was orange and I had washed out colors.

I have of course restarted the whole PC many times. My point is it did work all the time before that, with profiles I also created with it (although I had been slacking).

When I'm able to select that new profile as described above, things do look improved (color cast fixed), so I think the profile is fairly fine, but there is a Windows bug. Again, many reports out there about people suddenly getting washed out colors.

I've read up again on my old stuff and may do one last calibration later in advanced mode as one should (couldn't find my RGB controls before, now I have).

http://web.archive.org/web/20140528131715/www.imagescience.com.au/kb/questions/86/How+to+use+an+Eye+One+Display+calibrator

(I know you can pick settings acc. to what you do most, but it's a great tut for my specific software and calibrator)

NB, colourmanagement

Community Expert

In case anyone else has this issue here's an explanation of a test that may help and often does:

display profile issues on Windows

Here's something to try

It'll only take a few minutes and is good troubleshooting.

At least once a week on this forum we read about this, or very similar issues of appearance differing between colour managed applications.

Of course you must not expect accurate colour with programs such as early versions of Windows "Photos”*, because in those early versions colour management is not implemented, so, such programs are incapable of providing accurate image display.

*Windows "Photos” does do colour management now and has for a while, but beware early versions and other apps that are non colour management compliant.

Unfortunately, with Microsoft hardware: Windows updates, Graphics Card updates and Display manufacturers have a frustratingly growing reputation for automatically installing useless (corrupted) monitor display profiles.

I CAN happen with Macs but with far less likelihood, it seems.]

The issue can affect different application programs in different ways, some not at all, some very badly.

The poor monitor display profile issue is hidden by some applications, specifically those that do not use colour management, such as Microsoft Windows "Photos".

Photoshop is correct, it’s the industry standard for viewing images, in my experience it's revealing an issue with the Monitor Display profile rather than causing it. Whatever you do, don't ignore it. As the issue isn’t caused by Photoshop, please don’t change your Photoshop ‘color settings’ to try fix it.

To find out if the monitor display profile is the issue, I recommend you to try temporarily setting the monitor profile for your own monitor display under “Device” in your Windows ‘color management’ control panel to “sRGB IEC61966-2.1”. (If you have a wide gamut monitor display (check the spec online) it’s better to try ‘AdobeRGB1998” here instead as it more closely approximates the display characteristics).

Click ‘Start’, type color in the search box,

then click Color Management.

[or Press the Windows key + R, type colorcpl in the box and press Enter]

In the Devices tab, ensure that your monitor is selected in the Device field.

You can click to ADD to add “sRGB IEC61966-2.1” (or AdobeRGB1998) if not already listed there.

Again - IF you have a wide gamut display I suggest trying “AdobeRGB1998”

Once it’s selected, be sure to check “Use my settings for this device” up top.

And click on “set as Default Profile - bottom right

Screenshot of Color Management Control Panel

Quit and relaunch Photoshop after the control panel change, to ensure the new settings are applied.

Depending on the characteristics of your monitor display and your requirements, using sRGB or Adobe RGB here may be good enough - but no display perfectly matches either, so a custom calibration is a superior approach.

If this change to the Monitor Display profile temporarily fixes the appearance issue, it is recommended that you should now calibrate and profile the monitor properly using a calibration sensor like the i1display pro, which will create and install its own custom monitor profile. The software should install its profile correctly so there should be no need to manually set the control panel once you are doing this right.

I hope this helps

neil barstow, colourmanagement net - adobe forum volunteer - co-author: 'getting colour right'

google me "neil barstow colourmanagement" for lots of free articles on colour management

roberts82307609Author

Participant

Ok, this is all making sense now. I wouldn't have made the connection with the monitor profile because of how Acrobat was seemingly displaying the correct colors, but now I'm understanding how the interaction between the programs and the profiles differ.

Always better to understand a problem than to just resolve it with someone else's solution, so thanks all for the insight and education.

Looks like it's finally time to invest in some calibration tools that I've been putting off.

davescm

Community Expert

Acrobat should be displaying exactly the same as the other apps but has had a long standing bug on Windows that still exists, where it does use the document profile but assumes the monitor is sRGB. I reported it a couple of years ago and it has not been addressed.

Dave

roberts82307609Author

Participant

It's ironic that bug made it seem like the only app that was displaying properly in my situation.

jane-e

Community Expert

@roberts82307609

There is a reason you kept reading to do it in Bridge. If you create settings in each individual application, the settings may or may not be synched. If you do it in Bridge, the settings apply to the other applications. You have to do it once, and the settings are synched. The thing to look for is the icon. In the image below, there are two icons at the bottom. The one on the right is broken and shows the settings vary. The one on the left shows that they are all the same. You want to see the icon on the left.

https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/keeping-colors-consistent.html

Also, be sure to read Dave's answer one more time. What you did was a test. Now you need to proceed with his final paragraph.

Jane

davescm

Correct answer

Community Expert

Hi

Changing to the sRGB profile is not showing accurate colour but it is not as inaccurate as your previous, broken, profile. Yes , sometimes broken profiles are delivered with system updates.

The monitor profile is a description of the way your particular monitor with its current adjustments (such as brightness and contrast) display colour. Colour managed applications use that profile to translate the colour values in the document to those being sent to the display, in order to show as accurate colour as possible within the limitations of a particular monitor. If the monitor profile is incorrect then the display colour is incorrect. So whilst using the sRGB profile looks better than before, and confirms the old profile was indeed broken, accurate colour display requires a monitor profile that describes your particular monitor in its current state. The only real way to create such a profile is with a hardware calibration and profiling device such as those made by Calibrite which have superceded the older i1Display devices.

Dave

roberts82307609Author

Participant

Changing to the sRGB IEC61966-2.1 profile totally worked! Will I run into any issues leaving that as my monitor profile? And what would've broken the profile in the first place, a Windows update?

Thank you so much, I've been pulling my hair out trying to resolve this.

D Fosse

Community Expert

And what would've broken the profile in the first place, a Windows update?

By @roberts82307609

Many monitor (and laptop) manufacturers distribute profiles through Windows Update. It's not the Windows update in itself, but the bundled manufacturer profiles. These manufacturer profiles are surprisingly often defective in various ways.

Just make it a habit to look over the optional Windows updates before running them. If you see a monitor profile in there, disable that update, and it shouldn't come up again.

The Windows default monitor profile, if no other profile is installed, is sRGB IEC61966-2.1.

But just to be clear, yes, the real fix for this is to use a calibrator to make a new profile.

davescm

Community Expert

It sounds like an issue with your monitor profile which is set in your operating system. All those applications are colour managed and use the monitor profile to correctly display colours (although if the profile is broken then they will display incorrectly). Acrobat is colour managed but there is an issue where it does not use the system monitor profile but assumes sRGB. That is why Acrobat may look OK.

As a test, can you type Color Management in the Windows search bar. In the dialogue that opens try setting sRGB IEC61966-2.1 as the default monitor profile (you may have to click Add first and choose it from the list). When done close the dialogue and open Photoshop. Is the display better?

If so, the right answer is to install a monitor profile for your monitor made with a calibration & profile device such as those from i1.

Dave

Rockalot

Participant

I can confirm, I was having the exact same issue and it was the colour profile my new monitors decided they should use for each program. Infuriating! Thank you so much for this.

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