Dull / washed out colors across programs

[roberts82307609]

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?

[davescm]

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]

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.

[roberts82307609]

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]

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 · Accepted solution]

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

[jane-e]

@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

[roberts82307609]

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]

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

[roberts82307609]

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

[NB, colourmanagement net]

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

 

[Signfeld]

[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]

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.

[Signfeld]

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+...

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

[D Fosse]

Yet there is plenty room and option to add a list of profiles one may use frequently,

By @Signfeld

Yes, but only one profile is the correct one. Again, the profile maps the monitor's current behavior, in its current calibrated state. If you use the wrong profile, Photoshop will also display wrong. You can't "experiment" with profiles.

You only need a list of profiles if you have several calibration targets you switch between - different white & black points for different output. Each calibration target has its own corresponding profile. When the monitor's behavior changes, the profile is invalidated and you need to make a new one describing the new behavior.

Yes, there's a lot of complaining on the internet, but 99.9% of it is based on misunderstandings. And software that doesn't support color management at all.

Bona fide bugs are very rare. Windows has been exceptionally reliable in this regard. There has been a history of bugs with BenQ software, and recently there's been a problem with Calibrite. But basically, this just works.

That said, i1 Display 2 is by now pretty old. It will not work reliably with LED or wide gamut panels.

[Signfeld]

Re. "You can't 'experiment' with profiles."

I think the sRGB is the only one that fixed my orange car to red again, but it is not a calibrated profile. So I'm happy I can also compare the old and the new calibrations and leave them there. It's how I could see the new one does seem best. I think this "trick" I found saved me from reinstalling Windows.

Re. "Bona fide bugs are very rare."

Possibly. My sense from my search is you are underestimating the problem. For this reason there are many pages that tell you how to hopefully solve it and reset everything color in Windows (pretty tiring). But this didn't help me.

BTW, I did accidentally screw around with Windows' own "Calibrate display" function. My initial sense was that "the bug" might be something set by this utility that it is not undoing, or that I don't know where to undo, although I suspect the total reset described on many pages should do so. I also suspect that deactivating it and having a profile should override whatever I did there, but maybe it doesn't or didn't...

"That said, i1 Display 2 is by now pretty old. It will not work reliably with LED"

It does seem designed for it (CRT, laptop, LED), although it could be marketing talk, but I've never seen reason to doubt that — unless my recent problems were it 😉

---

BTW, explain me some things on the side, please...

(1) Reading about new monitors, you often see how some are hardware calibrated, or self-calibrating, yet when I see tuts on that, people are still using a 3rd party calibrator. So it does not mean these monitors can somehow calibrate themselves...?

I thought the more expensive Eizos could calibrate themselves, and many others too. So do you still need an external (or 3rd party) calibrator for some, or for all?

Before HDR monitors came into my awareness, I was considering the BenQ SW270C. AFAIK, it's a "hardware calibrated display," yet I see people using 3rd party calibrators with it. Then what does it mean, "hardware calibrated display"...? Or does it mean you don't have to install software, but you do need a calibrator?

(2) Would this model suffer from bugs you've seen?  Do I need a certain calibration software version of a certain brand to do it properly?

(3) I'm kind of expecting the Adobe HDR stuff will gain at least some ground and I'd prefer a monitor that is good for it. I still have to study what's available or affordable, like on Greg's page:

https://gregbenzphotography.com/review-best-hdr-monitor-for-photography

OTOH, at first sight it seems a good/great one may still be too expensive, and I don't like too much brightness anyway (I use f.lux for everything besides PS related things. I quit f.lux before calibrating of course.).

Do you think this new HDR thing will remain a "gimmick," or might you want it too and is it wise to have such monitor now? My current one is only putting out 50 cd/m² anymore, so I can't wait till prices come down. (I've seen Glyn Dewis uses 60 cd/m² on purpose, so I'm still in the neighborhood)

P.S. My current monitor is a cheap Eizo FlexScan EV2436W with 43800 hours on it. It was probably "EOL" many years ago, and I never knew 😉  It's also been heavily taxed by f.lux turning it up and down all the time. If some browser had its own orange mode (addon), I would use that instead and not tax a new monitor with f.lux (OTOH, I'm not sure it is really taxing it by using physical components, or just fading into another LUT or the like). Or I could buy the protective glasses. The day I started using f.lux my eyesight improved dramatically soon, and closing in on 60 in a few years, I still don't need glasses for computer work. Bright screens when not needed sting my eyes — you just know they are damaging your eyes, or make them build up protection. In Photoshop or image viewers this is not an issue, as the overall view is usually much more balanced than a generally white screen.

P.S. 2

Included are my color management settings.

For normal use, I have my main display duplicated to a TV when watching YouTube, etc. I think I deactivated that or picked the correct display when calibrating. If not, maybe that could be a culprit in what happened...

[davescm]

A couple of comments. 

Self calibrating monitors such as high end Eizo's do have a built in calibration device that flips out and measures the screen. So they act the same way as using an external device.

Software such as f.lux which adjusts your monitor to the time of day invalidates any profile. A profile is a description of how your monitor displays when sent colour values. Anything that changes the state of the monitor since the profile was made, such as adjusting a manual monitor control or having software doing the same, makes the profile invalid as the monitor is no longer in the same state in which it was profiled.

Dave

[Signfeld]

Re. "Software such as f.lux which adjusts your monitor to the time of day invalidates any profile."

Yes, of course. I thought I had hinted enough I'm not using this for PS and photo viewers. You can set it per app if it will kick in or not. Seems Eizo has or used to have screenmanager software that could do this too, but it seems not available for my specific model. I desperately want to keep such function to protect my eyes, but also learn what would be the least taxing way for the monitor (f.lux, monitor built-in, or a browser with orange mode, ...) — maybe it all amounts to the same thing...

[D Fosse]

The Eizo EV 2436 was in fact a splendid monitor with a first rate panel. It would show any current Dell or BenQ where to set the bar. I had one myself, and it was what I told people to get if they wanted maximum quality for minimum budget.

Its main shortcoming was, and is, that it didn't support the Colornavigator software or hardware calibration in general. You had to calibrate it through the video card with third party software. As is still the case with most monitors.

So when my income started to improve I got into the Coloredge series, and that's where I've been since. And yes, some of these models do have a little calibration sensor that pops out from the bezel. It looks tiny and oddly out of place, but is reportedly a high grade colorimeter as good as any. Having several units, I still prefer to use an i1 Disply Pro for consistency. The Colornavigator software supports them all.

I would strongly advise to not shift screen brightness! Try to keep the environment stable instead. If you have to work in darkness vs. strong daylight, this is one case for separate calibration targets and corresponding profiles.

From your description it sounds like you just have brightness set too high. Do the paper white test! Paper white is what you should see on screen. That's pretty dim.

HDR isn't a gimmick as such, but it's important to establish where it has a purpose. And that purpose is screen only - either video or possibly internet if everybody watching also have HDR displays. If your workflow relates to printed output in any form, even just by association, then HDR will just violate all common references and make everything a mess.

[Signfeld]

"The Eizo EV 2436 was in fact a splendid monitor with a first rate panel. It would show any current Dell or BenQ where to set the bar. I had one myself."

Wow. Cool 🙂  I ran all the tests on the Eizo site some hours ago, and a few do not come out so well, so I'm set on a new one anyway. Or I'll decide after a proper "advanced" calibration.

"So when my income started to improve I got into the Coloredge series, and that's where I've been since."

That was my first thought, but it's really way too much with alternatives like the BenQ out there, and suspecting I may add a HDR 4K one when they are established at better prices.

Re. "I would strongly advise to not shift screen brightness!"

You mean to not use things like f.lux?  Intuitively I agree, as the constant up and down regulation in my mind may be wearing things out and/or may indeed cause instability.

OTOH, I can't live w/o it, and wearing orange glasses has too many drawbacks as well... I was therefore hoping if there is some browser I can set to orange somehow. I'm used to that and it doesn't bother me at all. If I could take off its brightness in ways, I would not have to literally have brightness dialed down by f.lux or the monitor itself. Using 3000K most of the day (on non-PS apps), I assume it does have to dial things down...

"From your description it sounds like you just have brightness set too high. Do the paper white test! Paper white is what you should see on screen. That's pretty dim."

I still have to recalibrate using "advanced" which will probably fix a few things.  I thought the fact that mine can only reach 48 candela anymore by definition would mean it's not bright enough...

I don't know how you can get "paper" when many tuts advise 100–120 candela. Luckily I saw Glyn's 60, who is very happy with that for his personal printing. My intention re. printing is just to be ok(great) when sending to a service bureau for "regular photos." When I did that many years ago, I was already very pleased with the result (and always asked to do no corrections).

"HDR isn't a gimmick as such [...]"

I have decided to not go for such monitor yet, although it does seem you can use it for everything. You of course don't use HDR versions when preparing for a print. As most seem to be 4K and I don't want to edit on 4K, I may later buy an established HDR 4K as an extra, helping to see how stuff looks on there and in HDR when I want to.

I now understand how some monitors can self-calibrate, but I'm still not clear on what the difference is with my monitor and one that boasts "hardware calibration."  Does it mean the software connects to the monitor's hardware instead of going via the video card?

[davescm]

Hardware calibration means that the calibration information (which is created before profiling) is loaded into the monitor itself rather than into the video card. The advantage is that the full communication bandwidth is retained between the video card and the monitor regardless of the calibration.

I use Eizo CS monitors (two CS2731s). They do not have built in calibration devices but use the same Color Navigator software as the CG monitors, abeit with the need to plug in a sensor (I use the i1 Display Pro).

The Navigator software allows calibration to various targets in terms of brightness and color, and when switching between them, both the hardware calibration data in the monitors and the associated monitor profile are both changed automatically.

I have mine set to 100cd/m2 and D65 for general editing with gamma 2.2 and native monitor RGB gamut. That suits my own environment. But I can easily switch to paper matched calibrations, or to video standards such as Rec.709 for different purposes. Up to 10 calibration/profile settings can be stored for each monitor, so you can set up a screen mode for typing and reading that is different to that you want to use for image editing.

The big thing with the Eizo monitors, aside from being 10 bit/channel for smooth gradients, is that they are uniform across the screen. Many cheaper monitors are not - just put up a uniform grey background and see what it looks like corner to corner. For my use, that ranks far higher than a need for HDR at present.

Dave

[D Fosse]

That's right. Panel uniformity is what separates the good, the bad and the ugly. That's a big part of what you pay for, or what you pay less for with the BenQs, the Dells, the Asuses, and, I might add, the iMacs.

In short, with an Eizo Coloredge you get what you pay for. That's not always the case, but it is here.

NEC is also up there, making superb monitors, but they shot their potential market share to pieces with some odd regional policies, not selling the same product the world over. It's hard to understand what they were thinking. Here in Europe the NEC Spectraviews were always crippled.

HDR is primarily a video technology. That's where it can be put to actual good use.

For photography, there is always that pesky little thing called a print, which just refuses to go away. For better or worse, any photographic workflow will have to take printing into consideration, and a dynamic range fit for paper and ink. That puts HDR totally out of the picture.

[Signfeld]

Re. "For better or worse, any photographic workflow will have to take printing into consideration, and a dynamic range fit for paper and ink. That puts HDR totally out of the picture."

> I've only seen Greg Benz work on a few and AFAIK you can just further develop your version for print to HDR if you want that for the web. It's not like you have to restart from scratch — it seemed simpler than I had anticipated. IIRC, make some selections and have your sliders go a little further (which they do in that mode).

The hassle seemed more that ideally you need a website system that shows a regular jpg to users whose browsers or screen can't yet display the .avif format.

IIRC, he also claimed it's one of the coolest breakthroughs in photography (or was it "in the last 20 years"?). So I think you will eventually want to look and play with that.  OTOH, and again, I'm not into looking at crazy brightness for too long. If it's just in the sun or the lights, then maybe it will be ok and not jack up the general brightness too much.

[D Fosse]

The point I'm trying to make about HDR is that it's not about how "cool" it would be. There's an actual brick wall here, and it's paper color and maximum ink. OK, that's two walls.

You can't make paper that lights up your room at night, and you can't make ink that reflects no light.

You can work with an HDR display if you like, but the result can never be printed in any form. Or if you do, it will look horrible and nobody will like it.

[Signfeld]

Thanks!

"[...] that they are uniform across the screen."

BenQ too seems to make a huge deal out of that.

I don't know how many "big names" are using BenQ w/o "special ties" yet. I do know of Glyn Dewis, Frank Doorhof, Joanna Kustra, ... which I'm hoping is going in the right direction. Seems Joanna won one and kept using it (then did some webinars for BenQ, so it might be shady). I don't see the two others as sleazy propagandists.

-

I haven't ordered one yet, so anyone feel free to warn me against it 😉