ICC Profile Invalid Error Message in Color Settings - Photoshop CC 2019 / 2020

[Linkzero]

My machine is XPS 15 9560 with wide-gamut display, and OS is Windows 10 2004.

Each time I attempt to alter ANY settings in the Color Settings (Ctrl-Shift-K) dialogue, or try to assign profile, I get an error message saying "Could not complete your request because the icc profile description is invalid". See attached screenshot.

I tried to do a clean install of Photoshop and the issue persists.

I also tried the solution in this post, but it didn't work : https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop/the-embedded-icc-profile-cannot-be-used-because-the-icc-pro... 

Is anyone experiencing similar issue and / or has a solution to this specific issue?

[D Fosse]

It turns out that this message can come up if your monitor profile is defective/corrupt/invalid. That's actually very likely in your case, because Dell is notorious for distributing bad monitor profiles through Windows Update.

Do not change anything in Color Settings! In particular, never, ever, set Color Management Policies to "off". This will quickly get you into very serious trouble and IMO this option should simply be removed. There is no use for it and the potential damage is substantial. Photoshop's whole architecture revolves around functional color management.

If this laptop has a wide gamut display, you simply need to get a calibrator. End of discussion. No wide gamut display should ever be sold without one, and the vendors should either include it or inform their customers up front. Dell has never done either.

In the meantime, you can substitute the current bad Dell profile with Adobe RGB. It will not be accurate, but it will allow you to work. This is a system setting and you do it in Windows > Color Management > Devices.

Note that the wide gamut display will never display correctly in applications that don't support color management. That's a property of the display and there's nothing you can do about it. It will always be oversaturated on standard sRGB material. You need to use color managed software only. This is the deal you implicitly accept when purchasing such a unit.

This screenshot is intended for standard gamut screens, but with a wide gamut unit use AdobeRGB instead of sRGB:

[Linkzero]

Thanks for the reply.

I already tried to set AdobeRGB (1998) icc as default in lieu of those come with Dell PremierColor, but PS still pops up this error message.

The interesting thing is that while PS fails, Illustrator and InDesign work fine and correctly map the color to the assigned profile.

[NB, colourmanagement net]

It seems you may have a corrupted dsplay profile so I suggest you try this: 

Display profile issues on Windows

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

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

The issue can affect different applications 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 that causing it. Whatever you do, don't ignore it. As the issue isn’t caused by Photoshop, don’t change your Photoshop ‘color settings’ to try fix it. 

If you want to rule out pretty much the only issue we ever see with Photoshop, you can reset preferences, I never read of a preferences issue causing this problem though:

To reset the preferences in Photoshop: 

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/preferences.html

Note: Make sure that you back up all your custom presets, brushes & actions before restoring Photoshop's preferences. Migrate presets, actions, and settings

To find out if this is the issue, I recommend you to try setting the monitor profile for your own monitor display under “Device” in your Windows ‘color management’ control panel to sRGB. You can ADD sRGB if its not already listed. 

And be sure to check “Use my settings for this device”.

(OR, if you have a wide gamut monitor display (check the spec online) it’s better to try Adobe RGB instead).

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

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

Depending on the characteristics of your monitor display and your requirements, using sRGB or Adobe RGB here may be good enough - but custom calibration is a superior approach.

I hope this helps

if so, please "like" my reply and if you're OK now, please mark it as "correct", so that others who have similar issues can see the solution

thanks

neil barstow, colourmanagement.net :: adobe forum volunteer

[please do not use the reply button on a message in the thread, only use the one at the top of the page, to maintain chronological order]

[D Fosse]

I thought that's what I just said?