Insane Color Management Issues Photoshop CC + DisplayCal

Dave and I posted simultaneously. Between us you should be able to figure this out

Ayy I'm back. Sorry I've been away for a few days. I was focusing on finals, finishing my college career, and yesterday was the last day of my most-recent internship.

I've read through the entire thread again and did some more research on the side. I would like to clear a few things up:

• The image viewers I'm using pass the WhackedRGB tests. WhackedRGB is a color space that is intentionally sabotaged so that the image looks like garbage (really blue-purple) instead of normal when it's opened in a viewer that doesn't honor the embedded profile. I'm assuming that there's not much else to it, but let me know if that's wrong.
• I don't really expect non-color-managed viewers to display colors 100% correctly, but if they're treating the color space as sRGB and the image was created/edited/exported with sRGB as the working space, then surely the image would be represented somewhat accurately. Let me know if that's entirely wrong. This might not apply to other color-spaces.
• For my purposes I only really care about working in the sRGB space because it's standard, popular and my monitor covers close to 100%, compared to other spaces.
• I took those screenshots using ShareX, I don't know why one would have the profile and the other wouldn't. I took them the same way.
• sRGB IS a standardized color space. The S literally stands for standard.
• I truly desire being able to view an image - for example - with a solid color red (255,0,0 #FF0000) and the pixels on my monitor to display 100% red sub-pixels and 0% green/blue, plus the additional correction applied when the monitor was calibrated and profiled. I want this to apply to viewing images with a color-managed viewer, when editing in photoshop, and when exporting a final product. In my 'dream' workflow there should be no visual discrepancies. I feel like this is actually supposed to be normal and it shouldn't be a 'dream,' but alas, for whatever reason I can view an image using a color-managed viewer and open it in Photohsop with the recommended color settings and they are far from similar. There's no comparison. Since color is mathematical at a point, there's really no reason in my mind that they can't be exactly the same.

I've made and uploaded a video showcasing the inconsistencies (Sorry, It somehow came out to 29 mins): Color Management Issues In Photoshop CC 2019 - YouTube

Also here's a fantastic - albeit 1hr long video - from a video editor regarding lots of color correction issues and questions. I heavily relate to the way he feels in this video: How the hell does color correction work?? Mega reverse tutorial - YouTube

Although initially I assumed that the issue was localized within PS, I'm starting to question the settings I'm using to correct and profile the display with.

I have a feeling that DisplayCal is creating a correction and a profile properly, but something about it doesn't work with Photoshop. It works everywhere else though. As far as I can tell, the colors in just about everything else like After Effects, Bridge, my image-viewers, the desktop, everything (except some places in Firefox Chrome and the default Windows 10 image viewer) look amazing on this Asus VG248QE look amazing, especially when calibrated.

There's also a possibility that from the research I've done and the discussion in this thread, that I've completely misunderstood what 'Color Management' really means. Perhaps it's an additional layer above using a color calibrated monitor and embedded color profiles, and it's actually for additional accuracy that only works with color-managed applications (which might actually be rare contrary to my assumptions). In which case, 'color management' might not be right for me. I want my images to look similar/ the same on as many other devices as possible without assuming that my audience uses rare color-managed image viewers. Most newer monitors are being calibrated in-factory before QC and before they reach the customer. so as long as my monitor has an updated correction, then surely any image I create and send out to the world will look relatively similar.

I'm going crazy.

I'm fairly confident that all of this is just the normal difference between color managed software and non color managed software. The apps that Chillstice assumes are color managed probably aren't, or they aren't properly configured to be.

Assuming you have a valid monitor profile, and assuming the file has an embedded document profile, Photoshop is right. That's what the file really looks like. Other applications that don't agree are wrong, because they don't color manage correctly.

The original RGB numbers need to be remapped into the monitor color space to display correctly. If that doesn't happen, the file displays incorrectly. This remapping requires a) an embedded document profile, b) a valid monitor profile, and c) a color managed application that converts from one into the other.

That's color management summed up. It's not difficult, it just has to be there.

> If my assumption that color correcting a monitor brings it within a standardized specification and that images should appear similar across color-accurate devices is wrong, then what are we even doing?

That's pretty much exactly what it's for. But you have made a huge leap to expecting non-colour managed apps to work as well. This is the point at which we are so much in disagreement, and it's in trying to reach this that everything is going to the dogs.

> I still can't fathom why I can't achieve this anymore.

Did you buy a new monitor (or laptop)?

> Shouldn't all designers that do color work strive for consistency?

Yes, and they get it, where it is expected to work (colour managed apps. Only).

> Let me know if I'm wrong, but I feel as if I'm being talked-down to in this thread

Well, we know that colour management works, and we often hear from people who assert it doesn't. So it does come down to technicalities, but we need - I'm afraid to sound patronising - to find exactly what you are doing wrong, because the alternative is to say that colour management doesn't work and the industry and ourselves have been imagining things. And indeed, the person seeking colour accuracy by and large stays in Photoshop, because it shows what is right, rather than working through a catalog of other viewers: if the viewer looks like a correctly set up Photoshop it's right, and if it doesn't it's wrong.

Here's something: You write

> Using the preset rainbow gradient, apply the gradient from corner to corner and look at the preview:

>     Here's what the preview looks like (accurate):

What is this "preview" of which you speak? The accurate colour is what you see when you edit in Photoshop, which isn't a preview, it's the thing itself. Do you mean something else by "preview" (this might be getting us somewhere)?

All I really want is the old Photoshop experience, before I even started looking into color correction and color management. A time where I could drop images in Photoshop, the preview is identical to the input, and the export is exactly as the preview. Ever since I started down the rabbit hole it's been causing me issues.

If my assumption that color correcting a monitor brings it within a standardized specification and that images should appear similar across color-accurate devices is wrong, then what are we even doing?

If an sRGB image that's just 100% Red 255,0,0 #FF0000 can't appear the same between color managed image viewers and Photoshop, then although something might not be 'broken', something is really truly broken.

I still can't fathom why I can't achieve this anymore. Before, when I was ignorant of color correction and color-management - although the colors might not have been accurate - at least they were consistent and I knew what I was getting.

Shouldn't all designers that do color work strive for consistency? Isn't that why web-designers still use sRGB religiously, because it's the lowest-common denominator between browsers and devices?

Let me know if I'm wrong, but I feel as if I'm being talked-down to in this thread. I'm understanding what everyone's trying to say, but I'm struggling with the technicalities.

Here's an experiment I'm running:

1. Open PS and create a new 1000x1000px RGB document using the following color settings:

2. Using the preset rainbow gradient, apply the gradient from corner to corner and look at the preview:

     Here's what the preview looks like (accurate):

3. Save the image as a PNG with default settings and medium compression (my normal workflow with pngs)

     Here's what the final image looks like (accurate):

From this test I gleam that the saved file has the intended, standardized colors and they're displayed properly in un-color-managed and color-managed programs alike, however; the preview in PS is vastly different which is dangerous. Using the Proof colors set to Monitor RGB does somewhat make it look like the output, but not exactly.

I would like to use these settings and use this workflow for the most part, but I still don't understand why the preview in PS is so vastly different.

I understand the theory behind color-correcting a monitor, and I somewhat understand the color-management theory, but this is just beyond me. Does anyone know what's happening here and possibly how to alleviate it?

Am I messing something up big-time?

Here's my Devices tab for reference:

From what I'm understanding by reading through this thread: The color management in Photoshop is operating as intended and my color management workflow - for the most part - is correct.

I have a hard time understanding this because it seems extremely counter-intuitive that during the process of importing, editing, and saving an image through PS, the colors can appear dramatically different.

With sRGB set as the working profile and opening an untagged image, I can literally open the image, make absolutely no changes, save it to the same file format, and the two images look nothing alike when viewed in a color-managed viewer.

Is this intentional or am I still missing something?

Would anybody recommend a workflow that works with my initial goal in-mind.

Otherwise would it be better to go back to the days before color management when at least the colors were consistent?

Logically, I just can't work knowing that either the preview, or the final saved file/ export won't appear as originally intended. That seems like a nightmare and I have a hard time believing that's intentional at all.

Thanks for all your help.

Getting a bit more specific: I see your monitor profile name ends with "LUT+MTX" (look-up tables + matrix). I'd suggest making a simpler profile, this sound needlessly heavy and complicated. LUT profiles in particular are known to cause problems in many scenarios.

As long as you have a reasonably well-behaved monitor, a simple matrix is more than good enough.

Important: Proof to Monitor RGB disables all display color management. That can be useful for diagnostic purposes, but it's wrong and not to be used in any other situation.

It needs to be repeated (Dave mentioned it): Export has all color management disabled at default settings. It strips the document profile, and doesn't display using the monitor profile. You need to enable all of this manually (don't ask me why someone thought that was a good idea).

In Firefox you need to enable color management for untagged files. This is known as "mode 1". With this setting, Firefox assigns sRGB to all untagged material including html - allowing the normal color management chain to operate.

Another important point: the working space isn't important. The embedded profile is - it should always override the working space.

Summing up: there are no color management problems in Photoshop. But there may well be in other applications. As Chris Cox, former PS senior engineer, said it: "Color management isn't difficult. Other applications breaking it, that gets difficult".

Oh, BTW: never touch anything in the Windows color management "Advanced" tab. There's nothing useful there. Everything relevant for practical color management is in the "Devices" tab.

Just to be clear, the calibration part of this is not part of the color management chain. The calibration gets loaded into the video card LUT (or in high-end monitors, the monitor LUT) - and this obviously alters the monitor's characteristics globally, affecting everything.

The profile lives a separate life. It doesn't adjust anything, it's a description of the monitor in its calibrated state - used by color managed applications so that they can adjust the data they're sending out. It's a standard icc profile, used in a standard profile conversion.

The reason we're having these two separate processes, is that calibration, while a convenient and simple solution, has very low precision. You can't correct for irregularities in the monitor's tone response curve. You can't account for the position of the primaries - the size and shape of the monitor's native color space.

Theoretically, you could skip monitor calibration and just profile it. But calibration performs one very important function: it sets the environment for color management to work within. It defines what's white and what's black. Within that context, the profile just remaps document white to monitor white, without regard for what that white actually looks like.