Photoshop (and other color-managed programs) stuck using wrong monitor profile in Windows 10

[chupacabracobra]

For some reason any program that relies on Windows to tell it what monitor profile to use is stuck using one of my native wide gamut mode profiles I made for one of the custom calibration modes of my Dell monitor instead of using the monitor profile that I set in Windows color management to be the default for this display which I currently have in a custom calibrated REC709 Gamma 2.4 mode.

I have the correct monitor profile for the current mode my monitor is in set in Windows. I've tried re-booting, latest updates, etc. reset and reset it to that profile, removed all profiles, reset it to that one again, nothing helps.

So every inage I view with an Adobe product looks sickly since Windows keeps telling everything that the default profile is the one I made for the wide gamut mode of my Dell display even though I am in the REC709 custom calibration mode now and have the profile for that set in Windows as the default.

And every image I view in a web browser that has a color profile associated with it also looks sickly now.

The only things that work are programs that let you manually select your monitor's profile, so if I go to force Irfanview to use a specific profile then it works or FastPicViewer works if I tell it what to use. If I tell Resolve what my monitor profile is manually I can force it to work too.

How can Microsoft keep breaking this? Why do they even need to fiddle with whatever code sends out the link to the current default set profile? Why would they even need to change that single line of code? And how can they apparently keep re-breaking it again and again in various OS versions recently?

And why in the world does Adobe not let you manually chose a monitor profile like a lot of other special software and force you to be at the whim of the OS??

The weird thing is I almost feel like it broke as soon as I updated all my Adobe stuff to the new next year's versions. Although the problem is system wide. Not sure if Adobe broke W10 somehow. Or maybe there was some W10 update I did around the same time that broke it.

Is there any way to force Adobe products to use the monitor profile you want?

I find various other references to the exact same issue such as here (in this case with W11 Dc21-Jan22):

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-discussions/photoshop-referencing-wrong-monitor-p...

[Mark.Dahm]

@chupacabracobra ,The Windows update (or Ps version update) broke a back door patch that was in place previously to support icc color workflows in PS. Please manually check 'Use legacy display icc color management' in the Ps app properties on the compatibility Tab (see below). Adobe will work with MS to bump support in the OS to the current version of Ps.

In addition to this, the new HDR system in Windows is not supported in Photoshop. While it's unclear to me at the moment whether you need to turn off HDR in Windows to avoid problems in Ps, I would say try that if you continue to run into issues even with the .icc option selected.

[chupacabracobra]

Thanks,

I don't see such an option under compatability settings though, I only see the first few boxes, nothing about running .icc legacy.

Maybe that is a Windows 11 only thing? I'm on Windows 10.

[chupacabracobra]

I tried disabling CalibrationLoader and I1ProfilerTray from startup, didn't help.

Tried all sorts of things.

Finally I went to Windows/System32/Spool/Drivers/Color and (after backup up elsewhere first) the other three monitor profiles for my monitor (including the offending one that Windows 10 kept telling programs was default even though it was NOT the one set to default in Windows). And then it suddenly started working and now Photoshop shows Monitor RGB as the proper REC709 one for my monitor that is set to default. However, one really should not have to delete other monitor profiles to get it to send the proper selected one.

At least it is a temp workaround until whatever went wrong gets fixed. Not sure if a Windows 10 patch bothced it up or if something during the install of the new next year's versions of Adobe software somehow messed up the system a bit.