Photoshop changing embedded profile from adobe 1998 to adobe 1998 (8bpc) which turns red to green?

[heidilouw]

I have a somewhat frustrating issue in my photoshop and hoping someone can assit and point me in the right direction? When I export a tiff file from capture one, with icc profile set to adobe (1998) and open it in adobe; the icc profile changes to adobe (1998) (8bpc) which turns my reds into a green hue? I have never heard of this profile and no matter what I try, adobe keeps 're-setting to this profile? What am I missing in my colour management settings? I have not changed anything except that i am now working on adobe 2024 (release 25), capture one 23 (build 16.2.5.9), wacom intuous pro and an M2 macbook which is running on ventura 13.6 . In the screen shots you can see my destination and source files are both adobe 1998. I have also included my colour settings (all seems normal?). Attached is also a side by side of the colour difference between capture one and adobe? When I opened the same psd file in adobe again - it converted the profile to the green tinted image and stripped the reds, eventhough i have embedded the adobe 1998 profile into the file? Please see the screen recording - you can see the colour profile at the bottom remains the same? I must be missing something but just do not know what? Or si this a bug that has crept inn somewhere? Another strange thing that happens is that my file sometimes turns grey while working in photoshop? All the layers are still there and active and I can see the thumbnail and all colour layers etc, but it jumps to that every now and again? When I click the layers panel in the gray area, everything appears again and I can see the image.(see attached screen shot) 

I have reset my preferences already in the hopes that this would solve the issue, but it did not work. Would appreciate some feedback as this is mighty frustrating and is disrupting my workflow and making me worry that my end files will not show the correct colour as intended? Please help?...

[D Fosse]

8bpc = 8 bits per channel. It has nothing to do with the profile.

It's either a defective/wrong monitor profile or GPU bug. What monitor profile have you set up? Are you using a calibrator to make it, or is it just a stock profile?

What display make/model? Do you have multiple displays?

How does it look if you disable the GPU in PS preferences?

[heidilouw]

Ah! Ok - I was wondering what that was - thanks for clarifying bpc!

I forgot to add my monitor - it's an Eizo CG277 display (self callibrating).

Disabling the GPU helped to sort out the colour change! Thank you so much!

[D Fosse]

OK. There's a thing you should do in ColorNavigator (I have Eizo CGs myself). It's set to make version 4 and table-based (LUT) monitor profiles by default. Both are known to cause problems under some circumstances, probably because these profiles are rather big and complex.

Go into Preferences in ColorNavigator and change it to version 2 and matrix-based profiles (below). In ColorNavigatr, the latter is called Gamma value (EOTF) (which means electro-optical transfer function). The rest of us call it matrix profiles.

V2 matrix is always a much safer choice with much less problems. LUT profiles are in theory more accurate than matrix profiles, but that's largely academic. Matrix is more than good enough.

When you've done that, reprofile the display, and relaunch Photoshop so that it can load the new profile.

Then turn the GPU back on and try again. You really don't want to have the GPU permanently off, it cripples Photoshop in many ways and is mainly diagnostic, to confirm where the problem is.

[heidilouw]

Thank you so much! I changed the settings in my colour navigator, switched the GPU back on in photoshop and re-callibrated my eizo. Weirdly, it takes about 2seconds for the colour to update in photoshop though... it shifts from the green hue to what I am now hoping is the correct tone? Hopefully this has done the trick?;) Thank you so much for your help!

[D Fosse]

Good, we're getting there. Apparently there's still a small issue with profile loading, but that has to be an OS/GPU issue (the two are the same thing in MacOS).

Historically, there have been some glitches with external displays in iMacs and MBPs that have integrated displays "taking over" display color management. This does sound like something similar. It has come up intermittently for many years. What triggers it I don't know.

[heidilouw]

I thought the issue was solved, but now my images have a faded look, with my blacks washed out in photoshop  ....not sure if I now messed things up by re-callibrating? I am also re-installing an older version to see if it may be that the lastest version is the issue? On my older iMac all seems fine. I'm running Photoshop 24 on that one.

[heidilouw]

Downgrading unfortunatley did not work either.

[D Fosse]

You never "mess up" by recalibrating. You should always do that at regular intervals anyway.

The important thing to remember is that Photoshop loads the monitor profile at application startup. It loads the profile it gets from the operating system. It just asks "give me the monitor profile, OS", and the OS answers "sure, here it is". That profile will be used for the remainder of that session.

So if you change the monitor profile at system level, you must always relaunch Photoshop. That is true for every color managed application, not just Photoshop.

When you open ColorNavigator and pick a different calibration target, it not only changes the monitor's behavior accordingly, it also changes to the corresponding monitor profile at system level. Again, the conversation goes, "hey, OS, I have a new default monitor profile for you". And the OS answers, "Right. I'll replace it for you".

And then Photoshop starts up, and it gets the new profile when it asks for it.

Every calibration target has a corresponding profile. That corresponding profile is a map of that specific monitor behavior.

To sum up: the monitor profile has one job, and one job only: it is a description, or a map, of the monitor's current and actual behavior. If that behavior changes, the profile is invalidated and a new one needs to be made, describing the new behavior. Like a map needs to describe the actual terrain, the profile needs to describe the actual monitor behavior.

---

Now, the actual conversion into the monitor profile, the math and the calculations, that's done in the GPU these days. If the profile is slightly off, the GPU may choke on it. Conversely, if there's a small bug in the GPU code, the process may stall on a good profile. The GPU driver and the monitor profile need to work together. If one of them is off, the conversion goes bad, and Photoshop cannot display correctly. In this interface between profile and GPU it can sometimes be difficult to tell which is causing problems.

[heidilouw]

Thank you so much - yeah - I restarted the machine after making all changes to both photoshop and the eizo settings. According to the supplier that sold me the display; my eizo, my macbook and my photoshop are not "in sync" i.t.o. icc profiles and this is what is probably causing my issues ... I am sure it's just a click of a button away, but I have been racking my brain and feeling like I am completely missing something very obvious somewhere?

May I ask what your display settings are on both the macbook, eizo and photoshop colour settings? There must be something set incorrectly on my system ...

My macbook display is set to promotion refresh rate (just noticed it now when checking...shouldn't it be set to 60hertz?) and the colour profile settings is Apple XDR Display (P3-1600nits). True tone and automatically adjust brightness are also selected - not sure if it even has an effect on the eizo, as the screen runs through colour navigator 7 as far as I know?

[D Fosse]

"According to the supplier that sold me the display; my eizo, my macbook and my photoshop are not "in sync" i.t.o. icc profiles"

That's just another way of saying "I don't know what the heck I'm talking about". Nothing has to be in sync. The profiles just need to be correctly treated.

But here's a red hot smoking gun:

"the colour profile settings is Apple XDR Display (P3-1600nits). "

That's the last setting you want to have! That's for HDR output which the Eizo isn't even capable of. HDR display is a new thing where blacks are pit black and the white point is brighter than a thousand suns. 1600 cd/m² is blindingly bright! It's for movies and video, totally inapproriate for print-oriented work. The Eizo isn't capable of more than around 160 cd/m² at most, but for most normal working environments, 120 should be about right.

And in fact, there's a double problem here. This is MacOS interfering and getting in the way of Eizo ColorNavigator. This should all be handled in ColorNavigator, not in MacOS. You need to set MacOS to a neutral, photo-based setting, and take it all from there. Throw away all your previous profiles and make new ones. The monitor profile made by ColorNavigator should come up as an option in MacOS. That's the one you want to choose. Ignore all the Apple settings.

I'm on Windows, and I've never had any of these problems. Windows doesn't interfere. Everything I've said here is just because I'm very familiar with how this works and I know the underlying functions very well.

[heidilouw]

I managed to figure things out and solved my issue! It took a bit of thinking back to what changed on my macbook in the last wee and what was the variable' (as the colour in photopshop on my macbook was working fine the week before, I realised it must be either an app or third party plugin that is causing the issue?).  Dropbox was one of the last items I installed and it dawned on me; that this is also when my colour issues appeared!

So I did a complete fresh install of my OS and am also now running on Sonoma. (In case anyone is wondering - I was a naa-na face and forgot to take my time machine to the apple store....otherwise I would have just asked them to revert my sytem back to a week ago!). After the upgrade, I re-installed all my programs, except dropbox ... and tadaaaa, colour is back as it was. If I swop from my iMac to my macbook pro with my eizo screen - the colour is excatly the same on both systems(one runs on Montery and the macbook now running on Sonoma)!

I'll contact Dropbox today and notify them that they would need to look into this with adobe? I am just grateful that my issue has been solved by removing the variable that changed in the last week. Very relieved! Hope this helps anyone else with colour issues.