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mrcmueller
mrcmueller
Participant
March 22, 2019
Question

Photoshop Displaying colors differently

  • March 22, 2019
  • 1 reply
  • 398 views

Hey guys,

wonder what is going on. PS seems to display colors wrong and it does it since a long time. Never understood why and I want to get rid of it. Would be nice if you could help me out.

Example

The color I picked in this example was RGB 90 0 255 as you can see here:

I used Pixlin to measure the color I get displayed inside Photoshop:

As you can see it gives me RGB 92 15 253 (mouse invisible when I do screenshots). Not just in the "working area", also in the photoshop color picker itself.

I also wanted to know which color I get when I open the saved image in windows. In windows after saving it, it is...

...RGB 90 0 251

Not the same, but closer to the intended color.

Additional info:

I worked with a 16bit tif file, but the same issue appears when I work with 8bit and normal PSD...

Here my color settings:

Thanks,

Marcus

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    1 reply

    davescm
    Community Expert
    davescmCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    March 22, 2019

    Hi

    Those RGB values have to be taken in the context of a colour space. So a particular set of numbers will represent different colours in different color spaces and similarly the same colour will be represented by different numbers in different color spaces.

    So the first numbers 90, 0, 255 are in the context of your document colour space. That may be the same as your default working space or it may not.

    The second numbers look like they have been picked up from the screen so, as Photoshop uses the monitor profile to send values to the screen,  will be on the context of your monitor profile.

    The third numbers, from Windows, depend on whether you are using a color managed viewer (most are not). Again, it looks like you are picking them up from the screen so a colour managed application will be sending them using the monitor profile, a non colour managed application will just be sending numbers to the screen without any context (i.e displaying incorrectly).

    Dave

      mrcmueller
      mrcmuellerAuthor
      Participant
      March 22, 2019

      Hey Dave,

      thanks for your detailed answer! Helped me a lot to start researching from that.

      About the "second numbers": I could immediatly check and you were right. I knew I calibrated my monitor via eyeballing method, but since other applications didn´t behave like photoshop I thought for a long time the calibration changes the colors without me being able to notice/measure and the issue is on PS side. After you told me I went into C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color and renamed the profile for test purpose and after restarting PS the "issue" was gone.

      For the other things they sound correct also and understandable, but still I am going to research a little more to understand better.

      Do you maybe have some great resources to share?

      Thanks anyways and have a great day,

      Marcus

      davescm
      Community Expert
      davescmCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      March 22, 2019

      Hi

      In a colour managed application, such as Photoshop, there is a conversion between the document profile, which provides the context for those colour values we discussed earlier and the screen profile, which describes how your screen will display colour. For accuracy, it essential that the screen profile describes your particular monitor screen.

      In setting up a monitor there are two steps - first a calibration - setting the screen to your requirements or to a standard, and second the profiling - which prepares a profile describing the screen that can be used by a colour managed application. Both these steps are carried out by a hardware and software profiling package.

      In preparing a document , the document profile should be embedded in the document so that, when sent to another colour managed application the correct conversion can take place.

      You may find the following background reading useful:

      ColorWiki - The Color of Toast

      Color Management

      Dave

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