Photoshop not showing correct colors. Update after 3 weeks of troubleshooting.

[riccknl]

Hey PS community!

For those with the same problem; having Photoshop lifting black levels. As shown here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izYDPxoH-QM (Also happens with the default Adobe RGB 1998 profile)

Together with other artists we found out this only happens on Mac M2 chips, we tested with three different monitors (sRGB, DCI-P3, AdobeRGB), three different calibration tools (Spyder5, SpyderX, Calibrite Display SL) and three different Macs (M2 Studio Max 32, M2 Studio Max 64 and a M2 Mini Pro 16)

Which leaves us at the conclusion that the M2 chips and Photoshop causing this bug. Adobe Customer Service only thought that turning PS on/off without a monitor attached could fix the problem, but as this is quite hard to do with a M2 Max/Mini I am waiting until they fix this and considering other software in the meantime.

[D Fosse]

This would be interesting to see.

Can you post a small original file in Adobe RGB + a "wrong" screenshot + a "right" screenshot from a P3 monitor? Assign the monitor profile to the screenshots and convert it to Adobe RGB. Then they will be directly comparable and should ideally match.

Make the file small enough so that screenshots can be at 100%.

(Edited for a better and more reproducible procedure).

[NB, colourmanagement]

Hi

Please describe the issue.

I don't properly see the issue details in that movie demo here, I guess I wouldn't perhaps because it’s a screen capture - this process captures what's sent to the screen not what's shown on it.

My M2 Mac doesn’t have an issue, my black level does change between a custom display profile and, say Adobe RGB, but only in an expected way. 

I hope this helps
neil barstow, colourmanagement net - adobe forum volunteer - co-author: 'getting colour right'
google me "neil barstow colourmanagement" for lots of free articles on colour management
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[riccknl]

Hi both, thanks for replying 🙂

@NB, colourmanagement The problem is that my photographs, either NEF, JPG etc are getting lifted in the shadow/black values of the image in Photoshop. The youtube link also shows the slight elevation and 'muddiness' happening in the shadow areas on my iPad and iPhone which aren't color calibrated.

@D Fosse I added screenshots from ACR/PS compared. Also a image exported by ACR and one by PS, marked with PS left-upper corner. I had to bring back the P3 monitor because of the return period.

Adobe Customer Service keeps asking me to start a chat, but they abandon the chat without replying. But last night they sent me an email that it could be a problem with the M2 chips. Only to ask me once again to open up a chat.

[D Fosse]

What I see in these screenshots is channel clipping.

In example #1, ACR clips the red channel. The other two channels are unaffected.

In the jpeg, #3 shows blue channel clipping. The other two channels are unaffected.

This kind of channel clipping is historically typical of a bad/defective monitor profile - but here's the thing: the conversion into the monitor profile is executed in the GPU nowadays. That means a buggy GPU driver can throw the conversion off, and that's what I think happens here.

In other words, monitor profile <> GPU driver is very much two sides to the same coin now. A marginal profile can throw the GPU off, and a buggy driver can cause the profile to fail. Both need to be in good order.

The lighter shadows is the correct version.

I've doubled checked here and I'm not seeing this on Windows. ACR and Photoshop are absolutely identical in the dark values. So there's nothing inherent in Photoshop.

ACR won't work without the GPU now, but LrC does, so you could try to disable the GPU there and compare again.

[riccknl]

Ah, so channel clipping is the term, thanks!

Yeh and about the bad/defective profile; how could I try anything extra to solve this? As I tried v2/v4, matrix/lut and three different calibration tools with three different monitors? That also left me to the conclusion it had to do with the GPU driver. Too bad my friends and I saw this happening on three different M2 Macs as well..

But what really throws me of, is that this clipping also happens with the internal Adobe RGB1998 icc profile. While switching profiles, as seen in the YT video, you there is a fraction of a second where Photoshop shows the exact same tonality as in LR/ACR and every other application on my Mac.

I am curious what Adobe Customer Services will reply, as they also acknowledged this could be a problem with the M2 chips.

[D Fosse]

To be honest, I think this is an Apple problem. If you see the same thing with different profiles, different profile policies and different calibrators, that leaves Apple's GPU code/driver.

Try with Lightroom Classic, which shares the same color management code as ACR. Turn off the GPU in both LrC and PS, and compare again. Disabling the GPU shifts the display color management and profile conversion back to the CPU in the traditional way.

[riccknl]

I've been working in LRc for the past week and no problem there. Looks exactly the same as ACR. Must say that this whole hassle had me using LRc on a serious level -and I am completely surprised that it is such a powerful photo editing application. If Adobe and/or Apple can't help us out, I might try Affinity photo for compositing etc, at least for the time being 🙂

Turning off GPU in LRc/ACR/PS gives the same result as with GPU on. I will contact apple about this. @NB, colourmanagement Which OS are you using on your M2? I am on Sonoma 14.2 - I was wondering if Sonoma could be the culprit as my old Mac crashed after displaying GPU bugs for a while.

[D Fosse]

OK, then I don't know what this is - but again, that clipping does not look right, and and I'm very certain that the "lighter" Photoshop version is the correct representation.

[riccknl]

I checked the color channels and indeed saw that the blue's are clipped. Thanks for clarifying this! I will use all the info to send it to Adobe and Apple. As there already three Macs M2's having this problem that I know of, for sure there will be more people having this. But as it is also subtle enough I can imagine a lot of people not being aware of it. I have friends stare at the screen and go 'I don't really see it man, is this what you're laying awake from?'

I am also not sure about the 'ligther' version being the correct presentation seeing Photoshop is roughing things up pretty bad here. So I'll go with what LRc exports and make some test prints at my printer this week to see if it matches what I am seeing on my screen. I guess that was the whole point of getting an AdobeRGB monitor and calibrating it in the first place!

Thanks again for taking time to think with me and I'll keep you up2date about what Apple and Adobe say 🙂

[riccknl]

PS: FWIW, same thing happens with the a B/W gamma 2.2 photograph; looks detailed and rich in blacks in ACR and muddy and lifted in PS.

[NB, colourmanagement]

Hi @riccknl 

"@NB, colourmanagement net Which OS are you using on your M2? I am on Sonoma 14.2 - I was wondering if Sonoma could be the culprit as my old Mac crashed after displaying GPU bugs for a while."

Ventura here. I am far far from being an early adopter of new MacOS systems.

I hope this helps
neil barstow, colourmanagement net - adobe forum volunteer - co-author: 'getting colour right'
google me "neil barstow colourmanagement" for lots of free articles on colour management
Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here. "Upvote" is for useful posts.

[TheBeatnikHimself]

This does not happen in sRGB but not does in Adobe98 or any other color space. How could it be the GPU when it doesn't happen in sRGB?

[riccknl]

..and thanks for all the help btw, really appreciated!

[D Fosse]

It should be possible to figure out which is correct, at least.

Attached is an original file with Adobe RGB embedded. The file has lots of dark pixels but no clipping. All channels taper softly down to zero.

Try to duplicate these steps.

1 - Here's how the histogram looks when the original file is opened. The histogram is refreshed/uncached (important!) in all examples:

2 - Then I took a screenshot from Photoshop, assigned my monitor profile and converted back to Adobe RGB. This histogram is from the screenshot, not the original. Ideally, the histograms will now match again. For all practical purposes, they do:

3 - Then I opened the file in ACR, and did exactly the same as in 2:

The calibrator I'm using is Eizo ColorNavigator 7, version 2 matrix profile. The monitor here is an Eizo CG246.

Oh, and Photoshop is at 25.7, ACR 16.2, Windows 10.

[timk10691763]

I have the same exact problem. Any news on this?

Thanks

/Tim

[D Fosse]

Run the procedure I described directly above your post. This will determine what the correct appearance on screen should be. The immediate impulse is to assume the high-contrast version is correct, but in fact it's usually the opposite. Higher contrast often indicates excessive/incorrect clipping.

We've seen quite a few of these in the forum, all on Mac. Apparently it's a bug in MacOS's GPU driver component.

One thing we've established is that LUT (table-) based monitor profiles don't work well in MacOS, and excessive black clipping is the common symptom. If you're using LUT profiles, rerun your calibrator, this time set to make a matrix monitor profile.

Other users have reported that switching from the Adobe color engine to the Apple color engine improves it. It's still a bug, it should work with both color engines, but sometimes the main thing is just to get back in business.

[NB, colourmanagement]

HI @timk10691763 - this below backs up[ whjat @D Fosse wrote about LUT profiles on mac - it is from my colleagues at basICColor in Germany, makers of really good display calibration and profiling software - so they know their stuff:

Monitor profiles in Mac OS 10.12 thru 10.15

A really good monitor profile is essential for a color correct visualisation of your pictures!

This notice is needed because Apple no longer supports LUT-type display profiles in Apple Software. The Icons and other elements on the desktop may look whacked and images in Apple ́s programs (e.g. Preview, Photos, Safari...) will not be color correct.

Browsers like Firefox aren ́t any better, just Chrome and Edge will display the correct color if color management is enabled.

Although LUT display profiles are actually an advantage with some monitors, with a high-end hardware-calibrated monitor you will see no drop in quality when using matrix-based profiles.

This is why – in MacOSX 10.12 and later – we recommend to make Matrix type profiles in basICColor display 6. If you should use other monitor profiling software – which we don ́t recommend – you may want to set the profile type to Matrix-based, if that software allows for a choice.

We’d love Apple to fix this!

I hope this helps
neil barstow, colourmanagement net - adobe forum volunteer - co-author: 'getting colour right'
google me "neil barstow colourmanagement" for lots of free articles on colour management
Help others by clicking "Correct Answer" if the question is answered.
Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here. "Upvote" is for useful posts.

[Lance22237697q35g]

Hi @D Fosse ,

I've gone through countless forums looking for any answers to this issue and your responses have been the most illuminating, so thank you for that.

Since this appears to be an issue that is happening with the M2 specifically, and since there doesn't appear to be any immediate solution, could the problem be resolved by switching to something like a Dell XPS PC? At this point, I will buy/do whatever is necessary to resolve the issue and it seems like Apple hasn't provided a fix, even with the release of Sonoma 14.6.1.

Essentially, do you think the best way to completely resolve the issue would be to get rid of my Mac M2 Mini and switch to either an M1 or a PC? Many thanks for all the help you've given not only to me but to all the other people who have encountered this frustrating problem.

[timk10691763]

Fixed!

What fixed it for me was by choosing "parametric curve" instead of "LUT (Recommended)" on the bottom of the Target settings.

[Lance22237697q35g]

@timk10691763 what calibration software are you using?

[timk10691763]

Oh sorry! I have a Eizo cg277 and Colornavigator 7.

[Aytaç]

Hello @D Fosse ,

First of all, thank you for your help and contributions. I’ve seen that you are very active on the forum, and I’ve learned a lot thanks to you.

I want to correct a misunderstanding. Even when Photoshop uses Apple CMM, it still displays brighter shadows, up to RGB 10,10,10. Of course, it performs much better compared to Adobe ACE, but it’s still not perfect.

In fact, we could say the only mode that displays correctly is Lightroom’s Develop mode. All the others are flawed.

Today, I went to a store and compared large monitors and laptops. On Apple XDR displays, when I swtich to the Photography D65 mode, I noticed that shadows were brightened. This confirmed that the photos I edited looked correct.

However, I can't stop myself from having this thought: - why don’t we use the sRGB TRC?

Here’s why I’m asking: After looking at at least 10 laptops, monitors, tablets, and smartphones, the one thing I noticed when viewing my own edited photos, which were mostly shadow-heavy, is that all these devices followed the sRGB TRC, either directly or indirectly. Among all these devices, the only one that displayed the images correctly was the Apple XDR when I activated the Photography D65 mode. Even that displayed photos according to the sRGB TRC in its normal mode..

So my question is: If so many devices are set to follow the sRGB TRC, why are we still using gamma 2.2 for photo editing? Considering that 99% of the photos I take are viewed on phones and monitors, wouldn’t it make more sense to calibrate our monitors to the sRGB TRC? (DisplayCAL Tone Curve: sRGB). Even the software (Dell Color Manager) for my Dell U2723QE monitor only allows me to calibrate according to the sRGB TRC.

Since I take this matter very seriously, I’m curious. For the past 8 years, all the photos I’ve edited were adjusted on a monitor calibrated to gamma 2.2, and it feels like I’m the only one who can see them correctly.

I’d like to hear your thoughts on this.

Thank you.

[D Fosse]

@Aytaç 

First of all, neither sRGB or gamma 2.2 are correctly describing an LCD display. The native behavior is a dip in the shadows that is not correctly reflected in either curve.

But the point is - it doesn't matter. The monitor doesn't need to match anything. It can just be itself. This is all mapped in detail in the monitor profile, whatever the curve is.

Calibration isn't high precision, and it doesn't need to be. Ballpark is good enough. The rest is handled by color management and the monitor profile, which is based on measuring the response after calibration. The main purpose of setting a gamma in the calibrator is to make sure the monitor stays reasonably close to native response, for best behavior.

So when the document RGB numbers are converted into the monitor profile and sent to the display, the net result is linear. In other words, the file is displayed correctly. There is only one way to display the file correctly.

As long as you have a working color management chain, any TRC is remapped into any other TRC, and the net result is linear and correct.

---

But again, as I've been saying several times in this thread, there is no need for any guesswork here. I have posted a procedure for determining which on-screen representation is the correct one. If the same file displays differently in Lightroom and Photoshop, or differently between Adobe color engine and Apple color engine, you can do this simple procedure to find out which is right and which is wrong.

[Aytaç]

@D Fosse 

Thank you for your reply.

---------

But the point is - it doesn't matter. The monitor doesn't need to match anything. It can just be itself. This is all mapped in detail in the monitor profile, whatever the curve is.

Calibration isn't high precision, and it doesn't need to be. Ballpark is good enough. The rest is handled by color management and the monitor profile, which is based on measuring the response after calibration. The main purpose of setting a gamma in the calibrator is to make sure the monitor stays reasonably close to native response, for best behavior.

---------

So, are you saying the native TRC (Tone Response Curve) is the best option for a good factory-calibrated monitor?

When I calibrate and profile my screen to use the sRGB TRC, I notice deeper blacks. However, when I use gamma 2.2, the blacks appear lighter—this holds true even on Windows, where the display behavior is consistent across programs.

If I calibrate/profile my monitor to gamma 2.2 and open an sRGB image, why don’t I see the deeper blacks? I understand that the output to the monitor may not be linear, but isn’t the color management system supposed to correct for this? (or less deeper blacks).

For context, I’m working with sRGB images exported from Lightroom (with the sRGB ICC embedded). I’ve also tested using RAW files.

I did try your test for the first time i saw but, i dont still know witch one is correct. Because, i miss some information.

- Must i load the calibrated/profiled .icc or need i load the standart EDID data for it? ( I loaded the calibrated MonitorProfile)

(1) - I open the file in Photoshop, take a screenshot of it.

(1) - File > New > Color Profile is = MonitorProfile

(2) - Pasted the screenshot, so MonitorProfile is already loaded in to it then.

(2) - Edit > Convert to profile > Adobe RGB (1998)

(2) - Result = Exacly the same as your original picture.

(3) - Original downloaded picture > Filter > Camera Raw Filter

(3) - Pasted the screenshot, so MonitorProfile is already loaded in to it then.

(3) -  Edit > Convert to profile > Adobe RGB (1998)
(3) - Result = A little bit darker, deeper blacks, but still no cut off. Better contrast overall and blacks are not lifted.

I'm doing it right?

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The lighter shadows is the correct version.

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Also i added my screen calibration TRC with sRGB and Standard 2.2 gamma for reference.