Photoshop Saving issues with color shifting

[Yin_Iz]

Hello guys. it's been a while im having this issue and i cloudnt find a solution.

Since my switch to windows 11 (to use E & P cores) when i save a photo as PNG, or JPEG, with out withotu embedded profile, it shofts colors or the reds gets alot of saturation.

My work space is in Adobe RGB. I SHoot in Adobe RGB (Sony A7RIIIa + A7RIV)
I convert every foto in the end by flattening the entire work + SRGB profile.
I Save as Copy > Png. Embedding or not the profiel doesnt change anything.

I tried ALL saving options (exemple, legacy save as, save for web etc) but all give the same problem.
using color proofing is fine, i see the picture how it is, how i want it, so doesnt really matter.

The funny thing is that i shot in SRGB last time.
Even if i shot in SRGB and i myworkspace was in SRGB, saving the picture saturated all the reds a damn lot.

If u need my specs:
Windows 11 Pro
I9 13900K
64gb Ram DDR5 6600MHZ
RTX 4090
Photoshop is ALWAYS up do date. i have automatic updates.


Opening my picture with photoshop or the basic windows image viewer its just fine. Sending it via telegram (AS FILE) Show different colors. Same goes on WeTransfer..
Also, since browsers like Firefox are Color Managed, opening it in there is a big mess. Totally showing different color. Posting on social media also reflects the over satured and / or shifted colors.

The main problem is... is what i see on PS true? Or what i see after saving and posting on social media true?

Im a professional photographer and not seeing what I am doing is a big issue. Please help me out.

[Bojan Živković]

I will tag @D Fosse who may be able to asist.

[D Fosse]

What monitor profile have you set up? Are you using a calibrator to make it, which one? Or is this just a stock manufacturer profile? What monitor make/model?

Have you changed anything in Photoshop color settings?

(BTW if you shoot raw, the color space setting in the camera is irrelevant, it's set in ACR/Lr. It only applies to camera processed jpeg/heifs).

[Yin_Iz]

The monitor profile is set by the colorimeter (Spyder X Pro) and it loads at the startup (you can see the color change after 2 seconds when yoi get to see the desktop).
Calibrated with Spyder X program. Using display cal or other programs gave me the same exact issue.
Monitor is LG 34GP950

I changed the setting in photoshop in order to be correct to my workflow.

Usually i just saved images in 8 bit PNG (smaller file size) as Copy, having zero problems, colors always did stay the same.. now they change.
Also, if i TAKE A SCREENSHOT of the photo i am working on (with the snipping tool), and i paste it on the web or telegram, whatsapp, instagrap, the colors stay TRUE to what i see. They change ONLY when i save.

I'll add a screenshot so you can see my setting!
I'll Add also a semple so you can see the color difference and unwanted extra saturation.
Thanks in advance for the help.

[D Fosse]

Several things here. I'll run through them.

First of all, why are you showing a screenshot from your phone? That has no relevance here. How a phone displays an image is completely random.

Like many others, you are also confusing monitor profile and calibration. Those are two different things! The calibrator does two things: first it calibrates, then it makes a profile based on measuring the display in that calibrated state.

The monitor profile is a standard icc profile like any other icc profile. It is set in the operating system, and Photoshop loads the profile it gets from the OS when it starts up. Photoshop converts, on the fly, from the document profile (if it is embedded) and into the monitor profile. You need both these profiles, each in its own place.

The monitor profile has only one job: it needs to describe the monitor's behavior in its current state. If you make any changes to the monitor's behavior, the profile is invalidated and you need to make a new one. When you change monitor profile at system level, relaunch Photoshop so it can load the new profile at startup.

Always embed the document profile! Always, always.

Your monitor is a wide gamut (P3) model. This means that if you have untagged sRGB, it will always display oversaturated, no exception.

That monitor can only be used with a fully color managed process. Any application you have that doesn't support full color management, cannot be used. Throw them out. Things you could get away with before, with a standard gamut monitor, will blow up here.

Screenshots are always untagged! The original document profile no longer applies. It has been converted into the monitor profile by Photoshop, but that profile is not embedded. To treat screenshots correctly, assign your monitor profile, then convert to a standard color space like sRGB.

As far as I can tell, everything here works as expected. You just have some concepts to clear up in your head.

[Yin_Iz]

Ok ill answer while testing what you said to help me in order to clarify a couple of things 🙂

''First of all, why are you showing a screenshot from your phone? That has no relevance here. How a phone displays an image is completely random"
Telegram and phones are color managed, in fact the screenshots i took and sent on telegram as a test looks exactly the same as i see on monitor. When a picture is untagged, the web assigns SRGB as a standard, so nothing change. I used to tag SRGB profiles on saved pics but they did shift colors. I stopped embedding profile and magically the pics did show perfectly fine, to be more precise this did happen on every social network (ex twitter, facebook, instagram etc,);

''The monitor profile is a standard icc profile like any other icc profile. It is set in the operating system, and Photoshop loads the profile it gets from the OS when it starts up. Photoshop converts, on the fly, from the document profile (if it is embedded) and into the monitor profile. You need both these profiles, each in its own place.''
I am not understanding what you are trying to say. I know the difference between calibration and the ICC set on the monitor. In fact, they are the same. Are you saying i should use not ARGB profile on photoshop settings, as working profile but the ICC one i got from the calibration? In windows, the profile is set up alredy with the calibration ICC profile i calibrated. I manually did it.

''Always embed the document profile! Always, always. Your monitor is a wide gamut (P3) model. This means that if you have untagged sRGB, it will always display oversaturated, no exception.''
Even if i embedd the profile, the color shift still happens as i said... there is no difference because if there is no tag, the program or the web assign SRGB as a standard. And that worked for many years perfectly. Viewving pics on pc or phone via messaging programs or social networks where all the same without color differences at all!

''That monitor can only be used with a fully color managed process. Any application you have that doesn't support full color management, cannot be used. Throw them out. Things you could get away with before, with a standard gamut monitor, will blow up here.

Screenshots are always untagged! The original document profile no longer applies. It has been converted into the monitor profile by Photoshop, but that profile is not embedded. To treat screenshots correctly, assign your monitor profile, then convert to a standard color space like sRGB.''
Forgive my ignorance, can you tell me what i should do in your opinion to get the right colors after saving?
i am a little confused about this part. Should i set my monitor ICC profile in PS settings instead of Adobe RGB?
Anyway, untagged shows perfectly fine: the image is SRGB, if i screen it with the snipping tool and paste it anywere it shows perfectly, as i said before, because the web applies SRGB as a standard.

Thanks in advance very much ❤️

[OMNiArt]

I'm experiencing the same problem with PNGs and RGB Color Profiles. At our shop we've been working through 1,000 of PNGs this year and the "shifting colors" after saving the PNG from PSD layer files is real and frustrating as hell. We've tried everything and can only get the photos from not shifting colors about 90% of the time. I was hoping for a real solution to this problem as this thread best describes what we are going through on our end.

To solve some of the time, we've picked team "Adobe RGB" as our RGB color profile and we' "Save As" PNG to Adobe RGB. If we picked sRGB instead, we would have the same under or oversaturated problem and colors shifting at Save. I wish it would just leave it untagged and look that same as our PSD files. Also, our color settings we have to constantly check and fix after updates to Photoshop or whatnot. Keeping all our artist on the same RGB color profile with PNGs is helping but one of our artist's always saw "sRGB-like" colors in her PS when the rest of us viewed her files as oversaturated. The fix for her was to uncheck the "sRGB convert" box in "Export As" and then go back to saving PNGs from "Save As". This issue should be fixed. For years, it didn't do this.  

[D Fosse]

@OMNiArt 

Read my post above again, and carefully. It's all answered there.

There is no color shift as long as

• there is an embedded standard profile in the document - doesn't matter which one as long as it's there
• your monitor profile is valid, describing your monitor's actual and current behavior
• you're viewing the file in an application that supports color management and will treat both these profiles correctly

That's all there is to it. If you can put a checkmark on these three, the file has to display correctly, by definition.