Seeking True Color Signal from Photoshop (DeckLink Mini Monitor 4K + Pro Monitor PA32UCDM):

[STAR198501103h5i]

Hi everyone, I’m a professional colorist working primarily in DaVinci Resolve, but I also do retouching and editing in Photoshop at a professional level.
Recently I upgraded my setup with an ASUS ProArt PA32UCDM (OLED) as my reference monitor and a Blackmagic DeckLink Mini Monitor 4K I/O card. The DeckLink allows me to bypass OS color management and get a clean, unmanaged video signal directly from Resolve to my reference display — perfect for accurate grading in HDR/SDR workflows.

Now, here’s my question :

1. DeckLink + Photoshop workflow I read on Blackmagic’s website that there’s a “Blackmagic Export” option in Photoshop, but from what I see, that only sends a still image through the DeckLink, it’s not a live feed. So:

Is there any way to preview or edit live in Photoshop, using the DeckLink output, so I can view the true, unmanaged signal on my reference monitor while I work? Or is Photoshop always bound to the OS-managed pipeline?

2. Color spaces for web work From what I understand, the ideal workflow for web content is: Work in ProPhoto RGB (the largest available color space) Export/convert to sRGB for web delivery Does this make sense in your experience?

3. Color management for printing
For print workflows:

Should I still work in ProPhoto RGB and then soft-proof or convert to the printer’s ICC profile before exporting? Is there a way to preview how the image will look in print on-screen (for example, using soft proofing or a specific color management mode) so I can see how my vivid colors will be clipped or muted? 

Ideally, I’d love to have a setup where I can edit in ProPhoto RGB but have a second preview or window showing the print color space result — just like in Resolve when you toggle between HDR and SDR views.

Any advice or insights from people working with color-managed pipelines, DeckLink cards, or printing workflows would be amazing.
Thanks in advance.

[D Fosse · Accepted solution]

1. You disable all display color management by making sure the document profile and monitor profile are the same. Doesn't matter what the profile is, as long as they're the same. That's a null transform, nothing changes, and the original RGB numbers in the file are sent directly to the display unchanged and unmanaged. In practice, the simplest way is to assign your monitor profile to the document (convert recalculates the numbers, assign doesn't).

Not something I normally recommend, but if that's what you want, that's how you do it.

2. Yes, you can work in ProPhoto and convert to sRGB. Just keep in mind that this is potentially a massive gamut clipping to manage in one go, which might not look pretty. 

3. For print, don't do anything to the document until you know how it will be printed. When you know, soft proof to the print profile that will be used. Don't convert. The soft proof will show you what colors get clipped. For inkjet printers, set the print profile in the Photoshop print dialog, but keep the document in the original RGB color space.

[STAR198501103h5i]

Hi D Fosse, thanks a lot for taking the time to reply — your explanations on points 2 and 3 were super clear and really helpful, I appreciate it.

Just to clarify what I meant in point 1 — I wasn’t referring to disabling Photoshop’s internal color management by assigning matching profiles. What I meant was something more at the hardware and OS level.

Specifically, I’m talking about bypassing the Windows operating system’s color pipeline and GPU output path entirely — the same way DaVinci Resolve or Nuke do when using a dedicated I/O device such as a Blackmagic DeckLink Mini Monitor 4K.

In that setup, the DeckLink sends a true unmanaged signal directly to the reference display (in my case, an ASUS ProArt PA32UCDM), completely outside of any OS or GPU color management. The goal is to ensure that the reference monitor receives the pixel data exactly as defined by the working color space in Photoshop — without any interference or transformation from Windows or the GPU.

So my question was whether there’s any way to preview or edit live in Photoshop while feeding that unmanaged, bit-accurate signal through the DeckLink — not just exporting a still frame as the “Blackmagic Export” option currently does.

Thanks again for your detailed reply — I just wanted to make sure my question was clearer in this context.

[D Fosse]

There is no Windows color management pipeline as such. Windows makes the profiles available,  but the actual color management - the part where the RGB numbers are corrected for the display - that's all called by Photoshop, not Windows.

Photoshop converts from the document profile and into the monitor profile, and those corrected numbers are sent out to the display pipeline. It does this on the fly, as you work. If the profiles are the same, that conversion is from one profile into the very same profile. That cancels out the whole chain. Nothing is converted. The numbers stay the same.

The net result is that all the original numbers in the file are sent to the display as they are. No numbers are changed. No color management.

What I described does what you want. 

(perhaps you confuse this with calibration tables in the GPU  - that's a global monitor adjustment that has nothing to do with color management).

[STAR198501103h5i]

Hi D. Fosse, thanks so much for clarifying — I really appreciate the detailed explanation.

I understand now what you mean about how Photoshop handles color management internally — that Windows itself doesn’t process the image, and that Photoshop performs the document-to-monitor transform before sending it through the GPU/display pipeline.

However, my original question was slightly different in intent.

I was referring to bypassing the Windows OS and GPU color pipeline entirely — not just disabling Photoshop’s color transforms by assigning matching ICC profiles, but actually sending the image out via a dedicated video I/O device (in this case, a Blackmagic DeckLink Mini Monitor 4K) the same way apps like DaVinci Resolve, Nuke, or Baselight do.

The goal in that type of setup is to get a bit-accurate, unmanaged video signal directly to a reference monitor (my ASUS ProArt PA32UCDM) that’s been hardware-calibrated. This ensures that the signal reaching the display is 100 % untouched by any OS, GPU, or ICC handling — essentially the same “clean feed” workflow used in color-grading environments.

So, I was trying to determine if Photoshop supports any way to preview or edit live through that DeckLink output (rather than just exporting a still frame via the “Blackmagic Export” option).

From what I understand, Photoshop currently can’t output a continuous live feed through DeckLink — but I wanted to confirm whether that’s still the case, or if there’s been any change or plugin solution allowing it.

Thanks again for the thoughtful explanations

[D Fosse]

OK, got it. It's possible you need to address this on operating system level, not application level. But that's above my paygrade 😉

[Conrad_C]

For print workflows:

Should I still work in ProPhoto RGB and then soft-proof or convert to the printer’s ICC profile before exporting? Is there a way to preview how the image will look in print on-screen (for example, using soft proofing or a specific color management mode) so I can see how my vivid colors will be clipped or muted? 

Ideally, I’d love to have a setup where I can edit in ProPhoto RGB but have a second preview or window showing the print color space result — just like in Resolve when you toggle between HDR and SDR views.

By @STAR198501103h5i

I don’t use Resolve but have a limited knowledge of video color workflows. For background, there is a basic difference between how color management evolved for print and video.

For video, the workflow you want became common because years before digital video existed, it was standard practice for professional video studios to preview on a “reference” video monitor tightly calibrated in hardware to a specific video standard. So anything feeding that monitor could just send the unaltered signal and the hardware-calibrated monitor would proof it. It’s a great system as long as you can afford a reference monitor…

For print, digital design got going at a time when everyone used off-the-shelf computer displays that were not tightly calibrated to any standard (just good enough to leave the factory), because they were much cheaper than a video reference monitor. This is what led to color management being implemented at the OS software level, so that software-based calibration could adjust the OS output colors for the condition of whatever display was connected. This is why Photoshop and all other pro graphics apps are built around OS-level color management.

PC/Mac video editing applications have always floated somewhere in the middle. Early PC/Mac video editing apps were not pro level so they didn’t have direct output to a monitor, but the ones that ended up aimed at pros did add such a mode like the one you describe for Resolve. In Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects, you get that pure video output when you enable Mercury Transmit. In recent years, as online and social media delivery of video became important, Premiere Pro and After Effects finally started supporting OS color management, ICC profiles, and previewing colors through them. So now they support both types of output proofing.

But Mercury Transmit is not available outside of the Adobe professional video apps, so as long as we’re talking about Photoshop, the only video signal you can get out of it is the standard one that is sent through the OS color management system. So you would use the Proof Setup/Proof Colors commands in Photoshop to preview the print output conditions. 

If the display is one of the rare ones that can both be calibrated directly through hardware and supports hardware-based print proofing, that would be the closest you could get. You would set up the display’s print proofing mode using the print profile and output specs, which would make it a “reference monitor” for print. Then use Photoshop with its own soft-proofing disabled because that is being done in the display. But I’m not sure if the PA32UCDM supports that.