Wierd colour / profile issues

[TylerK29]

Hey guys!

I'm using Photoshop CC (21.1.2). I used to have a colour profile issue with my monitor that was resolved by uninstalling my monitor and GPU drivers, removing photoshop, restarting and reinstalling. But now i have this wierd issue.

Any ideas? The image in the camera raw box looks much nicer & more pure. I've checked the image with Windows side by side with photoshop and they look the exact same, it's just in dialogs such as Camera Raw.

Any help would be great!

[TylerK29]

So it turns out it may still be a monitor profile issue or something. Any help? I've added the profiles (see me).

Colour Settings (Bad)

Colour Settings (Okay)

Any ideas?

[NB, colourmanagement]

Have you set the workigspace to same as display profile? That is NEVER a good idea

Try these tips please:

Display profile issues on Windows

At least once a week on this forum we read about this, or very similar issues of appearance differing between applications.

Unfortunately, with Microsoft hardware: Windows updates, Graphics Card updates and Display manufacturers have a frustratingly growing reputation for installing useless (corrupted) monitor display profiles.

I CAN happen with Macs but with far less likelyhood, it seems.

The issue can affect different applications in different ways, some not at all, some very badly.

The poor monitor display profile issue is hidden by some applications, specifically those that do not use colour management, such as Microsoft Windows "Photos".

Photoshop is correct, it’s the industry standard for viewing images, in my experience it's revealing an issue with the Monitor Display profile rather that causing it. Whatever you do, don't ignore it. As the issue isn’t caused by Photoshop, don’t change your Photoshop ‘color settings’ to try fix it. 

If you want to rule out pretty much the only issue we ever see with Photoshop, you can reset preferences, I never read of a preferences issue causing this problem though:

To reset the preferences in Photoshop: 

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/preferences.html

Note: Make sure that you back up all your custom presets, brushes & actions before restoring Photoshop's preferences. Migrate presets, actions, and settings

To find out if this is the issue, I recommend you to try setting the monitor profile for your own monitor display under “Device” in your Windows ‘color management’ control panel to sRGB. You can ADD sRGB if its not already listed. 

And be sure to check “Use my settings for this device”.

(OR, if you have a wide gamut monitor display (check the spec online) it’s better to try Adobe RGB instead).

Quit and relaunch Photoshop after the control panel change, to ensure the new settings are applied.

If this change fixes the issue, it is recommended that you should now calibrate and profile the monitor properly using a calibration sensor like i1display pro, which will create and install it's own custom monitor profile. The software should install it’s profile correctly so there should be no need to manual set the control panel once you are doing this right. 

Depending on the characteristics of your monitor display and your requirements, using sRGB or Adobe RGB here may be good enough - but custom calibration is a superior approach.

I hope this helps

if so, please "like" my reply and if you're OK now, please mark it as "correct", so that others who have similar issues can see the solution

thanks

neil barstow, colourmanagement.net :: adobe forum volunteer

[please do not use the reply button on a message in the thread, only use the one at the top of the page, to maintain chronological order]

[TylerK29]

Hi! 

Thanks for the advice. I've already tried this, did it again however and reset photoshop settings as i'd changed the colour settings, no change. See this, this, this.

I've noticed when sending these edited images on other platforms like facebook, if i then look back on them using my phone, you can litterally see the image change colour as if the phone loads a new profile or something.

You can see here - white isn't really white either. Only changing my photoshop colour settings makes it look more white.

[D Fosse]

This is a broken monitor profile, there is no doubt about that. That can affect applications differently - except applications that aren't color managed at all. They don't use the profile and are thus not affected.

Setting the monitor profile as working RGB in Photoshop disables/cancels out all display color management. Don't ever do that. It will get you into trouble.

Fix your monitor profile. That's the solution, and the only solution. The standard way to do that is to use a calibrator. The monitor profile is an absolutely critical component in the whole Photoshop ecosystem, without it Photoshop cannot display correctly. You cannot work with a broken profile.

Read Neil's post again. I'm not going to repeat all of it, but it's the correct answer.

[TylerK29]

Hi

Neil said to see if the profile is the problem, "change the profile to sRGB, If this change fixes the issue, it is recommended that you should now calibrate and profile the monitor properly using a calibration sensor like i1display pro, which will create and install it's own custom monitor profile".

i did that and it didn't fix the issue. No matter what I do in the control panel, it doesn't fix it. 

ive never had this issue before. It only started happening about 2 months ago. Monitor profiles don't just "break". And funnily, its only happened with CC 2020

[D Fosse]

Did you relaunch Photoshop after you switched monitor profile in Windows? Photoshop loads the profile at startup. If you don't relaunch Photoshop, the same profile is used even if changed in the system.

The smoking gun here is your screenshot above that you have labelled "okay" - where you have disabled all color management by setting the monitor profile as working RGB. In this state, Photoshop doesn't use the monitor profile. It behaves just like an application without color management at all.

I don't know what monitor model you have, but the problem is that defective profiles are sent out by the manufacturer and distributed through Windows Update. This happens incredibly often and is a very common problem, and users don't know what hit them. Why some monitor manufacturers can't get this right is another question, but all Photoshop can do is use the profile it gets from the system. If the profile is wrong, Photoshop won't display correctly.

Again, this is why people have calibrators. It's the only way to have control of the monitor profile.

[TylerK29]

Hi.

To be honest, I wouldn’t mind not having colour management. I only use photoshop to edit game screenshots and stuff. But even when I change it to monitor profile or working RGB, dialogs like Camera Raw Filter still show the image differently like a little whiter & clearer. If I could get photoshop to look who Windows Photos does and how it looks ingame (eg I take a screenshot in GTAV) then I’d be happy. Problem is I use the camera raw filter a lot to edit my screenshots, so because that displays the image differently, I can’t get a true representation of what the edits I’m making look like.

I’ve also downloaded my monitors profile directly from the support website, and it’s dated 2013 so it’s not been updated recently. How this profile has magically been able to break in the last few months is beyond me.

Kind regards
Tyler

Get Outlook for iOS

[D Fosse]

"How this profile has magically been able to break in the last few months is beyond me."

We've told you several times: they come through Windows Update. It just happens when your system updates.

This really isn't difficult. Don't change anything in Color Settings. That's not where the problem is. You only create more problems and dig yourself deeper and deeper in.

Change it here, and relaunch Photoshop when done. That's it. That's all it takes:

This will fix it so that you can continue working. If you want accurate color, you need to get a calibrator. If that's not important, skip the calibrator and use sRGB.

But there's one more important thing:

You didn't mention screenshots before. Screenshots are a special case. They are not in the original color space and you cannot treat them as such. They are in monitor color space, because the numbers have already been converted into your monitor profile. So here, and only here, you need to assign your monitor profile first, and then convert to a standard profile like sRGB. I'm beginning to suspect this is the whole explanation why ACR appears to be "right". It's not, but with this scenario it will behave like a non-color managed application. So the bad monitor profile is removed from the equation.

[TylerK29]

Hi

Yeah but that's my point, the monitor profile by AOC hasn't been updated since 2013. I've checked windows updates and theres nothing.

Okay that's done, see here, and here.

Yeah so i take screenshots and stuff ingame. They get saved via png. I open / import them into photoshop. They look right in Microsoft photos, but yellowish in photoshop. Load up ACR and they look good again.

So to do "need to assign your monitor profile first, and then convert to a standard profile like sRGB" do i need to make them changes in photoshop or colour management? eg when i open these images in photoshop, i get: THIS. Do i do it via that?

Thank you

[D Fosse]

OK. Hold on to those settings - sRGB as default monitor profile in the system, and Photoshop Color Settings as shown. Keep sRGB as working RGB, and policies set to "Preserve Embedded Profiles". Don't change those again.

I assume in all this that your monitor is a standard gamut model (that's about 99%). I googled it and came up with an AOC model. If you had a wide gamut monitor things would be different and you would need a much more disciplined approach and a calibrator. But for a standard monitor this works.

The rest is down to standard profile handling in the document. First of all, there should always be an embedded profile. If there isn't, that's a problem and you need to assign one. That dialog means the document does not have a profile. If it's a normal file, you need to assign the profile the document was originally created in. As long as you work for screen/web/games etc, that should normally be sRGB.

For a screenshot the basic principle is the same, but a screenshot is no longer in the original color space. It has been converted into the monitor profile by the application, because it's ready to be sent to screen. It has already been color managed. But the profile is not embedded, so you have to assign one, and in this case that's the monitor profile, not sRGB. For consistent handling it should then later be converted into sRGB.

Now, if you use sRGB as monitor profile, you're getting off easy. If the document is sRGB, then this is already in place, so you don't have to do anything. But that only applies in a strict sRGB workflow. Any other profiles, and you need the full procedure.

If you consistently work with sRGB files, and you use sRGB as monitor profile, then Photoshop will for all practical purposes behave like an application without any color management - like e.g. Windows "Photos". In other words, they will match because none of them perform color management.

Bottom line, you can use this simplified workflow, as long as you never use any other profiles than sRGB, and everything should match and be consistent. It will not be correct, mind you - but everything will be consistent.