Working space color profile not saving when exporting to PNG

[paulrattu]

I'm having an issue with Photoshop, whenever I save my document as a PNG file to view outside of photoshop, the resulting file looks different from how it looks in photoshop. I have North America Web/Internet selected as my Settings, but the PNG file doesn't look like that. The file thats made is much darker. Why is this happening?

[lambiloon]

Hi did you tried it saving using save for web legacy option or what is your monitor color profile ? May be you need to change it also....Thanks.

[D Fosse]

Actually there is a bug in the later Photoshop versions. You cannot embed the profile in PNGs using Save As. Apparently this only affects the Windows version, the Mac version saves PNGs correctly with profile embedded.

Export or Save For Web both work correctly on Windows, so use that.

In any case, embedding the profile is no help if you view the file in an application that doesn't support color management at all. It also happens that monitor profiles are corrupt or defective, causing incorrect display in color managed apps.

A side by side screenshot might indicate what the issue is here.

[paulrattu]

As you can see, the photo when viewed in RV is quite a bit darker and slightly off color. It's not a major difference, but it's enough that its affecting the work.

I've tried exporting instead of saving and I'm still getting the same result. Same thing if I try to save as a different file format.

[D Fosse]

I don't know what RV is, but if it isn't color managed, a difference is expected and normal.

Only applications that are color managed read the document profile, remap that into monitor profile values, and send those corrected data to the display.

Applications that aren't color managed just send the original RGB values straight through to the display.

The catch is that for a color managed display path to work as intended, you need to have a valid monitor profile. This is something a calibrator will give you. If the profile is bad, it will not affect applications that aren't color managed to begin with.

[paulrattu · Accepted solution]

Well, I did try recalibrating the monitor and the result was the same.

I do have somewhat of a workaround. Since RV is color managed, setting the color profile to SRGB and the gamma correction to 2.2 will get me a really close result, but theres still a bit of a difference.

Going forward with photoshop, the plan will be to have the users set their color proof to monitor color so that their work in photoshop will reflect what they will be seeing when they go to do reviews in RV.

Thanks for your help

[D Fosse]

paulrattu  wrote

Going forward with photoshop, the plan will be to have the users set their color proof to monitor color so that their work in photoshop will reflect what they will be seeing when they go to do reviews in RV.

That's how you disable color management in Photoshop. So if they then match, that shows RV is in fact not color managed.

[paulrattu]

What do you recommend for color managed software?

[D Fosse]

I have no idea what RV is used for or what the options/alternatives are.

[paulrattu]

We use RV for reviewing work, specifically over SDI