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Adobe RGB as default color profile in Elements 2024

Forum|Forum|9 months ago
April 12, 2025
5 replies
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In Photoshop Elements 2024 for Windows, is there any way to set Adobe RGB as the default color profile in the Edit workspace? I want to save all psd files as Adobe RGB for printing, but Elements now uses sRGB as the default. I have color setting set as "Always Optimize for Printing", which I interpret as meaning the RGB profile is used. However, when I save an image as psd, it still indicates that the sRGB profile is in use. Does unselecting the sRGB setting in the Save pop-up mean the file will be saved with the RGB profile.

Earlier versions of Elements allowed Adobe RGB to be set as the default color profile and I think this should still be available in current and future versions.

I really hate manually changing color profile as part of the work flow for each image, and I haven't tried to use automation settings to change the color profile.

Jeff Arola

Community Expert

There is bug in Photoshop Elements 2021 and later that when having Edit>Color Settings set to Always Optimize for Printing

and opening a Camera Raw file, the color profile will be sRGB instead of Adobe RGB (1998).

As far as i can tell from experimentation, the bug is actually in the Photoshop Elements Editor itself and not the Camera Raw plugin.

Photoshop Elements 2020 with Camera Raw 17.2 when set to Always Optimize for Printing opens the image with a

Adobe RGB (1998) color profile

Photoshop Elements 2024 with Camera Raw 17.2 when set to Always Optimize for Printing opens the image with a

sRGB color profile

NB, colourmanagement

Community Expert

@Jeff Arola Great that you did the testing: " There is bug in Photoshop Elements 2021 and later that when having Edit>Color Settings set to Always Optimize for Printing

and opening a Camera Raw file, the color profile will be sRGB instead of Adobe RGB (1998).

As far as i can tell from experimentation, the bug is actually in the Photoshop Elements Editor itself and not the Camera Raw plugin."

SO that’s rather bad news for users of Elements 21 and later. Amazing it's just coming up 4 years later!

If you write it up as a new post you can then tag that post "bug"

I have added bug to the tags above on the OP, but this long thread may frustrate Adobe's bug gnomes, better just a copy of your post with the right tag.

I hope this helps

neil barstow colourmanagement - adobe forum volunteer,

colourmanagement consultant & co-author of 'getting colour right'

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Greg_S.

Community Expert

@NB, colourmanagement is the color management expert around here, so I will leave him to sort this out for you. In the Elements Editor dialog, you are given the following choices:

Here is the Learn more about Color Settings link shown in the dialog.

And here is the Save As dialog which only allows a change to sRGB in the embedded profile.

And here is the More Options dialog in the Print dialog. This allows color management by the program or the printer. If the printer is allowed to manage color, the icc profiles will make any adjustments to the embedded profile won't they?

But I believe the OP is correct in saying that there has been a change in the way Elements handles conversion of raw file profiles in the working space.

NB, colourmanagement

Community Expert

@Greg_S. "And here is the More Options dialog in the Print dialog. This allows color management by the program or the printer. If the printer is allowed to manage color, the icc profiles will make any adjustments to the embedded profile won't they?"

An image file has it's own "neutral" colourspace (ideally one big enough to contain all the original data) - so it can subsequently be used on many output devices.

That's the reason Adobe came up with working colorspaces back in '98

As best as we can tell, when selecting "printer manages color" the driver software takes over internally and uses a printer/media ICC profile, selected on the basis of the media setting there in the driver.

So it seems there's a conversion taking place from the file ICC to the printer ICC.

It can work well for a printer manufacturer's own media, they optimised it for that.

Looks like PS Elements can save out AdobeRGB(1998) file, that’s good because sRGB can clip data significantly, actually AdobeRGB(1998) often does too, but less so.

See my 2nd reply below separated for simplicity

I hope this helps

neil barstow colourmanagement - adobe forum volunteer,

colourmanagement consultant & co-author of 'getting colour right'

See my free articles on colourmanagement online

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A

Adept_Glimmer15A9Author

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My real question is: Can I get PSE 2024 to automatically assign Adobe RGB as the color profile without having to manually change the color space.

The issue is that when I open a Canon RAW .cre file in ACR and then transfer to PSE 2024 editor, the color profile listed in File>File Info... is sRGB. I have PSE set in Edit>Color Settings to "Always Optimize for Printing". This is supposed to set the workspace to Adobe RGB. I save processed images as .psd files with the Adobe RGB color profile but I have to manually change the color profile (Image>Convert Color Profile). Apparently PSE 2024 sets sRGB as the default color profile and does not allow another (i.e. Adobe RGB) to be set as default. I think earlier versions may have allowed this.

I set the Canon 5D Mark 3 to shoot in Raw with Adobe RGB as the Color Space, but I don't know whether or not the RAW file as generated by the camera tags the color space/profile as Adobe RGB. Apparently PSE will assign sRGB to any untagged image file.

My monitor is a NEC PA272W and is calibrated for Adobe RGB with NEC color profiling software and a Spider4 sensor. I use an (old) Epson R3000 printer with color profiles generated for the paper I use.

Tom