Adobe Programs Changing Colors

[John Seale]

Adobe CC, all apps. Refering below to Photoshop 22.1 and Bridge 11.0. Windows 10.

Adobe software appears to be trying to change color temperatures on me. This happens in every Adobe app I've checked but I just decided to post here in Photoshop. Everything is shrouded in an orangish glow. Color settings are synchronized across CC apps and set to "NA General Purpose 2" as usual. Windows is set to a standard color profile for the monitor. You can see in the screenshot the same two jpegs open in Windows Explorer and in Bridge. The color temperature in Explorer is "accurate" while the colors in Bridge are definitively not.

I can tell that Adobe is recoloring the images because I can get them to flash to the right colors. I'm using dual monitors and while the recoloring is happening equally on both monitors, if I move a window rapidly from one monitor to the other, for a moment the images are in true color, before being recolored. In Photoshop, the effect is pronounced. On the opening screen, the photo thumbnails under Recent are in true colors, but if I click on one to open it, it opens in the over-warm colors. In the other screenshot I have attached, you can see the image as it is open. In the bottom right I've pasted the screenshot of the same image in the Recent thumbnails.

What is causing this? I have checked everything I can find to check.

[D Fosse · Accepted solution]

This is a defective monitor profile.

Windows Photos is not color managed and does not use the monitor profile at all, so it is not affected (but never entirely right either).

Replace your current profile with sRGB IEC61966-2.1 as a temporary fix until you get a calibrator to do it properly. It won't be entirely accurate, but better than a broken profile. Relaunch Photoshop when done, it loads the profile at application startup:

[John Seale]

Thank you - this appears to have solved the problem. Never heard of a defective monitor profile before, and the one that was loaded looks like it came from Samsung with my external monitor. In the midst of troubleshooting I had applied the Samsung profile to my laptop monitor as well. If anyone else follows up to this thread later, the one causing the issue was "Samsung - Natural Color Pro 1.0 ICM".

Appreciate the help!

[D Fosse]

If you're not using a calibrator, you will often get manufacturer profiles through Windows Update. These profiles are astonishingly often defective in various ways, and Samsung is one of the worst offenders. Dell, LG, Asus and Acer are up there too. Why they can't get it right is a mystery.

That said, the real solution is still a calibrator, which makes a profile based on actual measurement of your display. That's always more accurate than a generic one size fits all profile.