This is discussed in more detail in the Illustrator forum, but for anyone interested:

For anyone interested I fixed it!

The list of issues was mind boggling, but in the end I got there.

Under Vista I had my Windows colour profile, Illy and PS working space and attached colour profiles in each were set to sRGB. But still whenever I got the file from Illy to ImageReady it was screwed. So I put XP back on to see how I faired.

I used Adobe Gamma (more on this later) to get my screens looking an assemblance of ok and got to work. Instantly everything looked more like each other, sadly they were more liked the screwed ones that ImageReady was displaying in Vista. So I set to work re-building a test page using new colours that were like the ones I had seen in Illy on Vista. So now in ImageReady and Illy they were looking a darn site better, but still not the same.

At this point I stopped, put down the keyboard and mouse and went and sat in a dark room and thought about it all. I came to the conclusion I must be being an idiot somewhere along the line so I went and read up on the web. The majority of people started by saying "Start with setting up your monitors with Adobe Gamma" blah blah blah. But I decided to take this completely out of the equation and removed all colour profiles from windows and rebooted. Now everything matched across all platforms...excellent. But for good measure I decided to add sRGB back into windows and NOT use the Adobe Gamma profiles. Everything still looked the same and matched across the board...excellent. But was that the end of the story? Not by a long shot...

So happy with my new found colour matching I slightly changed some of design and it looked great, although windows itself looked far too washed out for my liking (I suppose it's what I got used to). I had a few more programs to install after my downgrade back to XP (I don't really advise Vista to anyone at the moment) I installed them rebooted and to my shock and horror I saw something completely un-expected. There I was waiting for everything to load looking at the Telly Tubby hill when all of a sudden my right monitor flashed a lighter colour, now it looked slightly bleached compared to the left monitor. Confused I thought maybe the ATI catalyst may have kicked in and had some odd settings somewhere, so I fired it up and guess what?...both monitors went darker, but left the right one ever so slightly lighter. Completely confused I checked it's settings and apparently it wasnt in control of the colours and I should press a button to let it take control "Sod that" I thought and checked the colour profiles, both were still sRGB so I thought the problem may have laid with the ATI catalyst, so I removed it and rebooted. Now finally everything is working as it should.

When the ATI catalyst was installed I couldn't see anything before 12 on this site:

< http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/Calibration/monitor_black .htm>

But with it off I can see the difference from 3 onwards...bonus!

So it all appears to be fixed now thank god, so now I can get on with the job for the client now. But before that I will give you some pieces of advice, do not touch: Vista (XP is so much better in my opinion), Adobe Gamma and if you can avoid ATI or at least the Catalyst all the better.

Regards
Paul

DTWD

Replied in the following topics

ICC Profile inconsistency