Photoshop color management problem.

wrote:

Hi all,

today I opened up a file in Photoshop and all the colors were totally off. I have edited the file on a desktop computer and I am looking at it with my laptop now. I have calibrated my sceens and everything was fine until now. For some reasons all colors are totally off, but outside of photoshop they appear to be fine (when using the windows

picture

viewer).

First stop: Adobe Gamma. Re-run this program, follow the drill, restart Photoshop, and all should be well.
—
Mike Russell
www.curvemeister.com
www.geigy.2y.net

wrote in message

Hi all,

today I opened up a file in Photoshop and all the colors were totally off. I have edited the file on a desktop computer and I am looking at it
with my laptop now. I have calibrated my sceens and everything was fine until now. For some reasons all colors are totally off, but outside
of photoshop they appear to be fine (when using the windows picture viewer).
Something screwed up my color management in PS and I don’t know what it is.
Here are my settings (Windows Machine):
working spaces:
RGB: Adobe 98
CMYK: Offset print – Euro Catalog
Gray: Gray Gamma 2.2
Spot: Dot Grain 20%

color management policies
RGB,CMYk,Gray: Preserve Embedded Profiles

Conversion options
Engine: Adobe
Intent Perceptual

When I set View -> Proof Setup -> Monitor RGB and enable View -> Proof
Colors it looks much better but I did not have to do that before and I don’t think i should be doing this. Also I need to do that on every picture now, that seems wrong.

If I use the same computer and remote desktop to open photoshop on the desktop machine the images look o.k. (I am still viewing on the laptop). Also when I view the picture outside photoshop it looks o.k.
Hopefully some of you are kind enough to help me out.

Thanks

Andre

—

———————————-
http://www.aguntherphotography.com

Reply

Did not see you mention you have reset your preferences. This information is in the first chapter of your manual.

JR the postman

I am using the colorvision calibration program, hence no Adobe Gamma. They explicitly mention not to use Adobe Gamma since this would otherwise screw up the calibration.

Thanks for the info. I will check this out today. I usually put manuals in the shelf and thats where they remain. I could have checked before posting though.

It sounds like your monitor profile is screwed – either the wrong ones is associated with the monitor or the profile itself has been changed. As Mike has said, re-running Adobe Gamma (assuming you use that for monitor profiles) should sort it out.

Somehow I can not come to this conclusion considering that viewing the image outside Photoshop works fine. Also when I open PS through Remote Desktop on another machine and view the same picture it is fine. Meaning, the color management of PS is screwed up. I will check my manual tonight as JR suggested.
Unless Photoshop ignores my monitor Profile (and somehow starts Adobe Gamma or so) I think it has nothing to do with the monitor profile.

It sounds like your monitor profile is screwed – either the wrong ones is associated with the monitor or the profile itself has been changed. As Mike has said, re-running Adobe Gamma (assuming you use that for monitor profiles) should sort it out.

The fact that ‘viewing the image outside Photoshop works fine’ is exactly why the monitor profile is the likely culprit!

When viewing the images outside of Photoshop (e.g. Windows Picture Viewer) the monitor profile is not used. In Photoshop it _is_ used, but when you proof to the monitor profile the image is displayed the same way as other applications (I.e. no correction based on the monitor profile). So the colours are wrong when the monitor profile is in use and OK when it is not.

The Remote Desktop situation may be understandable. Photoshop discovers which monitor profile to use by querying Windows for the information. When accessing Photoshop remotely, it would be understandable if it either used the profile from the wrong machine, or simply could not discover which one to use.

In article ,
says…

Somehow I can not come to this conclusion considering that viewing the image outside Photoshop works fine. Also when I open PS through Remote Desktop on another machine and view the same picture it is fine. Meaning, the color management of PS is screwed up. I will check my manual tonight as JR suggested.
Unless Photoshop ignores my monitor Profile (and somehow starts Adobe Gamma or so) I think it has nothing to do with the monitor profile.

It sounds like your monitor profile is screwed – either the wrong ones is associated with the monitor or the profile itself has been changed. As Mike has said, re-running Adobe Gamma (assuming you use that for monitor profiles) should sort it out.

I had the same problem. One day the colours in PS were wrong but correct in other programs. Running Adobe Gamma again fixed it.

Brian

wrote in message

Somehow I can not come to this conclusion considering that viewing the image outside Photoshop works fine. Also when I open PS through Remote Desktop on another machine and view the same picture it is fine. Meaning, the color management of PS is screwed up. I will check my manual tonight as JR suggested.
Unless Photoshop ignores my monitor Profile (and somehow starts Adobe Gamma or so) I think it has nothing to do with the monitor profile.

It sounds like your monitor profile is screwed – either the wrong ones is associated with the monitor or the profile itself has been changed. As Mike has said, re-running Adobe Gamma (assuming you use that for monitor profiles) should sort it out.

Oh, ok. Thanks for the explaination, Graeme.
It sounds logical but I was wondering if you could elaborate a little further.
The color calibration software I am using loads the profile after starting the machine (there is even a little popup telling me that it has been loaded), so I was under the impression that the profile is ALWAYS being used. Maybe that was not a correct assumption but it sure looks this way to me.
Regarding the other computer, I have the same color calibration software running with its own profile and when I view the image on that machines display (CRT), inside Photoshop, it still looks much different (but very close to viewing it on the laptop outside Photoshop). Also after to profile loads, the monitors saturation and brightness changes a little. This also lead me to the conlusion that the profile is always being used. The popup tells me something like the profile has been loaded into the graphics card (possibly tweaking some lookup tables).
I am using colorvision Spyder2 (Spyder did not work very well on LCD so i gave it back and got Spyder2. This one seems to do a better job). I am not sure since I did all my editing on the Desktop with CRT but it appears that the change was sudden.
The funny thing is that the differences are not subtle but hughe. Thanks to all you guys answering my questions, I appreciate all the help I can get.

Andre

The color calibration software I am using loads the profile after starting the machine … so I was under the impression that the profile is ALWAYS being used.

Only programs which are color-managed use the ICC profile. Very few programs use it. Photoshop does, the others you mentioned do not.

Check your Start file to make sure Adobe Gamma isn’t loading as well, this can throw your video card off. You need to remove it from the Start folder since you have a profile generated by Colorvision.

The funny thing is that the differences are not subtle but hughe.

This means the profile somehow got corrupted (or over-written or the video card is getting written to multiple times).

I would simply generate a new profile and see if that fixes things (make sure Gamma is out of the start file). Probably it will.

Thanks Bill,

i just remembered messing with linear raw processing and installing Freds Linear.icm Profile (right click -> install). After I noticed the problems I unstalled it (right click -> uninstall). Maybe it did not get removed completely.
I will go through my systems folders and see if it is still there. One more question for Photoshop. I have a profile called whatever.icm. In PS i have set my workflow to Adobe 1998. I do not see an option to tell it to use whatever.icm. Does it recognize this automatically? Andre

In article ,
says…

Oh, ok. Thanks for the explaination, Graeme.
It sounds logical but I was wondering if you could elaborate a little further.
The color calibration software I am using loads the profile after starting the machine (there is even a little popup telling me that it has been loaded), so I was under the impression that the profile is ALWAYS being used. Maybe that was not a correct assumption but it sure looks this way to me.

That’s because when you use a monitor calibration/profiling utility, there are 2 parts to what it does.

1 – The monitor is calibrated. This sets up things like the approximate white point and gamma of the screen, and is done by a combination of adjusting the monitor by hand and loading a LookUp Table (LUT) to the graphics card. This gets the monitor into a reasonable and, more importantly, known state for profiling.

2 – The monitor is profiled. This involves measuring the actual response of the calibrated monitor (RGB chromaticities, measured white point etc.). This info is stored in the ICC profile (‘.icc’ or ‘.icm’ file), and is used by Photoshop (and some other apps, but not Windows) to correct the RGB values sent to the monitor.

When Windows starts, your software will load the appropriate calibration LUT to the graphics card that works with the ICC profile selected. While this will change the appearance of the screen, you will NOT be using the actual profile unless you are in something like Photoshop.

Regarding the other computer, I have the same color calibration software running with its own profile and when I view the image on that machines display (CRT), inside Photoshop, it still looks much different (but very close to viewing it on the laptop outside Photoshop). Also after to profile loads, the monitors saturation and brightness changes a little. This also lead me to the conlusion that the profile is always being used. The popup tells me something like the profile has been loaded into the graphics card (possibly tweaking some lookup tables).
I am using colorvision Spyder2 (Spyder did not work very well on LCD so i gave it back and got Spyder2. This one seems to do a better job). I am not sure since I did all my editing on the Desktop with CRT but it appears that the change was sudden.
The funny thing is that the differences are not subtle but hughe. Thanks to all you guys answering my questions, I appreciate all the help I can get.

The large changes are what you would expect if the monitor profile is either the wrong one, or messed up in some way. A simple example: if the profile reckons that the monitor has a gamma of 1 but (as it’s been calibrated) it’s actually 2.2 then Photoshop will apply a massive, but unnecessary, gamma correction to the RGB values sent to the graphics card in an attempt to give a gamma 2.2 final result.

Andre

As a matter of interest, try this experiment. Start Photoshop and go to the menu ‘Edit’, then ‘Color Settings’. In ‘Working Spaces’, ‘RGB’ drop down the list of working spaces and scroll up to near the top of the list. One of the entries should be ‘Monitor RGB – XXXX’ where XXXX is the name of a profile. This tells you which profile Photoshop is using as the monitor profile. (Don’t change anything – this is just to see which profile Photoshop is using).

i just remembered messing with linear raw processing and installing Freds Linear.icm Profile (right click -> install). After I noticed the problems I unstalled it (right click -> uninstall). Maybe it did not get removed completely.

Unless this is a *monitor* ICC profile and it somehow got installed as your default (which I doubt) it won’t make a difference. I described in another NG how to check to see if XP is assigning your monitor profile as the default, so you should check that first.

One more question for Photoshop. I have a profile called whatever.icm.

What kind of profile is it? Input device profile like for a scanner or monitor, output device profile like a printer/paper/ink combination or working space profile, which is abstract and not tied to any specific device? All of these are radically different in structure and purpose. I have monitor profiles under 500 bytes in size and printer profiles over 1,500,000 bytes, for example.

In PS i have set my workflow to Adobe 1998.

This is your "working space" profile and it has nothing directly to do with any of your device profiles (like monitor, printer, etc).

I do not see an option to tell it to use whatever.icm. Does it recognize this automatically?

If it is a printer profile you can soft-proof to this profile (ie, see a pretty close approximation of what the final print might look like) …. apply the profile to a specific image with View > Proof Setup > Custom and selecting it in the ‘Profile’ drop-down menu. If it is a scanner ICC profile you’d typically apply it when opening the file. If it is a monitor profile it should have been assigned as the default by the OS. Which leads us back to the question of "what kind of profile is ‘whatever.icm’?" If it is a working space profile you can assign it to replace AdobeRGB with Edit > Color Settings and changing the RGB "Working Space".

This is all pretty confusing the first few times you come across it but eventually it makes perfectly good sense 🙂 If you really want to learn the nitty-gritty I suggest the book "Real World Color Management" by Fraser, Bunting and Murphy.

From all you’ve said it still appears that a bad (or misassigned)

monitor profile is the root cause of your problems. Should only take a couple of minutes to re-generate one to check this, making certain that the Gamma loader .exe is out of your Start folder.

Bill

It’s a monitor profile generated by Spyder2 (Colorvision.com). Thanks for giving me some ideas about the root cause of my issues. I will recreate the profile and check for Adobe Gamma (shouldn’t bee there, I believe the Spyder App kills it immediately).

Andre
Bill Hilton wrote:

i just remembered messing with linear raw processing and installing Freds Linear.icm Profile (right click -> install). After I noticed

the

problems I unstalled it (right click -> uninstall). Maybe it did not get removed completely.

Unless this is a *monitor* ICC profile and it somehow got installed

as

your default (which I doubt) it won’t make a difference. I described in another NG how to check to see if XP is assigning your monitor profile as the default, so you should check that first.

One more question for Photoshop. I have a profile called

whatever.icm.

What kind of profile is it? Input device profile like for a scanner

or

monitor, output device profile like a printer/paper/ink combination

or

working space profile, which is abstract and not tied to any specific device? All of these are radically different in structure and

purpose.

I have monitor profiles under 500 bytes in size and printer profiles over 1,500,000 bytes, for example.

In PS i have set my workflow to Adobe 1998.

This is your "working space" profile and it has nothing directly to

do

with any of your device profiles (like monitor, printer, etc).

I do not see an option to tell it to use whatever.icm. Does it recognize this automatically?

If it is a printer profile you can soft-proof to this profile (ie,

see

a pretty close approximation of what the final print might look like) … apply the profile to a specific image with View > Proof Setup > Custom and selecting it in the ‘Profile’ drop-down menu. If it is a scanner ICC profile you’d typically apply it when opening the file.

If

it is a monitor profile it should have been assigned as the default

by

the OS. Which leads us back to the question of "what kind of profile is ‘whatever.icm’?" If it is a working space profile you can assign

it

to replace AdobeRGB with Edit > Color Settings and changing the RGB "Working Space".

This is all pretty confusing the first few times you come across it

but

eventually it makes perfectly good sense 🙂 If you really want to learn the nitty-gritty I suggest the book "Real World Color

Management"

by Fraser, Bunting and Murphy.

From all you’ve said it still appears that a bad (or misassigned)

monitor profile is the root cause of your problems. Should only take

a

couple of minutes to re-generate one to check this, making certain

that

the Gamma loader .exe is out of your Start folder.

Bill

Thanks Graeme,

i see that I have much to learn. I will try to make sense out of it tonight and ask more questions tomorrow if I can’t get it working. I keep wondering why every App has to do color management instead of windows doing it for all of them in a consistent manner.

Andre

It’s (whatever.icm) a monitor profile generated by Spyder2 (Colorvision.com).

This would typically be placed in the /…/spool/drivers/color folder with the rest of the ICC profiles and be automatically assigned as your default monitor profile. To see if it’s actually been assigned as the default see Graeme Cogger’s excellent post. If you want to see ALL your ICC profiles go to C:Windows/System32/Spool/Drivers/Color (I think you said you use XP).

I will recreate the profile and check for Adobe Gamma (shouldn’t be there, I believe the Spyder App kills it immediately).

I’m using an earlier version of the Sypder software and it doesn’t remove the Gamma loader .exe from the Start file but it does warn you about it and tell you to remove it manually. Perhaps this has changed in V2 but I doubt it. To check if the loader is active go to Start > All programs > Startup and make sure it’s not in there. Loading the video card LUTs twice (which is what happens if Gamma loader is in there but a different monitor profile is the actual default) will usually throw off things a bit but typically it won’t cause the type of problem you describe, which is most likely caused by a bad profile from the Sypder. I had one once when, I think, one of the suction cups holding the puck didn’t hold, the puck lifted a bit from the screen, and the puck got bad readings during the last phase of the profile generation. I have a profile checker program and it was pretty obvious this one was hosed when I graphed it so I just re-generated (more carefully) and the problem was fixed.

Bill

Thanks everyone, esp. Graeme and Bill, for clarifying a few things. I think i got it all worked out now. As you all so persistantly suspected, Photoshop was not the root cause of the problem. I was under the impression that once calibrated Windows itself is color managed. Well now I know better and thanks to you guys I know how to better take care of things and what to check for.
It seems like the profile was o.k. and Photoshop was the only program showing the image the way it is supposed to look like. On my CRT there is not that much difference to viewing outside Photoshop, but on my laptop there is.
This is about the worst LCD screen I have ever seen (I own a Compaq V2000, relatively new, without X-Brite (too much reflections when I checked it out in the store) ).
I will have to do some test prints to be sure, but basically I had to change the white balance on my most recent edits.
So thanks again.

Andre

P.S.: Bill, Spyder2 did not complain about Gamma, so I guess I must have deinstalled it when using Spyder (the older version that I gave back), its not in the Startup either (Regcleaner doesn’t show it as being started either).
About the Spyder sucktion cups, I had the same problem once but when I found the spyder not to be attached correctly I immediately reran it. The LCD solution is much more crappy, either you put pressure on the display (tilted display) and distort the output this way or you have the display in a vertical position and have to worry that the spyder is close enough. For the latter problem I usually do the cal in a dark room with no ambient light.