Photoshop Colors Are Slightly Yellow Still After Color Management

[Arastiir]

Hello everyone,

I've run into an issue with colors in Photoshop being slightly yellow.  I've tried Photoshop CS4 and downloaded a trial of the current Photoshop CC version, both of which run into this issue.  The same photos opened outside of Photoshop (e.g., in Windows Photos app) do not have the yellow tint.  From searching online, it seems to be an issue with color profiles, but after trying to change the color profiles for my monitor in Color Management settings in Windows and making sure they are updated in Photoshop's color settings options, I still can't get whites to be white; they still have a slight yellow tinge to them.  I've tried two separate computers to see if it was computer related, to no luck.

To be clear, so far I've tried:

- ICC Profiles: sRGB IEC61966-2.1, monitor default profile, Adobe RGB (1998), and settings calibrated through Windows color calibration software

- Within Windows Color Management Settings, I made sure each profile I tried was added and set as the default.  I also ensured I checked the "Use my settings for this device" so that the custom color settings were being used.

- Within Photoshop, I made sure the settings were set properly (screen snippet of my settings within CS4 with the IEC61966-2.1 profile enabled is below) and that the photo was set to the workspace color profile instead of an embedded color profile.

- I tried restarting the computer several times and restarting Photoshop after each ICC profile change.

Photoshop Settings:

Photoshop Version: CS4 and CC trial (to rule out an issue with the older version of Photoshop)

OS: Windows 10

The photo on the left is the one from Photoshop, while the one on the right is from Windows Photos

At this point, I'm not sure what else I can try short of purchasing a hardware tool to assist in color calibration.  From reading, however, it seems most people fix this problem simply by changing their color profile to sRGB IEC61966-2.1 in Windows and Photoshop, which hasn't worked for me for some reason.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

[D Fosse]

First of all: set everything in Color Settings back to defaults. That's not where the problem is. Color Settings deal exclusively with document profile handling, but this isn't the document profile, this is the monitor profile. Those two should never be confused.

Above all, never set policies to off. It should always be "preserve embedded profiles". The working space should always be a standard profile like sRGB or Adobe RGB.

Windows "Photos" is not color managed and does not use your monitor profile. Photoshop is and does, so there will always be a slight difference. That's normal and expected! With a valid profile, Photoshop is right and "Photos" is wrong.

If the profile is defective, which happens surprisingly often with manufacturer profiles distributed through Windows Update, the usual quick fix is to replace the profile with sRGB IEC61966-2.1 - the proper fix is to use a calibrator. You do this at system level, not in Photoshop. Photoshop uses whatever monitor profile it gets from the OS.

When you change monitor profile, you need to restart Photoshop. It loads the profile at application startup. That's probably what you haven't done here.

[Arastiir]

Thanks for taking the time to reply!

https://forums.adobe.com/people/D+Fosse  wrote

First of all: set everything in Color Settings back to defaults. That's not where the problem is. Color Settings deal exclusively with document profile handling, but this isn't the document profile, this is the monitor profile. Those two should never be confused.

Above all, never set policies to off. It should always be "preserve embedded profiles". The working space should always be a standard profile like sRGB or Adobe RGB.

Thanks for the clarification here.  While I understand there is a difference, I don't think I understand what the Photoshop color settings are exactly.

In regards to setting them back to defaults: I'm not sure what exactly "defaults" are, as I just changed it to the monitor profile at some point while tinkering with trying to get this to work, but I changed it to North American General Purpose 2, as suggested by JJMack.  Unfortunately, that didn't make a difference.

Windows "Photos" is not color managed and does not use your monitor profile. Photoshop is and does, so there will always be a slight difference. That's normal and expected! With a valid profile, Photoshop is right and "Photos" is wrong.

This I am aware of and understand.  I am hoping to get to that stage of Photoshop being right and Photos wrong; I've just got it reversed right now, unfortunately!

If the profile is defective, which happens surprisingly often with manufacturer profiles distributed through Windows Update, the usual quick fix is to replace the profile with sRGB IEC61966-2.1 - the proper fix is to use a calibrator. You do this at system level, not in Photoshop. Photoshop uses whatever monitor profile it gets from the OS.

When you change monitor profile, you need to restart Photoshop. It loads the profile at application startup. That's probably what you haven't done here.

I have tried setting the profile to sRGB IEC61966-2.1 and restarting Photoshop (and rebooting), as I mentioned in the original post.  That is why I'm very stuck and confused.  I'm hoping there is something I'm missing or there is an alternative solution I haven't been able to find.

Thanks again!

[JJMack]

For windows photo may be managing colors differently the Photoshop particularity for to color intent is for your monitor and Adobe warns that is not good if you intend to do any CMYK color editing.  Try changing your Photoshop color settings to Photoshop default setting North American General purpose 2 see it your colors match between application then.

[Arastiir]

JJMack  wrote

For windows photo may be managing colors differently the Photoshop particularity for to color intent is for your monitor and Adobe warns that is not good if you intend to do any CMYK color editing.  Try changing your Photoshop color settings to Photoshop default setting North American General purpose 2 see it your colors match between application then.

Thanks for replying JJMack!

I'm not entirely clear what you're saying in your first sentence, but I am not doing any CMYK color editing (I'm using RGB).  I did try changing my Photoshop color settings to North American General Purpose 2 and, unfortunately, the photo is still yellow tinted.

[JJMack]

I was just pointing out the you may have missed Adobe warning not recommended in the description in you post there are many poor setting you made in your post

[rayek.elfin]

I agree with @D Fosse: if you are serious about getting the colour management side of things right, you ought to purchase a hardware calibration device. You could get the least expensive one, since the hardware between versions doesn't really differ, but the software does - I use DisplayCal (open source and free) with my Spyder to calibrate my three screens nowadays. It takes a while, but it works very well.

17 years ago I had had enough of colour differences and back-and-forth arguing about colour shifts with clients and printers. I purchased my first calibration device at the time, and never looked back.

Yes, it costs a bit of money, but it's really the only way to make sure your screens are colour managed properly.

[Arastiir]

rayek.elfin  wrote

I agree with @D Fosse: if you are serious about getting the colour management side of things right, you ought to purchase a hardware calibration device. You could get the least expensive one, since the hardware between versions doesn't really differ, but the software does - I use DisplayCal (open source and free) with my Spyder to calibrate my three screens nowadays. It takes a while, but it works very well.

17 years ago I had had enough of colour differences and back-and-forth arguing about colour shifts with clients and printers. I purchased my first calibration device at the time, and never looked back.

Yes, it costs a bit of money, but it's really the only way to make sure your screens are colour managed properly.

Yes, I realize that the best option is getting a calibrator.  I just had seen from others that changing the color management in Windows to the sRGB IEC61966-2.1 seemed to be extremely close, whereas mine is still very obviously different.  I recognize every monitor will be different, and it is possible that is the issue; it just is a little surprising, especially since I've tried this on 4 monitors and two computers now, all with the same issue.  I also am a little concerned something else is going on and that a calibrator won't fix that, as I'll mention in the post replying to D Fosse below.

[Dusty_Brennan]

Don't know if it's too late to get in on this thread, but I started having the yellow color shift when I was upgraded (even though I declined) in the middle of the night to Windows 10 from Windows 7. I have Photoshop CS5.5 and my monitor was Dell S2340M. I never had to do a color calibration on that monitor.  I used this setup to produce Giclee prints of dozens of fine art files of my paintings created from professional scans that needed no color correction on my part ~ if anything I only needed to adjust the levels and sharpness.  It was heaven.  Prior to that we did the scans at our former graphics company and had a lot of issues with color correcting those files, which we finally got right.

Once I was upgraded to Win 10, I got an error message when I opened Photoshop: The monitor profile "Dell S2340M Color Profile, D65" appears to be defective. Please rerun your monitor calibration software.

This is when the yellow shift appeared ~ not on the monitor screen, but on the actual prints. Upon investigation I learned my monitor was incompatible with Win 10. So I researched further and got a U2415, which is supposed to come with excellent color calibration right out of the box. But the problem wasn't solved, same yellow cast and desaturated color on the prints.  This a nightmare.  It seems I'm not the only one with this problem since going to Win 10. The problem is there. I learned there are apparently conflicts between Win 10 and Photoshop. After more research I changed the ICC profile for the monitor in Color Management to sRBG IEC61966-2.1 to match the default Photoshop color settings hoping that was the answer, but no luck.

So I'm thinking of using Carbonite's Mirror Image restore feature.  It backs up not just files & folders but all programs, software, etc. It takes "snapshots" of your computer and restores everything, taking your computer back to an earlier date of your choice, the idea being to take my computer back to a date prior to when I got windows 10. Things ran smooth as silk with Win 7. I don't want to go down the rabbit hole of endless color correction on files that were just fine before Win 10.

[D Fosse]

The Dell U2415 is a wide gamut monitor.

A wide gamut monitor can only be used in a fully color managed environment. You cannot use software that isn't color managed!

You must have a valid monitor profile that these color managed applications can use. The only way to get that is to use a calibrator such as a Spyder, i1 Display, ColorMunki etc.

This is the deal you implicitly accept when you purchase one of these units. No exceptions. Dell or the seller really should have informed you about this, and shame on them for not doing that.

You may consider if you're better off selling this monitor and get a standard one. There wasn't any problem with your previous monitor - there's no such thing as an "incompatibility" issue with Windows 10. The message you got meant exactly what it said - Dell distributed a corrupt profile through Windows Update. Replacing it with sRGB would have solved that.

But this won't work with a wide gamut monitor. Here you can't use a generic profile, you really need a calibrator. And again - software without color management won't display correctly under any circumstances.

It may sound as if I'm painting a grim picture of Dell here, and I really am. Their only ambition is to sell maximum amount of units. If they were forthcoming about what a wide gamut monitor actually means to the user, they might sell less, so they don't. Instead they get to use marketing phrases like "a world of brilliant color" and similar nonsense. Shame on them. So many people have torn their hair out because of this.

[D Fosse]

I should perhaps say here that I have been using wide gamut monitors exclusively for many years. They work splendidly as long as you understand how to put them to good use. But they do require some experience and knowledge about practical color management, and as I said - they do require that you get a calibrator.

Oh, and just to beat up Dell a little more - their claims about "factory calibration" out of the box is nonsense.

[Dusty_Brennan]

But wait ~ there was a problem with the old S2340M monitor with Windows 10, that was when the error message appeared and the color shifted (not on the screen but on the output, with 'Photoshop manages color' selected). And I had the same result with the new monitor. This is what I'd found this on the Dell site: Support for Dell S2340M | Drivers & downloads | Dell US

Maybe "incompatible" was the wrong term...but as you can see from the link, the latest windows version supported by that monitor is Win 8.1. And various online articles said sRGB would be adequate with the U2415 if you didn't opt for calibration software.

[D Fosse]

There is no such thing as "operating system support" for monitors. They are "plug'n'play" devices, they don't require drivers to work. The manufacturers just stick a "supported" label on to reassure people, and at the time 8.1 was probably the latest.

There is no way the monitor can directly affect the file or printed output. It's not possible. These are entirely separate systems. However, since you get an incorrect representation on screen, it is indirectly affected, and that works right down to the preview image in the print dialog. What you see is not what you get.

The message "The monitor profile "Dell S2340M Color Profile, D65" appears to be defective. Please rerun your monitor calibration software" means exactly what it says, to the letter. Photoshop loads the monitor profile from the OS at application startup, and performs basic error-checking on it. If the profile isn't written correctly, or contains inconsistent data, Photoshop will reject it. And throw up this message.

It needs to be understood that the monitor profile is only used by color managed applications such as Photoshop. Applications without color management don't even know what a profile is, and won't be affected by a broken profile. But Photoshop will, and will display incorrectly as a result. Without a good monitor profile, Photoshop won't work correctly.

You can continue using this monitor if you go in and set it to "sRGB" in the monitor's OSD menu. Just as long as you realize that this turns your rather expensive wide gamut monitor into a very ordinary standard gamut one (and you could have saved the expense).

I will not, under any circumstances, advise you to use this monitor with its full gamut unless you have a good understanding of how color management works. Until you do, you will keep getting into trouble and frustration will build up. The unit simply will not behave the way you expect.

If you do set it to sRGB mode, you can manage without a calibrator. Then you can use sRGB IEC61966-2.1 as monitor profile. Not entirely correct, but usually close enough. You set this up at system level:

[Dusty_Brennan]

I really appreciate your knowledgeable input. Down the road when I have the time I would be really interested in learning more about color management. I'm spread way too thin right now, and am under a time crunch to produce some prints to frame and put in my gallery. No time for a learning curve at this point.

You said:

There is no way the monitor can directly affect the file or printed output. It's not possible.

I know that, what I'm saying instead is that Windows 10 is the variable in this equation ~ the issue started at the point when my system was upgraded.  I got the very same color shift in my prints (not on screen) with both monitors.

As R. Niel Haugen, an ACP (Adobe Community Professional) wrote in an earlier thread:

You note the issue came after updating to Win10 ... which does handle many things differently including video than Win7.

Another site i found in my searches:

Adobe is working with Microsoft to fix Photoshop Elements on Windows 10 S

Adobe's popular Photoshop Elements app doesn't currently work on Windows 10 S, but Adobe says they are working with Microsoft to fix the issue.

Those are examples of the "compatibility issues" between Photoshop and Windows 10 that I was speaking of earlier.

You can continue using this monitor if you go in and set it to "sRGB" in the monitor's OSD menu. Just as long as you realize that this turns your rather expensive wide gamut monitor into a very ordinary standard gamut one (and you could have saved the expense).

I already did that as I wrote in my earlier message: "After more research I changed the ICC profile for the monitor in Color Management to sRBG IEC61966-2.1 to match the default Photoshop color settings hoping that was the answer, but no luck."

In Photoshop color setting, with North America General Purpose 2 selected, the working space for RGB is sRGB IEC61966-2.1. You say the best default setting for generic color management in windows is sRGB IEC61966-2.1, But then you say:

If the source and destination profiles are the same, obviously nothing is recalculated. This is known as a null transform. IOW, if the document profile is sRGB, and the monitor profile is also sRGB, nothing happens. This is by definition no color management, and in this situation Photoshop in fact mimics any other non-color managed application. They have to display identically, they have no choice.

So that must be why, when I did add sRBG IEC61966-2.1 to the monitor profile and set it as default nothing happened?

BTW, I just found the Dell Drivers and Documentation CD that has the driver and color profile for my old S2340M monitor. I'm going to reinstall the color profile software on there to see if it works. If it does ~ Hooray! ~ then I just have to figure out what to do with my expensive new monitor!

[D Fosse]

OK, let's run this down. First the basic mechanism:

• Photoshop's display color management is a straight profile conversion, from document profile into monitor profile. This is just like any other profile conversion.
• Any color management requires two profiles - a source and a destination.
• A profile is a description, a map if you like, of a corresponding color space. Only one profile is the correct one.
• A monitor's native color space - its behavior - is likewise described in a profile. This is optimally made with a calibrator, based on measurement, but for less critical purposes a generic one can be used. Since most monitors are fairly close to sRGB natively, you can use sRGB IEC61966-2.1 as monitor profile.
• A profile conversion recalculates the numbers to preserve color appearance. This is also known as remapping the numbers.
• An application without color management ("Photos") does nothing of this - it just sends the original numbers straight through to the display, uncorrected.

So. This has some implications.

• If the source and destination profiles are the same, obviously nothing is recalculated. This is known as a null transform. IOW, if the document profile is sRGB, and the monitor profile is also sRGB, nothing happens. This is by definition no color management, and in this situation Photoshop in fact mimics any other non-color managed application. They have to display identically, they have no choice.
• If "Photos" and Photoshop don't display identically with sRGB as monitor profile, that means the document profile is not sRGB, but something else.

[D Fosse]

Oh - one more thing. When you set monitor profile in Windows, you do that in the "Devices" tab - not the "Advanced" tab. A lot of people misunderstand this. You also need to use sRGB IEC61966-2.1 specifically, not any other profile with sRGB in the name, like the sRGB "virtual device" profile which is for different purposes.

It looks like this:

[Arastiir]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/D+Fosse  wrote

OK, let's run this down. First the basic mechanism:

• Photoshop's display color management is a straight profile conversion, from document profile into monitor profile. This is just like any other profile conversion.
• Any color management requires two profiles - a source and a destination.
• A profile is a description, a map if you like, of a corresponding color space. Only one profile is the correct one.
• A monitor's native color space - its behavior - is likewise described in a profile. This is optimally made with a calibrator, based on measurement, but for less critical purposes a generic one can be used. Since most monitors are fairly close to sRGB natively, you can use sRGB IEC61966-2.1 as monitor profile.
• A profile conversion recalculates the numbers to preserve color appearance. This is also known as remapping the numbers.
• An application without color management ("Photos") does nothing of this - it just sends the original numbers straight through to the display, uncorrected.

So. This has some implications.

• If the source and destination profiles are the same, obviously nothing is recalculated. This is known as a null transform. IOW, if the document profile is sRGB, and the monitor profile is also sRGB, nothing happens. This is by definition no color management, and in this situation Photoshop in fact mimics any other non-color managed application. They have to display identically, they have no choice.
• If "Photos" and Photoshop don't display identically with sRGB as monitor profile, that means the document profile is not sRGB, but something else.

First, thanks so much for the explanation!  That really helped to give me a better understanding of how the Photoshop doc profile and Windows monitor profile interact.

A couple things unusual I have noticed.  If I open the screen snippet I took of the Windows Photo picture (with the correct colors displayed) in Photoshop, it opens with no color tinting (i.e., it looks like it does in Windows Photo; no yellow coloring).  However, whenever I open the original raw image file (w/ no xmp files to cause any unexpected changes) in Photoshop (Adobe Camera Raw), it keeps displaying the image with a yellow tint.  So, I'm stuck now trying to figure out why Photoshop displays the image as yellow tinted when I open a raw image, but it isn't yellow tinted if I open a screen grab of that same picture opened in Windows Photo.

[Arastiir]

So, after reading a little bit from where I was in the last post, I am suspecting this is due to a camera profile setting issue in Photoshop (or Adobe Camera Raw?).  Now, I am just trying to figure out how I change that setting... fingers crossed that it works (once I find it!)!

Again, I really appreciate everyone's responses!  It's been incredibly helpful!

[Arastiir]

So, just to update and hopefully help anyone in the future that has this problem.  Changing the camera profile was what made the difference (I didn't even know there was a camera profile before!).  It is under one of the menus in Camera Raw (look for the camera icon for my version, at least) when you open a raw file called Camera Calibration.  Unfortunately, it isn't quite perfect, but a couple of the settings are pretty close at least!

Thanks again everyone!

[D Fosse · Accepted solution]

Wait a second. Have you been looking at raw files here? You should have said so right away.

In that case the explanation is even simpler: Windows "Photos" displays the camera-processed, embedded jpeg, not the raw data as ACR interprets them.

Those are two really different things that have no relation to each other!

No, changing camera profile doesn't "solve" anything - there's nothing to solve, there is no problem. You have just picked a camera profile in ACR that is specifically intended to mimic the camera manufacturer's processing.

[Arastiir]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/D+Fosse  wrote

Wait a second. Have you been looking at raw files here? You should have said so right away.

In that case the explanation is even simpler: Windows "Photos" displays the camera-processed, embedded jpeg, not the raw data as ACR interprets them.

Those are two really different things that have no relation to each other!

No, changing camera profile doesn't "solve" anything - there's nothing to solve, there is no problem. You have just picked a camera profile in ACR that is specifically intended to mimic the camera manufacturer's processing.

Yes, understanding it now I recognize how important that seemingly innocuous piece of information was.

While I more or less agree with your statement about it not solving anything, at the end of the day it mostly resolved, to an extent, my issue of the ACR image colors being off.  If there is a better solution to that problem, I'm open and curious, but to my understanding this is the best solution available (changing to a camera profile that closer represents what the camera is "seeing").

[D Fosse]

Well, I would argue that ACR colors are by definition never "off". It's a raw file, it needs to be processed in any case, and there's no reason to just accept the ACR defaults as they are.

In particular, the white balance is always set in the raw converter - whether in-camera raw processing (firmware) or a standalone raw converter like ACR. There is no "inherent" white balance, the sensor just records the photons that happen to hit it. Then a measurement of the image data yields a calculated white balance. This will generally be a bit different in camera vs. ACR because the processing code is very different.

ACR defaults are intentionally conservative. They are not meant to give a "pleasing" image - they are meant to conserve and present as much of the original sensor data as possible. The sliders are there to be used, and that's what Adobe assumes you will do. The rest is up to you.

In short, a raw file isn't even an image without processing. If you could see it, it would be a very dark, very compressed grayscale image. Nikon's or Canon's opinion of how the finished image should look is just that - their opinion.

[D Fosse]

Oops. This is embarrassing, I really botched this one...

The Dell U2415 is not wide gamut. I confused it with the U2413. The 24-fifteen is a standard gamut model that can be used without any particular considerations.

What can I say? The good news is that you haven't wasted any money after all

Anyway. Everything I wrote is still true, it just has a lot less impact with a normal, standard gamut screen. It's still true that document sRGB > monitor sRGB is a non-color managed "null transform". That is indeed what you get with sRGB as monitor profile - and that's why I said it wouldn't be entirely correct. Because that would assume a perfect reproduction of sRGB on your monitor, and that's something you never get, no matter how much you tweak it.

This is what the monitor profile compensates for - all the small irregularities of the monitor's response, the slightly shifted primaries, the dips and lumps in the tone response curve. It's all corrected in the profile, based on measurements by the sensor.

And it's still true that Dell's canned profiles are notoriously bad and can usually not be trusted. So if you don't have a calibrator, the best bet is to use sRGB. The monitor is close enough to sRGB that it won't be dramatically off, as it would be with a wide gamut unit.

One more thing: Leave the "installation" CD alone, don't run it. All it contains are profiles, which as I said should be avoided. There's no driver there - none is necessary. It's just a small .inf file that displays the unit's model name in the device manager.

[Dusty_Brennan]

Wow, that is good news! I don't feel so much like a dummy now! But I do have a couple more questions....

You said this:

The message "The monitor profile "Dell S2340M Color Profile, D65" appears to be defective. Please rerun your monitor calibration software" means exactly what it says, to the letter.

I got that message the first time i opened Photoshop after Win10 was installed. Up until then the Dell S2340M monitor color calibration was perfect ~ what I saw on the screen was what I got on the print, despite what you say about Dell's canned profiles being notoriously bad. This morning I found the disc that came with the monitor when i bought it in 2014, and when i open the folder to view the files in File Explorer, among a bunch of other files and folders I find a Dell Application file CDBrowse.

When I open it I find a Dell CD Browser window for Dell S2240M/S2340M Monitor with 3 categories: Product Information, Dell Display Manager Software, and a Driver & Color Profile for S2340M with an Install tab.

There's also a Drivers folder, when I open it I find a Dell S2340M ICC Profile file which is an .icm file, which must be the file that runs when I click the Install tab in the Dell CD Browser.

In the Windows Color Management list, there is already a Dell S2340M Color Profile, D65 ICC Profile (file name DELL S2340M.icm) ~ the one that is now defective??

In your last post you say:

One more thing: Leave the "installation" CD alone, don't run it. All it contains are profiles, which as I said should be avoided. There's no driver there - none is necessary. It's just a small .inf file that displays the unit's model name in the device manager.

But if I hook that monitor up to my computer again as a test, why wouldn't i follow the instructions in the error message and rerun my color calibration software?

The problem being that I got the very same yellowed, slightly desaturated print when I assigned either monitor (the S2340M or the U2415) the sRGB IEC61966-2.1 ICC profile. It doesn't solve the problem. I still wonder if it's a Win10 issue with Photoshop.

[Dusty_Brennan]

But I'm also wondering...when opening an image file using the S2340M monitor, I got the Photoshop 'defective color profile' error message asking if wanted to 'use anyway' and I chose no. So when I went to print I was printing a file with no ICC profile selected and got the yellow shift. There was no color profile included with the Dell U2415 (because it's supposed to come factory calibrated), and 'use my settings' was not selected in Color Management, so both test prints came out the same.

Then when as suggested I assigned the sRBC profile, it was still, as you say, as if there was no color management.  I want to try hooking the S2340M monitor back up and reinstalling the Driver & Color profile for S2340M. Wouldn't that correct the defective color profile? Isn't that worth a try?