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Lightroom Imports look too dark compared to Photoshop

Community Beginner ,
Feb 17, 2017 Feb 17, 2017

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Please help,

I am a fairly experienced Lightroom & Photoshop user.

I have just noticed some very unusual behavior.  I use a fully colour managed workflow & have a calibrated monitor.

My Chosen Color working space is Prophoto RGB.

All was well until recently.  I noticed that when I import images into lightroom from photoshop the images appear darker in the shadows than they do in photoshop.

Even more strangely the image when viewed in lightroom library mode is displayed 100% accurately (they match photoshop) but as soon as I switch to develop mode in lightroom, the image darkens considerably & shadows get blocked up.  It's almost as though a profile of some sort is bieng re-applied over top of the original correctly displayed import profile.  It happens with my jpeg files, Fuji RAF files, Nikon NEF files etc ....

I have checked all my settings on both photoshop & lightroom & have found nothing set incorrectly.

Please help, I'm going out of my mind here trying to figure out what is going on.

Thank, Ali

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LEGEND ,
Feb 17, 2017 Feb 17, 2017

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What version NUMBER of Lightroom?

What version NUMBER of Photoshop?

What version NUMBER of your operating system?

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Community Beginner ,
Feb 17, 2017 Feb 17, 2017

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I should add my OS is:

Windows 10 Pro Version 1607

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Community Expert ,
Feb 17, 2017 Feb 17, 2017

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When colors don't match between Lightroom and Photoshop, and/or between Library and Develop, it's always caused by a defective or incompatible monitor profile. Many Windows 10 users have this problem, because Windows updates often install low quality monitor manufacterers' profiles.

First of all, check that Windows really is using a profile that was created by calibration. If not, select the correct profile, and click Set as default profile.

If that's not the problem, try setting the profile to sRGB, or Adobe RGB if you have a wide gamut monitor.

If that fixes the issue, there is something wrong with the monitor profile, and you have to re-calibrate.

Lightroom is not compatible with version 4 icc profiles, so be sure to choose version 2 in the calibration software.

To check what profile you are using, and to change to sRGB or Adobe RGB, press the Windows key+R, and type colorcpl in the box and press Enter.

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New Here ,
Mar 22, 2021 Mar 22, 2021

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Thank you for the advice, Per. It helped to resolve dark photos issues.

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New Here ,
Mar 29, 2022 Mar 29, 2022

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LATEST

I've been searching for this for almost 9 months, this literally fixed my issues immediatley thankyou

 

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Community Beginner ,
Feb 17, 2017 Feb 17, 2017

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Hi,

Lightroom CC 2015.3

Photoshop CC 2017.0.1 Release

Windows 10 OS

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Community Beginner ,
Feb 17, 2017 Feb 17, 2017

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Hi,

Thank you so much for your reply

Ok, so I followed your steps & I do indeed have a problem with the monitor profile, because even though the correct monitor profile was selected as default, when I de-selected it & changed it to Adobe RGB (1998) as you asked me too, "it did solve the problem."

So I tried re-calibrating my monitor & unfortunately the new calibration still has the same issue.

I have an Eizo ColourEdge CG222W monitor & i'm using a Eye 1display2 to calibrate, calibration software is Eizo's colour Navigator 6.

I am however unsure as how to select version 2 icc profile in the software, do you have any suggestions on this???

Thanks, Ali

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Community Expert ,
Feb 17, 2017 Feb 17, 2017

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I also have an Eizo monitor, and use Color Navigator.

The only way I've found to set the profile version is by creating a new target.

In the main Color Navigator window, highlight an existing target, (like your current profile) and click Create a new target.

Color-navigator-target.png

When you get to this screen, click Customize profile, and choose version 2.2.

Then run calibration with the new target.

Color-navigator-name.png

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Community Beginner ,
Feb 17, 2017 Feb 17, 2017

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Hi thanks again for your reply.

I have tried following your instructions and have created the new profile using icc version 2.2 but even now the new profile has not fixed the issue.

Any further suggestions???

Could it be that my monitor calibrator is broken??

Thanks, Ali

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People's Champ ,
Feb 17, 2017 Feb 17, 2017

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Ali,

I think it probably is. It definitely is producing profiles that are faulty in some way.

Hal

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Community Expert ,
Feb 17, 2017 Feb 17, 2017

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In the same window as you set the icc version, there are also two options for Tone Curve - LUT and Gamma value.

Try the other option, and see if that makes any difference.

I have to admit that I'm on thin ice here, and if that doesn't fix it, let's hope that D Fosse​ can contribute, he knows a lot about this.

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Community Expert ,
Feb 17, 2017 Feb 17, 2017

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Yes, I'm pretty sure this is caused by a LUT profile, which is what Colornavigator makes by default. You need to set profile policy in Colornavigator to "Gamma value", which will produce a standard matrix profile.

I've had some problems with Colornavigator LUT profiles myself - not in Lightroom, but in Photoshop with the GPU handling color management. What happens is clipped shadows and sometimes color banding. I always stick to matrix now.

LUT profiles are supposed to be more accurate than matrix profiles, but they are also heavier and much more complex.

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Community Beginner ,
Feb 17, 2017 Feb 17, 2017

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Ok that seems to have done the trick thank you all for the advice

But I only have one nagging doubt ..

Even thought the last step seems to have resolved the issue, the actual color calibration looked exactly the same whether I selected the generic Adobe RGB 1998 profile, or this new profile created using my hardware/software calibration tools. 

This strikes me as very odd, unless my monitor is very well calibrated to start with it makes little sense to me ...

Can anyone tell me what may be going on ?? I used to remember that when I calibrated a monitor using hardware/software calibration tools that the final result would look very different to the factory default settings ..

Thank, Ali

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Community Beginner ,
Feb 17, 2017 Feb 17, 2017

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Following on from my last point is there some way I can verify the monitor calibration .. I know that color navigator has a verification tool but I cannot make heads nor tales of it ...

Thanks, Ali

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Community Expert ,
Feb 17, 2017 Feb 17, 2017

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Eizo monitors are pretty good out of the box, so it's not surprising that you don't see much difference-

The CG222W reproduces 98% of sRGB and 92% of Adobe RGB, so using sRGB should probably be a closer match.

If you have seen big differences before, I guess that this was with a different make monitor?

The Color Edge Eizos are top of the class, but many other brands will not be good out of the box.

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Community Beginner ,
Feb 17, 2017 Feb 17, 2017

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So you think that I have an issue with my i1display2 calibrator??

Thanks, Ali

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Community Expert ,
Feb 17, 2017 Feb 17, 2017

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The Eizos are so well corrected to begin with that you wouldn't see any general color balance shifts. But if you look closer, you'll notice that individual colors reproduce differently. A blue sky, for instance, would look more cyan or more purple in one than the other. This is because the profile maps the exact position of the three primary colors. This is one of the most important functions of the profile.

As for verification, what you're looking for is called "profile validation". It's right up in the main window. What it does is compare predicted values to actual measured values, but you're using the same sensor. The few times I've run it I end up with delta Es in the 0.1 - 0.4 range, which is well below anything you can discern visually.

I have two Eizos, a CG246 at work and a CX 240 at home, and I work on the same material on both, often the same day. I'd immediately notice if there were any differences between them. There shouldn't be, since the CX is basically an extra-feature-stripped CG. But the sensors are different. I use an i1 Display Pro on the CX, and the integrated sensor on the CG. They're still identical.

Stick to matrix profiles, and these monitors can be trusted 100%. Especially if you set up your calibration targets to match printed output, so that what you see is really what you get. Do this visually and ignore the numbers, just let them fall where they want. People say that there will "always" be a difference between screen and print. Well, that's simply not true. It just means they don't have the right calibration parameters. Do it right, and you'll be surprised how close you can get.

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Community Beginner ,
Feb 17, 2017 Feb 17, 2017

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Thanks for the reply ..

I ran calibration again, using these settings in Color Navigator 6:

1. Select: Create new target

2. Select: Enter Target Manually

3. Select Gamut: Monitor Native

4. Select Brightness & White Point: 80cd/m2 & 5500Kelvin

5. Select Target Black Level: Set to Min of 0.2

6. Select Default RGB Gamma Values: Set to 2.2 / Default Priority is set as Standard

7. Select Customize Profile: Set to Update Profile at every adjustment / Version 2.2 / Tone Curve: Gamma Value

Have I used the correct settings??

Also I ran the validation after profiling & got these results:

Max: 2.3       Average:0.64       White:0.74

Are these good numbers???

Thanks, Ali

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Community Expert ,
Feb 18, 2017 Feb 18, 2017

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The validation is fine. Any delta E below 1 is by definition invisible (that's how it's actually defined). And if you have a single high value pulling the average up, it depends where it is. In any case, if there's a problem with the sensor it wouldn't show up. Don't pay too much attention to validation.

It's obvious that the profile is problematic in some way. Not only does substituting Adobe RGB clear it, but historically and empirically these symptoms are always caused by a bad profile - or the wrong one in a multi-display setup. I've long suspected that there is a bug in Colornavigator, a subtle one that affects Black Point Compensation and only shows up under special circumstances. In my case the problem is LUT profiles handled by the GPU in Photoshop - any other configuration is fine.

Try one more profile, but this time lift the black point to 0.3 or 0.4 (which is a lot more realistic in any case), and set priority to Gray Balance. This will maintain the white point temperature all the way down as far as it can, and stop there, instead of letting each primary go as deep as it can:

colornav_black_point.png

One more thing to try - if you haven't already - is to make sure the GPU is unchecked in both apps' preferences (for Photoshop it's enough to set it to "Basic"). That doesn't necessarily mean the GPU is the problem, it's still most likely the profile, but the GPU-resident color management seems to be a lot less robust and much more prone to choke on faulty profiles. The traditional way of letting the CPU handle it is always more reliable.

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Community Beginner ,
Feb 17, 2017 Feb 17, 2017

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Well I spoke to soon, I am now looking at an image in Lightroom & the color is quite different to how it looks in Photoshop ..

Any advice???

Could it actually be that my monitor calibrator is broken??

Thank, Ali

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Community Beginner ,
Feb 17, 2017 Feb 17, 2017

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I've switched back to Adobe RGB 1998 as default monitor profile & Lightroom & Photoshop are now matching ..

Thanks, Ali

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Community Beginner ,
Mar 06, 2017 Mar 06, 2017

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Ok Guys,

Thank you for the many replies.

I'm afraid that the problem still exists. 

Except that now even when I go back & select 'Adobe RGB 1998' I still get a difference between how the image looks in the shadows in the 'Library mode' of Lightroom vs 'Develop mode'.

I have tried all the other things brought up in this forum & am having no luck.

I even went and bought a new calibrator (Xrite i1 Display Pro) & tried again but still no luck.????

Could it be that my now ageing Eizo CG222W monitor (More than 7 years old) is at fault in some way???

Please advise????

Thanks, Ali

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LEGEND ,
Mar 07, 2017 Mar 07, 2017

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alizabi  wrote

Except that now even when I go back & select 'Adobe RGB 1998' I still get a difference between how the image looks in the shadows in the 'Library mode' of Lightroom vs 'Develop mode'.

Is this something that just appeared? If so it may be due to applying excessive sharpening and insufficient Luminance NR to high ISO images.Do the Library and Develop module images look the same at 1:1 Zoom View?

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