sudden color oversaturation in lightroom

[Pennymama]

I have used Lightroom for several years without issues. I currently have Lightroom 6, and my monitor is calibrated with the Spyder 5 Express, on a Windows operating system. I recently had all of my pictures edited of a maternity photo shoot with my red headed niece. Everything looked great, all I had to do was one final look through on all of the pics before I exported them and gave them to her. Yet, when I opened Lightroom her hair looked orange. all of the colors were way oversaturated. Now every picture in my folders and on my old Lightroom 3 (which I still have on my desktop, but never used) are oversaturated and almost glowing in neon colors. I have updated Lightroom 6, I have uninstalled it and reinstalled it. I don't understand what happened? Please help?

[JP Hess]

I'm not sure what you are comparing, because the catalogs for Lightroom 3 and Lightroom 6 are not compatible. What pictures are you looking at in the Lightroom 3 that are oversaturated? Are they the maternity pictures? They can't be the pictures that you have edited with Lightroom 6, at least in the Lightroom 6 catalog.

[Pennymama]

Very true, they are not compatible - sorry I left that information out. If I import any new pics into either Lightroom 3 or 6 they look this way. Also any pics that were already in Lightroom 3 or 6 now have this oversaturated look. I did not do another calibration because the pics look totally normal outside of lightroom. They only have this oversaturated glowing look in Lightroom.

[SeanMcCormack]

Very few things use the monitor profile, which is why I made the suggestion.

[Pennymama]

Thanks, at this point I will try anything.  Any suggestion helps! I will try to redo the calibration!  Any other ideas? I didn't know if I accidentally changed one of the settings or what! It's so frustrating!

[SeanMcCormack]

An unlikely scenario is that everything was selected, you had Auto-Sync on and changed the Saturation and it affected all photos.

[SeanMcCormack]

I'd redo the monitor calibration, just in case the profile has become corrupted.

[D Fosse]

Are you using more than one display? Like e.g. laptop + external?

The Spyder Express editions only support one profile for a single display. Maybe Lightroom uses the wrong profile.

[johnrellis · Accepted solution]

Here's a quick, easy, and reliable way to determine if the display profile is incompatible with LR: http://www.lightroomqueen.com/articles-page/how-do-i-change-my-monitor-profile-to-check-whether-its-... . Note that simply recalibrating won't identify the possibility that your calibration software has been configured to generate profiles that LR doesn't like.

[Pennymama]

No, I am only using one display! I checked the auto sync - that doesn't seem to be the problem. I will the website you recommended johnrellis! Thanks for all the suggestions - I am so frustrated!

[Pennymama]

Oh my goodness, I am literally dancing around right now!! That totally fixed my problem johnrellis!! Thank you!! Thank you!!

Now, everything you were talking about is basically over my head! LOL

So, can you please help me understand? Does this mean that my Spyder 5 is not calibrating my monitor correctly? Should I continue using it??

Oh my - thank you so much!!

How did this happen? Why did it all of a sudden change?

Thank you again!!

[D Fosse]

It means the monitor profile is defective for whatever reason. That's why the first troubleshooting step is to replace and/or remake the profile.

When you run the Spyder software, two things happen: calibration and profiling. The first is the monitor response correction, which is rather limited.

The second makes the monitor profile. The profile doesn't correct anything, it's just a description of the monitor's response in its now calibrated state. But this description is very accurate. Lightroom uses this profile to correct the image it sends to the monitor. If the description is incorrect, Lightroom displays incorrectly.

Many other viewers and browsers don't use the profile and are unaffected by a bad profile.

[Pennymama]

Ok, that makes sense - thank you. 

So does that mean every time I use the Spyder it will make a defective profile? Meaning I need to stop using the Spyder and replace it with something else? And if that's the case what kind should I get?

Thank you all for your help! !

[D Fosse]

No, if it did that something would be seriously wrong. First of all I would just run it again to make a new profile.

If the Spyder profiles are consistently problematic, see if you can update the software. Or maybe the sensor is broken.

If something doesn't look right, first check what profile is set up as default for your monitor (which should be the one made by your calibrator). You can do that under Windows Color Management, or you can see what's listed in Photoshop Color Settings > Monitor RGB.

Manufacturer monitor profiles are distributed through Windows Update, and if you don't watch out, could replace your custom profile. Normally that shouldn't happen, but it can. These profiles are surprisingly often broken and useless.

sRGB is your fallback. It's not entirely accurate, but for many practical purposes good enough. A good profile from the Spyder is preferable.