Color management problem in Adobe CC

I am now having a color management problem in CC. I just finished editing an image in photoshop. My working space is ProPhoto.

 

I sent a TIF from LR to Photoshop and did extensive editing, including selective color, vibrance, and a tad of saturation. I saved the TIF using file-save-as, as I always do. I then imported it back into the Lightroom directory from which it came. I then exported from LR to display on the web.

 

I was startled to see that the image in LR and on the web was quite different from the image in photoshop. I have never noticed this before. Reds were more orange. I then went back to Photoshop, converted the profile to sRGB, and saved a JPG. That looks more like the LR version.

 

Here are my photoshop color settings:

 

 

I use a wide-gamut NEC monitor. I set the monitor to sRGB, which didn't make the images look like each other. I then moved them to a narrow-gamut monitor. They still looked somewhat different.

 

So this seems to be something about how Photoshop is now rendering colors for the screen.

 

I took screen shots with the monitor set for widest gamut, and while they don't accurately capture what I see, they do show how different they are. Here's the screen shot from Photoshop:

 

 

And here's the corresponding screen shot from Lightroom. Notice how much more orange the curlicues in the middle are than they are in the Photoshop screen shot.

 

 

Anyone have any idea what's going on?

 

I have been using this setup for a long time, with no prior issues.

 

thanks for any ideas.

Weirder yet. I just loaded a standard test image into both LR and Photoshop, and I don't see the striking difference. It must be something about this particular image, which may explain why I haven't noticed problems before. I played with the edits, and turning off layers that have extreme selective color adjustments (pulling cyan all the way down for reds) seems to be the culprit.

The PS color settings look fine.

WHERE you view the data in LR is critical! Only in Develop module at 1:1 is accurate. The other modules use a differing color space and preview architecture. The preview in Develop at 1:1 and Photoshop at 100% should match. IF NOT, disable GPU and test again. If that still doesn't work, recalibrate and build a new display profile, V2 (Never V4).

As for the web page/site, a mismatch is nearly always an issue with a non color managed browser.

Andrew,

 

Thank you. I was hoping you'd respond. You solved the more important part of the problem. Within Lightroom, the problem was indeed that I was looking at the edited image in the library module. In the develop module, it looks like it does in Photoshop.

 

However, in web browsers, it doesn't. I tried two color-managed browsers, Firefox and Vivaldi, and they render the image the same, more like the LR library module. Reds are slightly too orange, and they loose detail in some places, almost as if the red were oversaturated in some places. The difference between that and PS/LR isn't large, but it's clear. I don't know whether Chrome is color managed, but on that browser, the image looks similar to how it looks on Firefox and Vivaldi.

 

I had uploaded the images to Smugmug. I just tried uploading to Flickr, and it looks similar same on both sites. Not identical, but similar to each other and not like PS/LR. So, the site isn't the reason.

 

My next step is to print with a really neutral paper and see which the print resembles more. If the print looks similar to PS, then the discrepancy with web displays is less important, given that things rarely look as they should on a random viewer's screen. Still, it's annoying.

 

Dan

This site doesn't allow edits after a short time, so I can't correct the post above.

 

I just tried one more think that I should have done a second time before posting, now that I know to make sure the LR is in the develop module: I moved everything from my wide gamut monitor to a cheap, roughly sRGB monitor. Bingo. LR and web pages look similar--not identical, but similar.

 

So I think all of this boiled down to two things. First, as Andrew pointed out, I should have double-checked that I was in the Develop module. Second, the fairly extreme selective color adjustments I did pushed colors outside of the sRGB gamut. Color managed browsers must be limited to that output even when on a wide-gamut monitor. Is that right?

Color managed browsers on a wide gamut display will show colors outside sRGB like say PS.

Some web uploads strip profiles; not good. Even if is the image is in sRGB. Some browsers assume sRGB for untagged images, at least in the past some assume the users display profile. And for a deeper level:

 

sRGB urban legend & myths Part 2 In this 17 minute video, I'll discuss some more sRGB misinformation and cover: When to use sRGB and what to expect on the web and mobile devices How sRGB doesn't insure a visual match without color management, how to check The downsides of an all sRGB workflow sRGB's color gamut vs. "professional" output devices The future of sRGB and wide gamut display technology Photo print labs that demand sRGB for output High resolution: http://digitaldog.net/files/sRGBMythsPart2.mp4 Low resolution on YouTube:

Good video. thanks. I do in fact follow all of the advice in that video: I shoot raw and edit in the widest gamut I can, with the highest bit rate available.

 

I remembered when I got to the part about tests of color management that color managed browsers can correctly render images outside of sRGB. Some time ago, when Firefox had its brief snafu with color management, I used one of those sites to test both Firefox and Vivaldi, and one of the images I tested was in ProPhoto.

 

The remaining color space issue in this case is so simple that I'm embarrassed to realize it only now: I had my file export-to-web plugins in LR set to convert to sRGB. So the long and short of it is:

 

1. The selective color adjustments I made to the image in question pushed some colors outside of sRGB.

2. The result didn't render correctly in LR on a wide gamut monitor because I was in the wrong module

3. The result didn't render correctly in web browsers because I was looking at an sRGB conversion--whichever parameters LR automatically uses in its file export routines--and that conversion wasn't very good.

Previews outside of Develop module are using JPEGs in Adobe RGB (1998).

Ah, the pieces fall into place. Thanks. That explains why on the wide-gamut monitor the LR library view looked quite different from the PS view but not quite like the web views, which were sRGB.

 

This is in any case an interesting example. As I mentioned, my processing follows your recommendations. So typically, for an image that I want to show printed, I wouldn't care all that much if the sRGB product at the end looked noticeably inferior, as I wouldn't be producing one en route to printing. These days, however, because of COVID, a lot more exhibits and competitions are online.