Weird display of color profile (Camera RAW, IrfanView, Windows)

[pedda]

Hello community,

this is my first post in this forum, so please excuse any mistakes!
I've registered because of a long-term problem with color profiles and calibration
and hope that this forum can provide good tipps...

What I did:

I bought a Spyder for calibrating my monitor. I do a lot of prints in my free time and just had enough of weird color differences between the edit and the final result.
But it did not work out as planned.
Basically I ended up with a color profile for both of my monitors which "looks" good on these monitors and windows and stuff as well as when I print them directly (through any program).
The problem lies in the part of editing.
IrfanView for example displays a different image than Camera Raw in PS and it gets even worse when I open an image in the windows preview (which is negligible).
See photo below.

IrfanView (left), Camera RAW in PS (center), Windows Preview (right) - the image in all three programs are taken in raw and the file came straight from the camera

I rely on IrfanView as the best "output" because the image I print looks pretty close to what it displays.

What I do not understand:

How can I set up (at least) Photoshop and Camera RAW in a way that it accepts my color profile which is set up to be my standard for Windows, so that it matches IrfanView and the prints?
Changing the color settings in Photoshop does not result in a correct image display. Or I do it wrong.
Converting color profiles from e.g. sRGB to Monitor Profile makes it worse.

Thanks for any kindly help!

 

[Ysarex]

I can't test this for you as I don't have IrfanView installed but if you're opening the same raw file in both IrfanView and ACR I would expect them to look different. Both IrFanView and ACR are processing the raw file immediately upon opening and will do so differently. ACR will open the file using Adobe's input profile for your camera. IrFanView will use some other input profile (Adobe won't let them use theirs). They will both apply different tone curves and they will both interpret WB differently. So basic rule: No two raw file converters will open the same raw file and display it the same. You should expect them to all display the same file differently.

Next problem: You did the right thing using the DataColor Spyder to calibrate your monitor. You should continue to do that. ACR (and I'm assuming IrFranView) will use the ICC display profile the Spyder creates to display your image. The bad news is that Windows preview will not. So in this instance Windows isn't following correct color management protocol. There's no fix for the Windows error so you either suffer it or use good software to preview your photos. All MS Windows software that displays photos does so incorrectly.

Joe

 

[pedda]

I can't test this for you as I don't have IrfanView installed but if you're opening the same raw file in both IrfanView and ACR I would expect them to look different. Both IrFanView and ACR are processing the raw file immediately upon opening and will do so differently. ACR will open the file using Adobe's input profile for your camera. IrFanView will use some other input profile (Adobe won't let them use theirs). They will both apply different tone curves and they will both interpret WB differently. So basic rule: No two raw file converters will open the same raw file and display it the same. You should expect them to all display the same file differently.

Yes I agree that they will render them slightly different but this is like day and night and the issue is all the same if I open any other image files like jpgs etc.
It does not matter which type of image I open, they will preview things differently...

It appears that ACR does not adapt/accept the color profile of the spyder at all!
And this is driving me nuts...

Next problem: You did the right thing using the DataColor Spyder to calibrate your monitor. You should continue to do that. ACR (and I'm assuming IrFranView) will use the ICC display profile the Spyder creates to display your image. The bad news is that Windows preview will not. So in this instance Windows isn't following correct color management protocol. There's no fix for the Windows error so you either suffer it or use good software to preview your photos. All MS Windows software that displays photos does so incorrectly.

Joe

I thought so...well Windows preview is not mandatory enough to care about.
ACR is my focus primarely because that is always the first step for the edit.
And ACR is the one which lacks the most in proper colors unfortunately!

Thanks for the reply!

 

[john.margetts]

It appears that ACR does not adapt/accept the color profile of the spyder at all!
And this is driving me nuts...

ACR does not use the screen profile at all. All programs send the image to the operating system to display. It is Windows which uses the profile. ACR should use the profile embedded in the image file - usually sRGB or AdobeRGB. Are you sure you have a colour profile assigned to the image? From memory you assign it from Files menu.

 

[Ysarex]

It appears that ACR does not adapt/accept the color profile of the spyder at all!
And this is driving me nuts...

ACR does not use the screen profile at all. All programs send the image to the operating system to display. It is Windows which uses the profile. ACR should use the profile embedded in the image file - usually sRGB or AdobeRGB. Are you sure you have a colour profile assigned to the image? From memory you assign it from Files menu.

This is incorrect.

Adobe does use the display profile when rendering an image.
All programs do not just send the image to the OS for display. reference: HOW TO TROUBLESHOOT BAD MONITOR PROFILE in Adobe Photoshop CS6 and Apple Colorsync Color-Managed Applications
ACR is predominantly used to process raw files (which is what the OP is doing). Raw files have no assigned color space or embedded profile.

You can verify that Adobe is using the correct display profile from Color Settings by checking the value in Working Spaces RGB: Adobe will ID the display profile that it's using.

Adobe doesn't give the user a display profile choice but many photo editing programs do. If instead they were all just handing off to the OS for display there would be no reason to have an option in Preferences to select the display profile. For example in DPP:

Or in DXO:

When editing software doesn't give the user a choice then it's fair to assume the OS display profile is used by default, but nonetheless it is used by the editing software to render the screen image. Any discrepancies in the monitor performance are noted in the profile and the editing software corrects to the extent possible.

Joe

 

[Ysarex]

It appears that ACR does not adapt/accept the color profile of the spyder at all!
And this is driving me nuts...

Open Photoshop and go to Color Settings. In the box Working Spaces click the drop box for RGB: and see what's listed as the Monitor profile. It should be the name of the saved profile from your Spyder calibration. If so then that's the profile Adobe is using.

Joe

 

[Ysarex]

I can't test this for you as I don't have IrfanView installed but if you're opening the same raw file in both IrfanView and ACR I would expect them to look different. Both IrFanView and ACR are processing the raw file immediately upon opening and will do so differently. ACR will open the file using Adobe's input profile for your camera. IrFanView will use some other input profile (Adobe won't let them use theirs). They will both apply different tone curves and they will both interpret WB differently. So basic rule: No two raw file converters will open the same raw file and display it the same. You should expect them to all display the same file differently.

Yes I agree that they will render them slightly different but this is like day and night and the issue is all the same if I open any other image files like jpgs etc.
It does not matter which type of image I open, they will preview things differently...

I'm not an IrFanView user and I hear you that you're seeing a difference no matter what file type you look at, but in terms of raw files does IrFanView even process the raw file at all? It's not a raw converter as I understand it and I'll bet what it's doing is just displaying the embedded JPEG in the raw file without processing the raw file at all. That would account for a fairly substantial difference.

If you're seeing a big difference then IrFanView to Photoshop with an untouched JPEG then something else is going on and one way or the other I'm back to the display profile.

Joe

 

[fmw]

I don't have the answer but I wanted to drop by and compliment you on an excellent image.

 

[pedda]

Sorry for the long time off.
I got sick last week and just recently kinda recovered...

This is incorrect.

Adobe does use the display profile when rendering an image.
All programs do not just send the image to the OS for display. reference: HOW TO TROUBLESHOOT BAD MONITOR PROFILE in Adobe Photoshop CS6 and Apple Colorsync Color-Managed Applications
ACR is predominantly used to process raw files (which is what the OP is doing). Raw files have no assigned color space or embedded profile.

You can verify that Adobe is using the correct display profile from Color Settings by checking the value in Working Spaces RGB: Adobe will ID the display profile that it's using.

Adobe doesn't give the user a display profile choice but many photo editing programs do. If instead they were all just handing off to the OS for display there would be no reason to have an option in Preferences to select the display profile.

Open Photoshop and go to Color Settings. In the box Working Spaces click the drop box for RGB: and see what's listed as the Monitor profile. It should be the name of the saved profile from your Spyder calibration. If so then that's the profile Adobe is using.

Joe

Thanks for the detailed reply!
I am definately using the color profile in every setting it's letting me change.

I turned color management off to prevent "spreading" my cancerous profile accidentally to the clients.
Don't know if its important for Camera RAW.
(its in German but you will get the point)

And in CameraRAW:

If I change on of these settings the other one will change as well.
If I set it to RGB for example the colors will visually shift a little bit to the magenta tones but it still looks like hell.

Here is the weird thing:
I just discovered when I open old .psd-files, I created BEFORE I adjusted the colors with the spyder, that these are getting displayed 100% correct and fine.
If I create new ones and e.g. copy over some content from the old files, it creates this color issue again...
But still I am certainly not able to track down the issue.

I'm not an IrFanView user and I hear you that you're seeing a difference no matter what file type you look at, but in terms of raw files does IrFanView even process the raw file at all? It's not a raw converter as I understand it and I'll bet what it's doing is just displaying the embedded JPEG in the raw file without processing the raw file at all. That would account for a fairly substantial difference.

If you're seeing a big difference then IrFanView to Photoshop with an untouched JPEG then something else is going on and one way or the other I'm back to the display profile.

Joe

It does not matter which file I open in IrfanView. A jpg-photo from an iPhone, a mp4-video from a camera or a (Canon/Sony-)RAW-file from another camera, all of them look great.
The opposite is Camera RAW (Video look still sh** after import in Photoshop too).

Even Firefox is displaying them correctly...

I don't have the answer but I wanted to drop by and compliment you on an excellent image.

Well thank you very much!

 

[Ysarex]

Joe

 

[pedda]

But you marked it on your image?

View attachment 119151

When I put RGB in there everything in Photoshop displays now as the Windows Preview.
IrfanView is still different and more vivid...

Camera RAW for example is still completely off.
And it opens images with my monitor profile:

View attachment 119778

 

[Watchful]

Why are you using coated stock SWOP2? What type of stock are you printing on?

 

[pedda]

I don't. It was a mistake due to the fiddle with the settings. Thanks for letting me know though...

I think I figured out what the problem is.
After switchting back to the RGB work space in Photoshop (thanks Ysarex!), everything within Photoshop looked weird first but then I realized that this was the correct display of those images.
Now PS is displaying the same image as the windows preview and Camera RAW (finally). It's not a nice one but read on...
IrfanView is the problem here which brought me into thinking, everything else is wrong.
Together with my newly purchased camera I thought only IrfanView is displaying those images correctly because of the more saturated colors.
But apparently the images of this particular camera and my latest photoshop-files I used for reference were just undersaturated in the greens...

I looked up some irfanview color profile issues and apparently it does not handle those quite well.
To check this I installed XnView as well. Same result. And in Firefox too.
So they just add the colors from my screen profile to the sRGB colors resulting in oversaturation on green and orange colors (which are a lot in nature and humans).

I hope everything is solved by this insight...or do you have any doubts?

If yes I will facepalm so hard.
This issue bothered me for nearly half a year.

Edit:
Here is by the way the image I could finally edit properly. Hopefully it is not too saturated now because of my changes?

Edit2:
You can force IrfanView to accept the color profile through downloading the LCMS(?) plugin and putting the settings like this: