Windows 10 Desktop Colours

[JNB_Rare]

5-year-old system began to glitch and spit, so I thought it was time to purchase new. I purchased a Win10 system with Benq SW2700PT monitor, which is supposed to be 99% Adobe RGB hardware calibrated out of the box (and I have an i1Display Pro on the way).

I've set the monitor to display Adobe RGB. I brought up a file in Photoshop to make a desktop background (wallpaper). Checked against my old system (NEC 2070NX, calibrated by Spyder 3) the images look similar, with the Benq being subtly different, and showing a bit more in the green spectrum (to my eye). So, I output a jpg with the Adobe RGB colour space, and made it my Win10 desktop image.

Whoa there! The Win10 desktop image is WAY different! It's super saturated, and a way different colour. On my old system (admittedly, less than 100% sRGB, although calibrated) the PS and desktop images appear mostly the same.

I don't want to muck up my LR or PS displays, which seem accurate. What am I missing with Win10?

John.

[TonyW]

Try outputting the image again this time save as sRGB and set as wallpaper - how does it look now?

[FabienP]

(...)

I don't want to muck up my LR or PS displays, which seem accurate. What am I missing with Win10?

John.

John,

The behaviour that you describe is what I would expect with applications that are not colour management aware when outputting to a wide gamut display.

AFAIK the Windows wallpaper and the Photos App are not colour management aware and will ignore any profile information supplied in files. Converting the image to sRGB will probably not change anything, as the colours will still be "stretched" to the limits of the native gamut of your monitor.

The reason you did not see this in your previous setup is that you were viewing your images on a monitor which had a sRGB gamut rendering. It could not display such saturated colours.

If your new monitor has an emulation mode for sRGB in its OSD menu, you could try selecting it temporarily to see if things go back to normal.

Cheers,

Fabien

[digitaldog]

Whoa there! The Win10 desktop image is WAY different! It's super saturated, and a way different colour.

Not color managed based on what your report you're seeing.

[TonyW]

Sorry about missing this - long time since I played with Windows backgrounds.  As already stated certain Windows components are not colour managed and it seems this is still the case with Windows 10 as far as Wallpapers go.

There is one workaround that may help - This assumes that you have calibrated and profiled your monitor and set Windows colour management to use the profile:

1.  In PS EDIT/Convert to profile and select your monitor profile.
2. EDIT/Assign Profile and select sRGB
3.  Save image and set as Desktop

[JNB_Rare]

Sorry about missing this - long time since I played with Windows backgrounds.  As already stated certain Windows components are not colour managed and it seems this is still the case with Windows 10 as far as Wallpapers go.

There is one workaround that may help - This assumes that you have calibrated and profiled your monitor and set Windows colour management to use the profile:

1.  In PS EDIT/Convert to profile and select your monitor profile.
2. EDIT/Assign Profile and select sRGB
3.  Save image and set as Desktop

Thanks everyone, and a special thanks to Tony, whose workaround WORKS! 

Best regards,

John.