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Author Topic: Big Sur to Monterey colour inaccuracy  (Read 2572 times)

Mick Sang

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Big Sur to Monterey colour inaccuracy
« on: February 13, 2022, 12:52:51 pm »

We have been running Mojave on our MACs since its 10.14.6 release and it has been running very smoothly. Colour and B&W prints have been accurate and stable. However, since new features in LightRoom and PhotoShop were released which are not supported by or available in Mojave, we felt it was time to explore an "upgrade" to Big Sur. So, out of an abundance of caution, we "upgraded" only one of our MACs to Big Sur. This immediately broke the PhotoShop and LightRoom Classic print pipeline from that MAC. When we printed from it the result looked like prints made without the use of any ICC profile at all.  However, prints from Print Tool and ImageNest were perfect. So, this seemed to be an issue between Adobe and Apple. At the same time I read accounts from others who had run into ColorSync related issues after moving to Big Sur. Apparently ICC profiles were hidden i.e. unavailable etc. We never had that issue. Our profiles were listed but were being ignored by PhotoShop and LightRoom - but not other apps.

After a couple of weeks of this and printing only from Print Tool or ImageNest from that MAC, we decided to move it to Monterey because I had read that it had solved some of the ColorSync related issues encountered by others. After doing so we printed our standard image test file from PhotoShop. That test file has been used by us for several years. So we know it well. It consists of a collection of various colour and B&W images and scales. The print from Photoshop immediately appeared as though our profiles were being picked up again. But, two images (one in particular) were inaccurate which begged closer inspection. One of the images in the test file is a pic of a woman with deeply tanned skin tone. The skin was clearly more brown/red - cooler than the correct print or the screen display. Also, after closer inspection we saw that the greens in another image were cooler. In fact the entire file appeared ever so slightly cooler. This was highly unusual.

So, we printed the file from Print Tool and ImageNest again. This time, the print from Print Tool matched the result from PhotoShop i.e. cooler with browner red skin tone in that one image in the file, cooler greens and ever so slightly cooler overall. The print from ImageNest however was a complete failure. It was not picking up the ICC profiles or was not reading them correctly. The result was a crazy, oversaturated, magenta laden mess. So, first, ImageNest is apparently not yet supported in Monterey. More importantly to us, though, was this new colour discrepancy in our standard test file that was apparently created by Monterey. So next we printed the same test file twice to the same printer on the same paper - once from a Monterey MAC and next from a Mojave Mac. The same settings were used for both prints. The print from the Monterey MAC showed the cooler midtone to deep red and the print from the Mojave Mac was normal i.e. that skin tone was warmer and the greens in the other image were less cool.

Further to this, we ran 2 more test prints from a file which is comprised of a 60 patch colour scale and 51 patch grey scale. We run these tests regularly to gain numerical comparisons of profiles and printers in addition to visual comparisons using the aforementioned image based test file. The scales were printed first from the Mojave Mac and second from the Monterey Mac on the same printer and paper with the same settings. After drying, we measured the patches with an i1Pro2 and compared the readings in Patch Tool by Babelcolour. Normally, the results would be almost perfectly matched - certainly well below d/e: 1.0. BUT, the readings from these prints differed significantly. While over half of them read well under d/e: 1.0, half of them, including some midtones of the greyscale and deep reds and greens neared d/e: 1.0 and several were over to d/e: 1.3. This confirmed what we were seeing between the 2 image based test prints.

Something has changed in Monterey. Something is apparently wrong in Monterey. A quick, cursory glance at the Monterey print versus Mojave print might lead one to believe they may be the same. But, fortunately the particular depth of red in that one image of the woman with tanned skin tone has revealed the inaccuracy between the Monterey and Mojave prints quite clearly. It caused us to inspect more closely and we noticed the greens were off as well. I posted our findings on this in another forum. One or two replies were from folks who had printed from PhotoShop or LightRoom in Mojave and Monterey and claimed that their results were identical.  As I said earlier, we have used this particular test image set for many years and know it very well. But, if we had deleted the pic of the woman with deeply tanned skin tone from that image set, we may well have missed this inaccuracy. So the degree to which the difference is evident is dependant upon the colours in the tested image. I am very curious if anyone else has seen such difference between prints from these two MAC operating systems.

Mick
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digitaldog

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Re: Big Sur to Monterey colour inaccuracy
« Reply #1 on: February 13, 2022, 01:57:36 pm »

Don't know what to tell you other than, nothing changed for me after that update to Monterey. One of the first tests I make is viewing and printing my color reference images. All fine.
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Mick Sang

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Re: Big Sur to Monterey colour inaccuracy
« Reply #2 on: February 13, 2022, 03:53:20 pm »

Well, coming from you, sir, that makes it quite clear to me at least that our Monterey MAC may have become corrupt in some way. We've printed these tests several times from that Mac and the results are perfectly, consistent - yet off by a small, but noticeable, amount.  I'm very reluctant at this point to move any more of our MACs to Monterey. So, a reformat and completely new, clean instal may be required. I can't think of any other way around it.

Thank you for your post.

Mick
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Mick Sang

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Re: Big Sur to Monterey colour inaccuracy
« Reply #3 on: February 16, 2022, 07:13:33 pm »

By way of a brief update, today we just reinstalled PhotoShop and Monterey twice. The colour inaccuracy we had experienced is gone when printing from Print Tool or Qimage One. Then, I updated PhotoShop 23.1 to 23.2 because others announced that Adobe had "fixed" a colour issue which they apparently had caused in 23.1. The colour in our test prints is now way off in the opposite direction when printing from PhotoShop only. Instead of the result being slightly heavy in the magenta which it turns out was due to Monterey not PhotoShop, it is now obviously weak in the magenta with overall too much black. It's a mess. PhotoShop was deleted and reinstalled yet again to no avail.

So, the long & short is that now Monterey seems to be settled and we are getting good, accurate prints from that MAC when printing from other apps. We will leave it alone now, stick with Monterey and hopefully gain a fix to PhotoShop at some future date. In the meanwhile, even though it took two reinstalls, it was worth it and all is well. Thanks again to Mr. Rodney for your input which gave us some confidence in Monterey and persistence to continue to search for a solution aside from moving backward to an earlier OS.

Mick
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William Walker

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Re: Big Sur to Monterey colour inaccuracy
« Reply #4 on: February 17, 2022, 07:53:49 am »

Hi Mick,

I have given up trying to print through Lightroom for the same reasons you mention. I am also on Monterey and Mac Pro.

On my Canon printer I use the Canon ipf8400 Print Plug-In and that works perfectly...on my Epson 3880 Print Tool works fine and yesterday, after reading about  "Epson Print Layout", tried that - and it worked fine too.
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kers

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Re: Big Sur to Monterey colour inaccuracy
« Reply #5 on: February 17, 2022, 09:33:00 am »

Sad story that the wheel has to be invented with every ’upgrade’
Even to a level of square wheels…
All this to prees you to buy ‘new’ hard and software.
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Mick Sang

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Re: Big Sur to Monterey colour inaccuracy
« Reply #6 on: February 17, 2022, 09:46:30 am »

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I have given up trying to print through Lightroom for the same reasons you mention. I am also on Monterey and Mac Pro.

Well, it is oddly comforting to know that we are not alone. But, this is why we will not be "upgrading" any more of our MACs to Monterey just yet. The move to Monterey was encouraged by a desire to investigate a couple of new, impressive tools available in LR and PS which were not available to Mojave MACs. But getting to Monterey was only after having disastrous print related experience with Big Sur. The whole exercise of getting to Monterey via Big Sur has reminded me of our experiences with MACs in the System 7, 8 and 9 days. Fortunately, we have other apps to print from which work well. It does leave us with some distrust for PS and LR, though. That said, soft-proofing seems to work fine.

Mick
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digitaldog

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Re: Big Sur to Monterey colour inaccuracy
« Reply #7 on: February 17, 2022, 09:56:12 am »

The move to Monterey was encouraged by a desire to investigate a couple of new, impressive tools available in LR and PS which were not available to Mojave MACs.
Such as?
https://www.techkuda.com/article/adobe-photoshop-system-requirements-on-windows-mac/
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digitaldog

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Re: Big Sur to Monterey colour inaccuracy
« Reply #8 on: February 17, 2022, 01:16:15 pm »

Just printed out of the latest versions of Photoshop and Lightroom Classic on Mac OS 12.2.1 to an Epson 3880 using my two color reference images. NO issues.
However, the old 16-bit check box bug IS back! DO NOT set an Epson whose Mac print driver has such an option to be on. It doesn't do jack and worse, it prints awful. Otherwise, everything is fine and matches my output from older Mac OSs.
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Mick Sang

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Re: Big Sur to Monterey colour inaccuracy
« Reply #9 on: February 17, 2022, 08:24:49 pm »

First, I should clarify that I was referring to LightRoom Classic. I haven't used what is now called "LightRoom."

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Such as?

So, to name a couple in LightRoom Classic: 64 bit processing (for whatever good that will be - we'll see), Photoshop style layers and masking. Honestly, the process of fighting with Monterey and PhotoShop upgrades to regain colour accuracy has distracted to the point where the original excitement and reasons for our wanting to check out the new features and updates in PS and LR Classic (which had ceased to become available to us in Mojave) have been largely forgotten.

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Just printed out of the latest versions of Photoshop and Lightroom Classic on Mac OS 12.2.1 to an Epson 3880 using my two color reference images. NO issues.

When we printed from this version, we had no issues either. The issue we encountered were apparently routed in a faulty Monterey installation. After 2 subsequent reinstalls the issue finally cleared up. Then, we "updated" PhotoShop from version 12.2.1 to 12.2.2 which was touted by a poster on the Epson Wide Format Group forum to be Adobe's "fix" for some colour related issues. We updated and the results are awful - much worse than they were when we had the Monterey related issue. It is as though profiles are being only partially read. This time the difference is very obvious and obviously BAD. The strange thing is that the one image in our test image set which had been too cool and red is now too warm and lacking magenta. A solid magenta patch in the test is very weak indeed. We deleted and reinstalled PhotoShop twice in hopes that the issue would clear up as it had with Monterey. Iy didn't. We now print from Print Tool and Qimage One. ImageNest is not yet Monterey compatible.

Mick
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digitaldog

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Re: Big Sur to Monterey colour inaccuracy
« Reply #10 on: February 17, 2022, 08:39:25 pm »

First, I should clarify that I was referring to LightRoom Classic. I haven't used what is now called "LightRoom."
Yes, Lightroom Classic.
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So, to name a couple in LightRoom Classic: 64 bit processing (for whatever good that will be - we'll see), Photoshop style layers and masking.
Lightroom Classic has been a 64-bit product dating back to at least version 5.
New Masking appeared in both ACR and Lightroom Classic that CAN run in at least 3 Mac operating systems including the latest, Monterey (12.x).
https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/masking.html
https://helpx.adobe.com/camera-raw/using/masking.html
You do not have to update to Monterey to use these features.

As I indicated, there haven't been any issues for me, and AFAIK others, other than the two here printing out of Photoshop or Lightroom Classic in recent memory.
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Then, we "updated" PhotoShop from version 12.2.1 to 12.2.2
PS 23.2 was released like a week ago. The previous version was 23.1.1.

What IS bad, obviously bad, is printing out of either Lightroom Classic or Photoshop using the Epson driver 16-bit check box set for on, but this was a bug that's years old, cleared up, seems to be back, and again, there is zero reasons to have it on even when the bug doesn't take effect.

Bottom line is, for me, no printing issues with either Adobe product on OS 12.X, no reports I know of outside this forum post.

The fixes to PS is outlined here: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/fixed-issues.html
Nothing about printing (yes, a bug exporting with ProPhoto RGB). If someone on another forum said anything about a Photoshop version 12.2.1 to 12.2.2, someone is confused.  :D
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Mick Sang

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Re: Big Sur to Monterey colour inaccuracy
« Reply #11 on: February 17, 2022, 10:07:12 pm »

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PS 23.2 was released like a week ago. The previous version was 23.1.1.

Whoops, yes these are the version numbers I meant. Sorry, my bad. Confusion is mine  Brain drain? age? both? who knows?. We updated to 23.2 and got the bad colour.

I think we may have printed our tests with 16 bit checked after the update. Not sure. I don't use it. But, the guy who ran the test often does. I will ask and have it run again with it unchecked (8 bit) to be sure.

Thank you for the link and info.

Mick
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Mick Sang

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Re: Big Sur to Monterey colour inaccuracy
« Reply #12 on: February 17, 2022, 10:47:03 pm »

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New Masking appeared in both ACR and Lightroom Classic that CAN run in at least 3 Mac operating systems including the latest, Monterey (12.x).
https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/masking.html
https://helpx.adobe.com/camera-raw/using/masking.html
You do not have to update to Monterey to use these features.

Yes, Masking was available. But, the newest version of LightRoom Classic offers PS style layers which offers an better approach IMO. We have only just begun to look at everything it offers that wasn't available to us from Mojave. We got tired of seeing repeated UPDATE notices only to see "Unavailable" in the Creative Cloud app. listing. So we were unable to get security updates or access to any new features of which the PS style layer masking was one.

Mick
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digitaldog

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Re: Big Sur to Monterey colour inaccuracy
« Reply #13 on: February 17, 2022, 11:03:03 pm »

But, the newest version of LightRoom Classic offers PS style layers which offers an better approach IMO.
There are no "PS style layers" in Lightroom Classic and I'm not at all sure what you might be referring to.
And I'm saying this as a long-time Adobe beta for PS and LR; whatever you think is PS layers, exist in PS, and not in  LR.
NONE of this has anything to do with Mojave.
« Last Edit: February 17, 2022, 11:06:20 pm by digitaldog »
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digitaldog

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Re: Big Sur to Monterey colour inaccuracy
« Reply #14 on: February 17, 2022, 11:04:19 pm »

I think we may have printed our tests with 16 bit checked after the update. Not sure.
If you did, the issue is that driver setting.
Again, even without the bug, the setting doesn't provide anything.
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William Walker

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Re: Big Sur to Monterey colour inaccuracy
« Reply #15 on: February 18, 2022, 02:33:10 am »

Just printed out of the latest versions of Photoshop and Lightroom Classic on Mac OS 12.2.1 to an Epson 3880 using my two color reference images. NO issues.
However, the old 16-bit check box bug IS back! DO NOT set an Epson whose Mac print driver has such an option to be on. It doesn't do jack and worse, it prints awful. Otherwise, everything is fine and matches my output from older Mac OSs.

Andrew, I printed with 16-Bit checked and un-checked and it made no difference...I will double, double-check! :)
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William Walker

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Re: Big Sur to Monterey colour inaccuracy
« Reply #16 on: February 18, 2022, 03:33:17 am »

Andrew, I printed with 16-Bit checked and un-checked and it made no difference...I will double, double-check! :)

Apologies!! I had the 16-bit unchecked in Lightroom - but not in the print dialogue! Seems fine now! ;D

Thanks!
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Mick Sang

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Re: Big Sur to Monterey colour inaccuracy
« Reply #17 on: February 18, 2022, 10:21:39 am »

This morning I asked if the test run yesterday was run with 16 bit checked. Apparently it was not. Nevertheless, we printed from PhotoShop again this morning with 16 bit checked and NOT checked and the colour appeared to be exactly the same in both (without pixel peeping) and both were wrong. We printed again from 2 different profiles, M1 and M2, for the same paper. Same result.

It took 2 reinstalls of Monterey to clear up the issue we had experienced with slight colour inaccuracy when printing from all apps in Monterey. By the third reinstall it cleared up. Now, after seeing the very inaccurate results after updating to v.23.2 of PhotoShop we deleted and reinstalled PhotoShop twice more with restarts between to no avail. The last time I personally experienced this sort of thing was back in the early OS days. I wonder if the colour inaccuracies that we see are coming from a stubborn bad bit of app data, why is it not clearing up after 2 app deletions and reinstalls? How is this fixed?

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Bottom line is, for me, no printing issues with either Adobe product on OS 12.X, no reports I know of outside this forum post.

So, you updated to PS 23.2 and prints were good?

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Again, even without the bug, the setting doesn't provide anything.

We have been printing in 8 bit exclusively for the past couple of years. But, I seem to recall reading an article from you or somewhere in Colour Management for Photographers, sir, in which you pointed out that this 16 bit setting did result in a very small improvement that could only be seen by serious "pixel peepers." Did I misunderstand in some way? 

I also saw a post, yesterday, in Epson Wide Format Group in which the poster said that he had actually seen a very small but clear difference between the 8 bit and 16 bit paths from PS. I tested this years back and saw no real beneficial difference.


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There are no "PS style layers" in Lightroom Classic and I'm not at all sure what you might be referring to.
And I'm saying this as a long-time Adobe beta for PS and LR; whatever you think is PS layers, exist in PS, and not in  LR.
NONE of this has anything to do with Mojave.

I understand, sir, and I have the highest respect for you. Perhaps it is my characterisation of the improved masking feature in LightRoom as being similar to layers in Photoshop. Yes, I guess that's an overstatement. But, that's how I see them. When you select the Masking tool and mask a subject - and by the way, the subject selection feature is amazingly good at selecting the subject and the fine detail of hair - you get an accompanying "layer" with the mask. I don't know how else to describe it. But, that was not present in our LR Classic version in Mojave neither was the subject selection nearly as good IMHO.

Mick

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digitaldog

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Re: Big Sur to Monterey colour inaccuracy
« Reply #18 on: February 18, 2022, 10:53:17 am »

I also saw a post, yesterday, in Epson Wide Format Group in which the poster said that he had actually seen a very small but clear difference between the 8 bit and 16 bit paths from PS.
I printed a few thousand patches both ways. Measured them and  plotted the deltaE: far less than one. Invisible. That's how one tests this; not with an pair of eyeballs.
IF this fellow wishes to print targets I would supply both ways and send to me, I'd be happy to measure and report them as well, just for our own curiosity.
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Perhaps it is my characterisation of the improved masking feature in LightRoom as being similar to layers in Photoshop.
There are no such layers in Lightroom Classic. There are new masks that some might visually mistake for a layer. They are not layers. They are masks. And this has nothning to do with Majave; that's an OS of which Lightroom Classic can run, with masks.
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Mick Sang

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Re: Big Sur to Monterey colour inaccuracy
« Reply #19 on: February 18, 2022, 12:52:45 pm »

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That's how one tests this; not with an pair of eyeballs.

I agree. Thank you. I used this method when we had our issue with Monterey. There was a de of more than 1.0. As I said it was slight. But one image in the test lot in particular showed quite a difference with eyeballs and d/e.. That's settled now fortunately and thanks to your confirmation that your tests did not show a colour
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difference.

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There are no such layers in Lightroom Classic. There are new masks that some might visually mistake for a layer.

Yes, I'm one.

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NONE of this has anything to do with Mojave.

It may not. But, we didn't experience any difficulties until we moved to Big Sur followed by Mojave. Also, in Mojave no further PS or LR updates were available to us. Which is why we made the move on that Mac and to see how it went.

So, just t confirm, sir, did you update to 23.2 of PS and found no colour difference between it and 23.1.1?

Mick
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