First, let me say, I hope that I am explaining this right. It's been four days of trying to fix this, and I am at my wits end.
I work with dual monitors, one on my laptop, and also my external. I am working in PS CC. I am color calibrated, I use Spyder4 Pro. I work in sRGB color space (triple checked by the lovelies at adobe, too). I edit sessions on my external monitor. This problem started about a week ago. Before that everything was totally fine, I've been using the same setup for two years, no issues until now.
When I open an image in ACR, the colors are almost over saturated, and vibrant and contrasty. When I click "open" and they open into PS, the colors get more washed out. (see example). Over the last four days, I have learned that:
Any image does it, whether it was 4 weeks ago, or 4 days or 4 months.
If I open any filter (camera raw filter, lens correction, liquify, etc., the preview of the image is again back to bright colors. Once any adjustments are made (if any), the image in photoshop remains less vibrant. So anything I open in a new window or secondary window (whatever the right term is here) inside of photoshop, that image is always brighter and bolder.
If I move photoshop to the laptop monitor, the images appear the same, in both ACR and PS (or the filters, etc).
On the occasions (four, so far) that I have spoken with adobe on the phone, they have taken control of my computer and they, too, can see the issue. The problem is, their solution is to reset my calibration for the main monitor (the laptop) and it does make it better, but then my colors are all wrong. Adobe also doesn't understand why this is an issue and they have never heard of Spyder anything, or any advanced calibrating software and flat out told me that it didn't matter what colors I was seeing on my monitor, they would never match my prints. (at that point, I asked to speak to a supervisor who was of no more help). After recalibrating my monitors with the Spyder software, the main issue returns. Adobe has thrown their hands up, and have told me that other than setting the color profile manually through color preferences to the specific .icc file, there is nothing they can do, and I should contact Spyder.
After contacting Datacolor (Spyder), they have told me that it could be my graphics card, and something to do with needing two separate Lookup Tables, and that I should contact my computer's manufacturer and ask them.
I spoke with my computer manufacturer, and they said that while I don't have two lookup tables, if the problem has just begun in the last week, it was likely a windows thing. They suggested I update any drivers, and if that doesn't help to roll back to an earlier date.
I updated my drivers. No difference. I couldn't rollback on windows, because there hasn't been an update in the last ten days. I did, however, have a windows update, which I installed. Still no change.
I replaced my HDMI to DVA adapter, (it connects my monitor cable to my laptop via HDMI), and that wasn't the issue.
I have uninstalled and now reinstalled photoshop and that has not corrected the issue. Do you have any suggestions? I have sessions waiting to be edited, and I am at wits end.
