Tahoe is turning Photos DARK and DULL

Starting over. We've all been covering a lot of ground without relating nearly any of it to what you're doing. We aren't going to get anywhere this way.

I looked at tutorials that show how to go into DISPLAY and unclick something, but my Mac does not offer that option.

Not enough information. Unclick what? If you mean Automatically adjust brightness, then per your screen shot, it's already off. Which it absolutely must be for color management. And that means not even moving the computer from where you normally do your color work. You should be doing such work in a space that has neutral lighting that never changes.

Why should automatic brightness be off? Because a monitor profile is made by first setting the calibration. This is the white point, black point, gamma curve and gain. Once those are set, a profiling package then reads a series of color patches to measure the gamut and color range of your monitor. Since the color of those patches are affected by the calibration, you CANNOT change any calibration settings after the profile is created, or that profile is instantly invalid.

one cannot get rid of the "glass" effect, which I suspect is the problem.

The new GUI look has nothing to do with this. Not even a little.

Now to the meat of the issue. What is causing the color shift going from Photos to Mail? On a personal note, after doing some testing in Photos, this is why I don't, and will NEVER use the app.

When you do an export, these are the default settings:

The Color Profile drop down is a huge red flag! What is that? Why is an unknown space the default? So, I tried it to find out. Apple (sort of) converts the exported image to a profile named Apple Wide Color Sharing Profile, which it embeds. When I compare the original and the exported image, the one Apple converted to this secret profile is indeed darker than the original. Which right away means it's doing a lousy job of converting the color.

So then I wondered, what is Apple Wide Color Sharing Profile? Basically, it's a nearly 100% copy of Display P3. You can display the two in comparison mode in the ColorSync Utility to see that. Which then begs the question, why have Most Compatible as a choice at all? Just make the default Display P3, which is one of the other choices.

Try this as a first test. Export an image and make sure to choose Original, as shown next:

Drop that exported image into Mail. Does it now match what you see in Photos?

You have, for some reason, two profiles on your system with the same name. The Color LCD you have selected is not the default choice for your MacBook Pro. The one above line is the version pulled from the display panel of your Mac. You'll find that one at:

/Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Displays

At the very least, change that. The Color LCD profile you're using is from who knows where and could be the problem.

One question I missed, what app are you exporting the photo from?

Double check your export settings. Make sure you are using a proper export color profile.

Also, depending on the app, are you using ColorSync in the export process or the apps built in color management.

Double check your export settings. Make sure you are using a proper export color profile.

Also, depending on the app, are you using ColorSync in the export process or the apps built in color management.

That brings up another thought. One that would most certainly cause such an issue. This assumes a duplicate of the photo is being dropped into Mail.

If, a different profile is assigned to an image rather than converted to, then you will see anything from slight to massive differences in color.

Generally, when exporting for an email and to be viewed by any possible computer or device or web, the proper export setting should be JPEG with an sRGB colorspace. Generally, sRGB is the assumed colorspace for JPEGs since pretty much all computers and devices will default to that interpretation for JPEGs.

This is false. sRGB had one purpose when it was created. To create a bottom-of-the-barrel, lowest-common-denominator color space that would knock down the color of an image to a point where even the cheapest CRT monitors could handle it.

And even that is false. Well, it may have been true at the time when color management was in its infancy, along with computers. There wasn't a whole lot of uniformity yet between the International Color Consortium and its implementation in Apple's ColorSync, and Windows' Kodak CMS. So a dumbed down image was better than nothing.

This is now completely unnecessary and has been for decades. Unfortunately, web designers are still told all images must (or should) be exported with the color dumbed down to sRGB. No, they don't! That's what color management is for.

Here's the same image. On top, my monitor profile is used. Next, Wide Gamut RGB. Despite the fact the RGB values are drastically different between the two, what matters is each pixel points to the same color in Lab.

Do they look any different to you? They shouldn't, and that's the point. ColorSync is doing its job. Both are being converted behind the scenes to your monitor profile, which is always the last conversion.

And just because, as sRGB. This one is slightly different because the brightest (most saturated) reds and yellows had to be converted down to a hue that exists in sRGB. Other than that, it's indistinguishable.

xWauwau wrote:

What I take from Apples website is that all Apple products with displays from since god knows when are designed to display DCI-P3 color gamuts? Or did I misread this?

My understanding is that Macs default to Display-P3 when a color profile is not embedded in the image.

It's interesting that when I do GetInfo on all my Nikon D700 NEFs & iPhone 16 Pro JPEGS, all come up on my iMacs as Display P3 ... in contrast to my Nikon D700 JPEGS which come up as sRGB. (The Nikon D700 is set to sRGB for JPEG images, so it's embedded in the image.)

How did you do that?

It's a script Apple includes with the OS. This particular one is at:

/Library/Scripts/ColorSync/Extract.applescript

There are a lot of them to play with under different categories. I opened this particular script and saved it as an app. Then I put it on the desktop so I can just drag and drop images onto it.

But, there's a rather big problem. I think this was also in Sequoia, but it's very evident in Tahoe. Apple's apps aren't tagging images correctly, or something.

When I first extracted the image profile the other day, it pulled out Display P3. But, that was before the hosts edited the image. That changed the embedded profile to Color LCD.

Explainable, so no problem. However, the OS is still not tagging images properly. Or maybe it's just images yanked from the forum. I'm not sure yet.

If I open an image exported from Photos using Most Compatible for the color space, I never know what Photoshop or Affinity is going to see. The first time I opened that export into Photoshop, it said there was no embedded profile at all. Closed the file without doing anything and opened it again. The second time, it suddenly said the embedded profile was Apple Wide Color Sharing Profile. Huh?

Same thing with this forum image. As you note, Preview says the embedded profile is Color LCD. Photoshop says it's Display. And that's it. Just the word Display.

The issues we're seeing may have to do with a rather serious flaw in how Photos, Preview and other Apple written apps are using ColorSync.

Just found another problem, on top of the rogue Color LCD profile. I took the image you posted and extracted the embedded profile. Which begs the question, "Why, and in what app are you using Display P3?"

Display P3 is a junk profile that is only a somewhat larger space than the worst possible choice of sRGB.

Here's the thing about all of those canned profiles. None of them, not a single one, represents the color response of any device you're using. Not Color LCD, Adobe RGB, sRGB, Wide Gamut RGB, etc. Those are all generic hunks of Lab that represent nothing. Not your monitor, digital camera, digital projector, scanner, printer, or anything else that displays, captures or prints color.

Such as, here's the custom profile for my EIZO CG279x compared to Display P3. Everything in gray is how much larger my monitor's color response is compared to Display P3.

Display P3 is slightly larger in the saturated reds and greens.

But otherwise, why would I intentionally use a profile that clips off a large amount of color I can view, and could be using?

If you are a professional photographer, then you should, at minimum, invest in monitor profiling package so you can create a profile that actually tells the computer what your monitor's color range and gamut is. Anything else, and it's guessing. And badly at that.

Check your display settings.

Has your screen brightness increased?

Also, has auto brightness been suddenly enabled? HDR mode?

Also check that your display profile has not changed.

Display P3?

Sorry, I'm lost.

Display P3 is the RGB, .icc profile embedded in the image you posted above. It's one of many .icc profiles you have on your computer you can assign or convert the color of an image to. Such as these in the System folder:

sRGB Profile.icc

ACESCG Linear.icc

AdobeRGB1998.icc

DCI(P3) RGB.icc

Display P3.icc

Generic CMYK Profile.icc

Generic Gray Gamma 2.2 Profile.icc

Generic Gray Profile.icc

Generic Lab Profile.icc

Generic RGB Profile.icc

Generic XYZ Profile.icc

ITU-709.icc

ITU-2020.icc

ROMM RGB.icc

And gobs more depending on what apps you've installed, printer profiles added, and more.

If you want to see a really big RGB space, open ROMM RGB in the ColorSync Utility. It dwarfs pretty much everything else but Wide Gamut RGB. There aren't any displays I know of that can even hope to cover such a gamut, but it's there to use.

And if you ever decide to do video work, convert copies of the still images you place in your timeline to ITU-709.icc (also known as Rec-709 or BT.709). This is the most widely used color space for video. Otherwise, the color of your stills on the final rendering won't look like what you expect on your TV.

Color management is one of those things that sounds like theoretical particle physics when you're first trying to learn it. But once you get it, it's actually pretty easy.

The following may still seem like way too much, but in a nutshell an RGB color space is, "How much of Lab does this RGB space fill?"

Lab is a mathematical model of all color we as humans can see. The model of course existing so our concept of color makes sense to a computer. It's generally depicted as a sphere with the most saturated color at the surface and everything falling inward to fully desaturated gray, top to bottom down the center. Any time you see an RGB value with all the same numbers, such as 153, 153, 153; it's colorless.

Here's Lab.

Here's Lab with an RGB profile superimposed within it so you can see how an RGB space is just part of Lab. I think I used an Adobe RGB map here. It's not a perfect way to represent this, but works well enough visually.

DiscerningOne wrote:

Before I downloaded Tahoe, the system worked fine. I didn't change anything.

How do I check my export settings? What is the proper export color profile?

I'm in the dark about ColorSync.

I should have added in my original message that I am 73 years old--and started photography when people developed their own black & white film--so the technical side of the Apple computer settings are deep water for me. But I know how to use an enlarger! 😊

If you are using Photos then ColorSync is already used and no need to worry about it.

The export settings are in the dialog box when you export the image.

Generally, when exporting for an email and to be viewed by any possible computer or device or web, the proper export setting should be JPEG with an sRGB colorspace. Generally, sRGB is the assumed colorspace for JPEGs since pretty much all computers and devices will default to that interpretation for JPEGs.

BTW, I was also processing film and printing B&W when I was around 10 years old. Recently dug out my old Nikon FE (purchased within a year or two when they first came out) and started shooting B&W film on occasions again (send out for processing though). Otherwise have been shooting full digital.

They aren't designed to display that color range. Anything you see like that about a monitor is, "What generic RGB profile does this panel come closest to displaying 100% of its range." That's it. It doesn't mean that's the only one you should use, or use it at all.

And calling P3 a wide color range is a joke. Call up P3 in the ColorSync Utility. Chose "Hold for comparison" from the little drop down arrow a the top left of the 3D profile display. Then choose Wide Gamut RGB to display on top of that. P3 is nothing compared to Wide Gamut RGB. It's barely better than sRGB.

HWTech wrote:

Besides the color/brightness issue, the picture on the right appears to have lost some data since it is blurry compared to the one on the left and it is also a different physical size. The picture on the right has been manipulated in more than one way. I don't think color profiles are the answer here.

Good call!

Perhaps besides other issues, the image is highly compressed - possibly due to the user choosing

a small jpeg size:

xWauwau wrote:

Funny idea. HDR can’t possibly be causing the issue (as previously mentioned by woodmeister50)?

also thank you KurtLang for elaborating on P3.

It can be if you are mixing around with the image in that mode and the display is not calibrated for it.