Washed out blacks in Photoshop after calibration

[lancewilson]

Hey all,

so I’ve calibrated my Dell U2723QE with my Display Pro HL (I am operating on a Mac Mini if that matters at all). Everything seemed fine until I open images in Photoshop, especially dark ones, as the blacks suddenly appear extremely lifted and lots of detail in the shadows is lost. I am calibrating using WLED in the Calibrite Profiler with most of the other settings set to default (CIE D65, 120 cd/m2 etc.) Having scoured lots of forums and trying different fixes, I am entirely lost. This is pretty detrimental for me as it makes it so I can’t really even edit my photos, so any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[Vincent]

U2723QE is likely to be a WLED PFS phosphor display , like P3 macs… hence it is not a WLED. Also Calibrite profiler does not support this backlight , even if you see in the combo boxes… it is not, it’s fake combo box value…. but that will reflect on whitepoint only.

Regarding that supposed lift in dark tones… first of all check if calibrated monitor TRC (gamma) tracks what is stored on ICC profile.

Remember that you are on macOS which has a very limited color management support on desktop, so all your display profiles must be limited to idealized behavior: single curva + matrix + blakc point compensation. => Use Displaycal python 3 port for mac instead of Calibrite profiler:
https://github.com/eoyilmaz/displaycal-py3

And last but not least… if there is no black crush  and TRC in calibrated display matches TRC in ICC profile… it may be true that you are seeing an sRGB image as it shoudl like on a color managed enviroment, so your previous “references” including your apple display may be just “wrong” : typically displays with 2.2 gamma TRC but fake Apple ICC with sRGB TRC or something like that.
Since you have not done basic testing ( = MEASUREMENTS), we cannot know from your problem description.

Summary:
-use displaycal for macos (python 3 port compatible with Sonoma)
-aim to default oversimplified profiles ( matrix, single TRC curve, fake infinite cotrast = BPC)
-use WLED PFS 9x% P3 colorimeter correction
-validate in “measurement report” after calibration. Check if predicted TRC matches measured TRC.
If this goes OK, what you see in PS is how should be displayed.

Also check if your previous reference display is behaving as its ICC profile predicts (2.2 gamma on display but some fake linear TRC on display icc profile as Apple used to do in the past)

• This reply was modified 1 year, 11 months ago by Vincent.

[lancewilson]

Thank you. Sorry if this is stupid, but is there a way to download displaycal that is not very complicated? I have zero experience coding and even looking at the instructions is overwhelming me.

[Vincent]

AFAIK there is not DIsplayCAL py installer yet.
You hence need brew /basic commandine in macOS and compile. Pretty straightforward at this point of DiplayCAL py3 development.

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