Color issue in PhotoShop - Need Help (see Video)

OK, folks, here's a weird one. I'm editing an image in Photoshop and do a black and white conversion using Silver Efex Pro. When it comes back to Photoshop it's got colors. These were not visible in Silver Efex, nor are they visible in Lightroom when I save it.

Here's a video of what I'm seeing...


The colors are only visible in 16-bit RGB mode. If I change to CMYK mode the colors disappear. Here's the weirdness, this is only a display issue. Here is the RGB image exported out of Photoshop...




I've got a MacBook Pro Retina, just recalibrated. This was happening both before and after the recalibration. I'm editing in ProPhoto RGB, as I have been for the past 2 years. Nothing has changed.

Any ideas? I've rebooted, recalibrated, run with and without other software running - it's all the same.

First, very cool photo. Did you shoot that? Nice capture.

Second, do the colors still exist if you zoom in and out? You didn't do that in the video. Could it be a compression artifact that makes the gray-scale appear to create color? If that's the case, there would be no color in a print.

As an example, remember those black and white wheels that would appear to show colors when spun?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dftGzC45jXA

Just in case you don't want to watch the video, this is a screen grab of what I'm seeing in Photoshop.

Blade Canyon said:

First, very cool photo. Did you shoot that? Nice capture.

Second, do the colors still exist if you zoom in and out? You didn't do that in the video. Could it be a compression artifact that makes the gray-scale appear to create color? If that's the case, there would be no color in a print.

As an example, remember those black and white wheels that would appear to show colors when spun?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dftGzC45jXA

Click to expand...

They do not change with zooming in and out, and it's consistent with multiple images.

Cool photo. Crazy problem. I'm clueless (more than usual).

What if you apply the B&W filter in PS?

Que the Twilight Zone theme

Marcel said:

What if you apply the B&W filter in PS?

Click to expand...

It has zero to do with image saturation. I should have put it in the video just so you can see, but desaturating in Ps does nothing. It's got to be something weird with the color settings in Ps and possibly my monitor. Going to contact Adobe support today.

Good luck Jake. Please keep us informed when/if they find something trivial causing this.

I have no clue, but would your resolution of 360 while editing in PCC with your EFEX Pro resolution of 300 have anything to do with it?

Nice guess, but I don't even need to use Silver Efex, I can just use a B&W adjustment layer on the raw file and when I hit a certain contrast level it shows up.

BackdoorHippie said:

Nice guess, but I don't even need to use Silver Efex, I can just use a B&W adjustment layer on the raw file and when I hit a certain contrast level it shows up.

Click to expand...

But does it still show up if you send the file to Photoshop with a resolution of 300 instead of 360 with or without it going to EFEX Pro?

My only other suggestion would be to download the latest Photoshop version (using the advanced settings and keeping your current version). See if it happens there, too.

Yes. The PsCC default was 240 but I upped it to 360 a year ago after going through a luminosity tutorial that went into detail about settings. I went back to 240, then tried a bunch of others and there was no change whatsoever. It's likely something weird with my color settings.

When I get a chance I'm going to hook up to a second monitor and see if it shows the same way there. If not, it's an issue with Ps and the MacBook display, otherwise it's a color profile thing.

Update...

So I finally spoke with someone I could barely understand after a 45 minute wait with Adobe support. Long story short, if I turn off the Use Graphics Processor option in the Performance section of the Preferences the problem goes away. The problem with that is that I need the option set in order to use a subset of the Filters that get greyed out when it's unchecked, and I told the rep that. She told me that I would then need to update the Graphics Processor software, and she kept telling me that even when I told her that it's not possible to download drivers for Mac OS X, and that the Software Update information was showing me that my graphics processor is up to date.

So I have a half-ass solution where I can leave the processor setting off until I need it, but the minute I switch it on it calls into question the colors I'm seeing, at least in my mind.

I'm by no means an expert on Macs, so if anyone here knows how to force feed a driver update on a MacBook Pro, or can point me to instructions so I can give it a try, it would be much appreciated.

The GPU even in the PCs are screwed up. I bought a new video card that is on the approved list and it worked like a charm for at least 2 Adobe updates and now after the last update it no longer is supported.

Don Kuykendall said:

The GPU even in the PCs are screwed up. I bought a new video card that is on the approved list and it worked like a charm for at least 2 Adobe updates and now after the last update it no longer is supported.

Click to expand...

Adobe has a list of supported cards?

hark said:

Adobe has a list of supported cards?

Click to expand...

Yes. It is on their website


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