How to see which monitor profile photoshop is using
A common question to those new to colour management is how to set up Photoshop so it is using the right monitor profile. The one you just created with your new monitor profiling equipment or the one you just created in Adobe Gamma.
Answer: you can’t set the monitor profile in Photoshop
Why?
Because you don’t need to. Any monitor profile is common to your whole computer and not just Photoshop. Photoshop reads the profile you created from the computer’s operating system - there’s no need to set anything.
So how do I know which profile I’m using? How do I know that the monitor profile I just created has been recognised by the computer?
Adobe Gamma or your calibrator will know which operating system you are on and should automatically create the right path to save the new monitor profile to without needing any intervention from yourself apart from giving it a name. For example, on a Windows XP PC the profiles are stored in:
C:\windows\system32\spool\drivers\color - where “C” is your drive that you have your XP installed.
You can navigate to this folder to check or use one of the two methods below.
Method 1: Checking via the Display adaptor (Video Card) settings:
1) Close all windows so you can see your desktop
2) Right-click the desktop and select properties This will show the following dialogue box:
3) Click the settings tab - here’s our settings tab
4) Click the advanced button - this brings up a new dialogue box with a number of tabs
5) Click the color management tab
6) You can see a list of colour profiles that the device has recognised. The one highlighted is the current one in use and should be the one you just created and named
Still not convinced?? Ok then,
Method 2: Seeing your monitor profile from inside Photoshop
1) Open photoshop (this is based on CS2 but this dialogue box is in every version of PS from v5 I think!)
2) Click edit on the top menu then color settings from the dropdown to display this dialogue box
3) Under the working spaces (in blue) box click the dropdown arrow next to the RGB working space
4) Scroll up the dropdown list with the sidebar until you see monitor rgb - XXX
5) XXX should be the name of your new profile if it is the profile assigned in your operating system (we checked that in Method 1)
PP
