Images open too flat in Photoshop (color management issue?)

[seanharding]

Something weird is happening when I export a jpeg from NegPy and open it in Photoshop, and I can't figure it out. For some reason, the image looks very flat, only in Photoshop. It seems ok in Preview, and previewed in the Finder. I extracted the ICC profile, and while I am not an expert, it appears similar to a known-good sRGB profile.

This is NegPy v0.33.0, Photoshop 26 (27.8.0) on macOS 26.5.1. Maybe it's a Photoshop bug; I'm not sure. But I have never experienced this with files from other apps.

[seanharding]

A few more data points:

I went all the way back to v0.23.0 and this problem happens even then, so it doesn't appear to be a recent change (unless it's something that could get pulled into the older versions after a new version has been run on the image; e.g. something in the db file. I didn't do a complete wipe of everything before running the old version).

It isn't specific to this sample image. I have tried a few different images and the same thing happens with all of them. I also tried exporting with different color spaces, and different file types (tiff and png), and that didn't help. I do notice that sRGB is just called "sRGB" in NegPy, and "sRGB IEC61966-2.1" most other places, but I don't think that should matter (and in any case, manually assigning and converting to sRGB IEC61966-2.1 makes no difference).

[thetalkingdrum]

Could you share one of these files? I can't reproduce it.

[seanharding]

Let me know if this works for you.

[thetalkingdrum]

It works for me. Export looks identical in PS. You could try resetting the file to see if it is a db issue. But I was interested in one of the files that behave differently in Photoshop than in preview and finder. Can you share a jpg too?

[seanharding]

Yeah, I have been resetting before every export. Here is one of the jpegs.

[thetalkingdrum]

This one opens normally in PS for me. It has an adobeRGB profile, not srgb. Does it open flat on your end? I tried in several apps and it opens identically in every app i tried.

[seanharding]

Oops, you're right; that was one of the adobe rgb ones. I've been running so many tests that I lost track. But in any case, yes, that file opens flat for me and to my eyes the sRGB and Adobe RGB ones look the same. I downloaded it directly from github to be 100% sure I am working with the same file, and this is what it looks like.

[thetalkingdrum]

[thetalkingdrum]

Strange...

[seanharding]

Yeah. To be clear, I am 100% open to the possibility that something is wrong on my specific machine, and also that NegPy isn't doing anything wrong. I just don't know what it would be, and it's odd that ONLY NegPy seems to trigger this (and I use/experiment with most of the negative inversion apps out there, as well as other image-related apps).

[seanharding]

@thetalkingdrum I do notice that you're using PS 2025 and I am using PS 2026. Maybe that introduced a bug or something.

[thetalkingdrum]

Possibly. Have you tried in any other apps? I tried bridge, camera raw, affinity, and a few more an it opened identically in all of them.

What happens when you assign a different profile in PS?

[thetalkingdrum]

It kind of looks like the "flat master" but not quite. Or like it is using a linear profile...

I would try assigning some different profiles in ps and see what happens.

[thetalkingdrum]

This is if I manually assign a linear srgb profile in ps. Looks almost identical to yours, no?

[seanharding]

Assigning a different profile does make it look different, but I haven't found one that makes it look right. However, one thing I discovered is that this problem does not seem to exist on my M3 MacBook Air (running the Golden Gate beta, but same version of Photoshop) connected to my Studio Display. Not sure if it's because of the display or something on the machine or what. I'll have to investigate more tomorrow.