Sometimes you open a photo in Photoshop from Lightroom and the colors are different – often dull. So, why do your photos look different in Photoshop? A mismatch in colors is usually due to one of two reasons. Either it’s a corrupted or incompatible monitor profile or often it’s incorrect color space settings. For example, a ProPhoto RGB photo mistakenly rendered as sRGB will display as desaturated and flat.
ProPhoto RGB photo correctly displayed as ProPhoto RGB:
ProPhoto RGB photo incorrectly displayed as if sRGB:
The corrupted monitor profile is very easy to check, and there are instructions here.
We’ll also need to confirm that the color spaces match across the 2 programs. The same principles will also apply to opening photos in other software, not just in Photoshop.
First, check your color settings.
In Photoshop, go to Edit menu > Color Settings to view the Color Settings dialog.
The RGB Working Space is your choice, but whichever you choose to use, you’re best to set the same in Lightroom’s External Editor preferences and Export dialog. We’ll come to that in a moment.
Selecting Preserve Embedded Profiles and/or checking the Ask When Opening for Profile Mismatches in that same dialog will help prevent any profile mismatches. Preserve Embedded Profiles tells Photoshop to use the profile embedded in the file regardless of whether it matches your usual working space. Ask When Opening for profile mismatches shows you a warning dialog. This is when the embedded profile doesn’t match your usual working space. The dialog asks you what to do. If Preserve Embedded Profiles is selected, you can safely leave the two Profile Mismatch checkboxes unchecked.
Next, set your External Editor settings.
In the Lightroom Preferences dialog > External Editing tab, select the same color space that you’ve selected in Photoshop.
You’ll also want to check the color space that you’re using in the Export dialog. Then, if passing these photos to Photoshop, select the same color space for photos you’re going to edit in Photoshop.
As long as your Photoshop and Lightroom color settings match, or you have Photoshop set to use the embedded profile, your photos should match between both programs.
For extensive information on Lightroom Classic, see Adobe Lightroom Classic – The Missing FAQ.
If you have the Photography Plan, then as well as Classic you have access to the Lightroom cloud ecosystem including the mobile apps and web interface. For more information on these apps, see Adobe Lightroom – Edit on the Go.
Note: purchase of these books includes the first year’s Classic or cloud-based Premium Membership (depending on the book purchased), giving access to download the latest eBook (each time Adobe updates the software), email assistance for the applicable Lightroom version if you hit a problem, and other bonuses.
We also have a special bundle offer for the two books. This includes Premium Membership for the first year as described above for the whole Lightroom family!
Originally posted 13 December 2014, updated for Lightroom Classic in 2019.
I embedded a colour profile of AdobeRGB in PS and saved as a tiff file. When I returned to LR and clicked ‘edit in photoshop – edit copy with LR adjustments’ of the same image, it came up as prophoto colour space. Why did it not use the embedded option nor give me a warning?
When LR sends a photo to Photoshop (other than the original file), it always uses whatever color space is selected in LR’s Preferences. For the missing warning, you likely have Ask When Opening unchecked in Photoshop’s Color Settings.
I’m completely stymied… was experiencing the same “faded/ugly” colours when trying to export from LR to PS for editing and also when exporting JPEGs. PS was giving invalid ICC profile description pop-up.
I’ve tried replacing the ProPhoto RGB profiles in both locations on my Win10 Dell XPS Laptop, deleted Photoshop preferences, updated (ugh) from 22.4.2 to the newest version to try that and still PS is giving the “could not complete request because the ICC profile description is invalid” on ALL/ANY selections I choose.
Will keep searching for solutions – other than buying a new Mac and going with tried and true LR 9.4 🙂
If you’re saying this is when you export a JPG from Ps, then this isn’t a Lightroom issue. And if you’re exporting as a JPG, then it won’t use the ProPhoto workspace (JPG can’t, they are far more limited in the gamut).
What settings are you using in Export for Color Space? Convert to sRGB?
When opening an image in Photoshop, from the “edit in Photoshop” command in LR Classic, the image is grossly oversaturated. However, if I first export the image as a PSD file, then open that file in PS, it matches the look in LR. Up to date on both LR and PS. Working on a Mac, with Mojave OS. Have not changed any of my preferences in either program. Problem just appeared today, after a lifetime of always matching. Any suggestions?
I’ve seen an open bug on that: https://feedback.photoshop.com/conversations/lightroom-classic/lightroom-classic-editing-raw-file-in-ps-from-lr-loses-profile/5f9043b035f40c2520b9e964
What are your working spaces set to in Lightroom & Photoshop? Are you passing raw files over?
Ughhh I’m at a loss. I followed this guide to the T and if I press Edit In > Adobe PS, they still come out desaturated, especially the reds/warm tones.. any other ideas where the mismatch is happening? I work with CR2 files from Canon.
I have the exact same problem, for years, never found an answer and all my settings are always correct. Would love to know if you resolved the problem!
Feel free to post on the forum (link in the menubar) and we’ll be pleased to help you troubleshoot.
i have a long time the same settings you wrote but sins i have a new nikon Z6 camera the color a different between lightroom and photoshop and i don,t know why this is happens. i read that some settings from Nikon directly adobe lightroom also changes like noise reduction and vignetting. do someone know what the problem can be?
You’re right, Nikon embeds Lightroom Develop settings in the files, so they come in with different defaults to other photos. However that shouldn’t affect Lightroom vs. Photoshop. The color settings noted in this thread would still be the prime suspect, but if you need help troubleshooting further, feel free to post on the forum (linked on the menubar).
Hello Victoria,
Thank you for your article
So I’ve been having a bit of trouble with photoshop. I find my images not looking exactly how I edit them after I export. They seem to look more heavily saturated and contrast seems to be cranked up quite a bit. I’ve remedied this in the past by adding a -15 contrast adjustment layer right before exporting to compensate for this difference. It only works about half the time. Any help to get my images to look closer to my final edit would be great as I find this incredibly frustrating as an artist.
Thanks.
Export, or Edit in Photoshop? Either way, you want to check your color space settings match in both programs, as noted above.
Invaluable as always
Hi Victoria,
when I edit a file in LR Develop module am I in the color space I selected in the External editing tab?
Best, Guido
When you’re in the Develop module, Lightroom handles everything in a very wide color space. If you need to preview in a smaller space like sRGB, you can use soft proofing.
Is there any paper/post/article about this “native” Lightroom color space?
Is it the same color space applied to previews?
This is about as close as you’ll get https://www.photographyessentials.net/downloads/pafa-lccc/thu/Rodney-Color-Management-Lightroom.pdf, although it was written for LR1 in 2007! The core colour management hasn’t massively changed since then.
Very interesting. Thank you!
Hi – If I have calibrated my monitor in PS – how do I get that info into LR. When I open them now they are a mismatch. But if I make them both ProPhoto when does my monitor calibration kick in?
Monitor calibration isn’t done in Photoshop. It’s done using a monitor calibration hardware device such as i1 Display, Spyder, ColorMunki, etc.
Hi Victoria,
I was soft proofing an sRGB output but was getting completely different results in LR and PS. I know this article doesn’t deal with soft proofing but it helped me track down the problem. In the ‘Customize Proof Condition’ dialog in PS, I had ‘preserve RGB Numbers’ checked and that was the problem, so I unchecked it and all is resolved. I can’t see why I would ever want it on. So may settings, thanks for helping me track it down.
PS Great site, been here more than once 😉 !
Well done for tracking it down John!
Hi Victoria,
Following your advice here I have set both my LR & PS colour profile settings to SRGB, however when exporting images from LR into PS, it tells me my image has an embedded Adobe RGB profile. Do you know how I can fix this?
It’s tough to say without a bit more information. Which LR and PS versions are you using? And how are you exporting the images from LR to PS? And where it is telling you that it has an embedded Adobe RGB profile?
Yes. It’s because camera raw will turn it into that. If you look at the bottom when camera raw pops up change it to srgb
what happens when I export to a print lab? most want sRGB so when to convert and why not just use that color space?
Also, if I correct in PS or LR, i should tell the lab not to color correct? What happens if I send corrected file andvthe lab processes it, Will the prints be awful color wise, or will it not make a difference? very confused on this issue! Please advise! thnx!
Why use ProPhoto? The main reason is future proofing. Although many labs want sRGB at the moment, there are already printers that can print colors way outside of sRGB. In the future you might want to use a printer with an expanded range, and if you’ve already compressed the image data into a small color space, it’s too late to get it back.
When you export the files ready to send to the lab, THEN you export to sRGB, and you tell the lab not to color correct. If your screen’s properly calibrated, and the lab’s looking after their machine calibration, the prints should come back looking like they do in LR/PS. If you’re using colors way outside of sRGB – often really strong reds – then they might be a little more muted (but that would be the case even if you didn’t edit in PS). You can preview those limitations using soft proofing while you’re editing.