Photo Viewer Background Color

This is something that perplexes me - I have two computers running Windows 10 Pro, one's a desktop and one's a laptop.

I used WinAeroTweaker to "enable" the Windows Photo Viewer for image files, since I prefer it to the newer "Photos" app.

When I open a picture on my desktop, the background color is some ugly yellowish off-white color. It's the normal shade on my laptop (as well as at work, where I have 10 Enterprise)

Here are a couple comparison shots using the same image.

On the laptop (I like this color)


On the desktop:


See how it's a yellower color? And what's weird is the white text in the background is ALSO that yellow color.

I know when I open Photoshop, I get some message about an invalid monitor color profile, so I'm thinking Windows created some "profile" for my monitor that it's trying to adjust colors to match, and it's really doing nothing but causing trouble.

My monitors look fine with just the standard un-adjusted colors that Windows 7 had, and other "dumb" programs like Paint. But the photo viewer seems to do what Photoshop is trying to do and adjust my colors for some reason.

Is it possible to wipe those color profiles and just tell it to treat the monitor like a generic PnP monitor without anything special? I'm using DVI so it's able to query the monitor and find its model... other than that, I don't really know what's going on.

If it means anything to anyone, I have an AMD Radeon 380X graphics card, and I just installed the newest driver update this morning. The monitors are LG something or other.

@drfsupercenter
If you open that same image in Windows Paint, does the same thing happen?

Edwin said:

@drfsupercenter
If you open that same image in Windows Paint, does the same thing happen?

Nope, that's what's odd. It shows the proper white in Paint.

Try "Photo Viewer Background Changer"
It's a portable app that doesn't require installation; just open it and click on 'Reset to Defaults'



Get it here:

Downloads / Software / Photo Viewer Background Changer

Hmm, I tried that, but it didn't help.

I was able to change the background color to black and that DID change it - but when I used "reset to default", and even if I selected pure white (which is lighter than the default shade of grey), it still showed up yellow.

I definitely think that monitor color profile has something to do with it.

This is the message Photoshop gives me:


I never created a profile to begin with, so I'm curious where it's pulling that from. But I think that might be the problem.

Mine was doing the same thing. Brink fixed it by telling me to do this .

It sounds like it's an issue with your Color Management profile. See if this below may fix it for you.

Open Color Management (colorcpl.exe)
Check the Use my settings for this device checkbox.
Click the profile to select it.
Click the Remove button. Click Continue.
Click the Add button. Under ICC Profiles, double-click sRGB IEC61966-2.1.
Click Close.

It was in this thread.
Windows Photo Viewer - Restore in Windows 10 - Page 15 - Windows 10 Forums

Clint said:

Mine was doing the same thing. Brink fixed it by telling me to do this .



It was in this thread.
Windows Photo Viewer - Restore in Windows 10 - Page 15 - Windows 10 Forums

Ah, perfect, that's just what I needed. The colors look correct now!

I'm wondering where that profile is even coming from. If I simply delete the bad one and don't assign the sRGB profile to it, it recreates itself and still has the same issue. It's like the graphics card (or is it Windows 10 itself? Never had this problem in 7) is detecting the monitor and trying to create a blank profile on the fly for it.

Great. What would we do without Brink??