Color management - going from 3ds Max to Photoshop

Question

I'm trying to develop a workflow for bringing renders from 3ds Max into Photoshop, and having them look the same in both programs. The issue is that Max isn't color managed, so things can shift.
There's a good article on the subject here:
http://www.artstorm.net/journal/2009/07/color-management-wide-gamut-dell-2408/
So, to repeat what Johan is describing in the article, here's a test I've been doing:
- Put my dell U2410 monitor in Standard mode (which is wide gamut)
- Set the monitor profile to Dell U2410 D6500 (the monitor isn't calibrated yet; I've just been using this profile for the tests)
- Create a scene in Max, and tweak the render so that the colors look correct to me in this non-managed setup
- Save the image
- Open the image in Photoshop (with working space of sRGBIEC1966-2.1), which of course gives the "missing profile" message
- Now, if I'm understanding Johan correctly, if I assign that Dell profile, the image should look identical in Photoshop to what I saw in Max (because I'm assigning the profile that was in effect at the time of creation). And if I assign the Working RGB (sRGB...), I should expect to see the brighter colors become desaturated, due to the smaller gamut.
So...what's the problem? Well, sometimes I get those exact results consistently...assign the Dell profile and it looks corrrect; assign the working sRGB and it's desaturated. But other times, for no apparent reason, I'll get different results: Assign the Dell profile and it's OVERsaturated; assign the working sRGB and it looks correct (i.e., exactly as it does in Max). Things have been in that weird state for the past few hours...I keep getting those same wierd results...earlier today I would consistantly get the results as predicted by the article. Yesterday it was the same thing...it shifted back and forth a few times between working and not working...nothing changed as far as I can tell.
Any ideas what's going on?

Answer 1

I think this is overcomplicating it, and with a quite a few stumbling blocks on the way.
To name one: using the monitor profile in the document accomplishes only one thing - turning display color management off in Photoshop, thus reducing it to the same non-color managed state as 3ds Max. Since the two profiles are the same, no change happens, and you just get what's known as a null transform. IOW you gain nothing and lose a lot.
The two will be consistent - and both wrong. That's why this is never recommended.
Now this is important, so pay attention: If you do this with the Dell in native wide gamut mode, you will be scr*wing up your files beyond recognition. Take that file into a properly color managed scenario, and it will be miles off.
I think the only workable approach in this case, since you have to use software that isn't color managed, is to put the monitor in sRGB mode. There's just no way you can work with a wide gamut display in this scenario and keep your sanity. Or, as I suggested in an earlier post, sell it and get a standard display.
For this to work, you need an sRGB-type monitor profile. That can be straight up sRGB for "close enough", or a calibrator-produced profile made with the unit in sRGB mode. That would be better for Photoshop, for 3ds Max it doesn't make any difference because it'll just ignore the profile anyway.
EDIT: I should add, just in case it's still unclear, that the reason sRGB "works" in a non-color managed setting while other profiles and color spaces don't, is simply because that's the way an average monitor displays. The Dell U2410 is not an average monitor. If we all had U2410s, and I mean everybody, then Adobe RGB would have been the consensus standard. But we don't and it's not. So you have to play by the majority rule.