Colors Oversaturated in Mountain Lion

Question

I've just now finally upgraded to ML from Lion, and find that the colors on my display are out of kilter. The icons on my dock, for instance, are way oversaturated.
I've searched Apple Discussions and Google and seen a lot of mentions of problems along these lines, but haven't found any solutions. I've tried repairing permissions, restarting, changing color profiles, and recalibrating with Colormunki Smile.
I saw one person suggested installing something called basICColor, but I don't want to spend money on another calibration system to fix this.
I thought I'd try for a solution one last time here, and then will just downgrade back to Lion (luckily I made a clone before I upgraded).

Answer 1

The problem is indeed Mountain Lion. I tested numerous ways to try and narrow down the issue. While newer Macs, like an iMac I worked on while doing a bit of freelance work, don't seem to be affected, other models are. We have two Mac Pros; a mid 2010 and a late 2008. Graphics card in use makes no difference. Both models showed exactly the same issue. In all cases, I installed only what was necessary to test, and that was OS X, Photoshop CS6 and the CoCo filter. Here's what I did:
1) Installed Snow Leopard on an erased drive, then Mountain Lion, then PS CS6 and CoCo.
2) Installed Snow Leopard on an erased drive, then Lion, then Mountain Lion, then PS CS6 and CoCo.
3) Installed Mountain Lion on an erased drive from a bootable thumb drive I made from the ML download, then PS CS6, then CoCo.
4) Repeat 1 and 2 but install PS CS6 and CoCo after Snow Leopard in order to allow Lion and/or Mountain Lion to be undisturbed by the installation of PS CS6 afterwards.
5) Finally, to see if Photoshop or the filter itself was changing something, I repeated 1, 2, and 3 above without installing PS or the CoCo filter, just OS X.
In every case, Mountain Lion itself is causing the color problem. Using the same wide gamut EIZO CG243W monitor, color on both Mac Pros is fine in SL and Lion, and breaks as soon as you install Mountain Lion, even if installed on an erased drive by itself.
I even have it narrowed down to where. The Dock, any open folder specifically in Icon View, and any other app which uses the system call for color as these two OS functions. The desktop itself, icons viewed when using Command+Tab, or folders in List or Column view are correct. As is any app which does not use the broken system call.
It also doesn't matter what profile you use for your monitor in the System Preferences. The wider the color space, the more obvious the problem. Being a much smaller color space, sRGB has the least distinction, but you can see a difference even in that.
To prove that little theory, I took a handle of apps from another drive and placed them on the desktop. Then copied them into a folder, also on the desktop. With the folder open and in icon view, the color of all items in the folder is wrong. See below:
At the right is the desktop, which I made white so it would match an open folder window, making it easier to compare color. Notice how far off color is in the folder's Icon View. The Dock exactly matches this incorrect color.
Looking at the MS Word and QT Player 7 icons in particular stuck out. I thought, this looks like same shift as the sky in the picture I took in Yellowstone. Upper image is correct and how it appears in the Photoshop interface. Lower image is how it appears in the CoCo filter.
It's what started my whole focus on this problem. We use CoCo dozens of times a day in Photoshop. Because of this color issue in ML, it makes it impossible to use. That is forcing us to stay in Snow Leopard (we can't stand Lion). If not for this issue, we'd be working in Mountain Lion as our day to day OS.
So anyway, I opened the above image in PS CS6, then CoCo. Success! With no corrections applied, the color on the right was immediately off, exactly the same as the left side when viewed on the desktop. See below:
It's compounded on the left in this image since the incorrect over saturated color is now applied twice. After taking a screen shot of the above photo, I opened both in Photoshop and dragged the lower image over the upper image, then moved it over so the right side (the incorrect desktop color as displayed in CoCo) was over the incorrect color of the folder icons at the left. Turning the upper layer on and off, the incorrect color is the same, pixel for pixel.
What that proves is that CoCo is using the same broken system call as OS X does for Icon View and the Dock. A few games and other apps I have also must use the same color function as they also are greatly over saturated only in Mountain Lion.
So anyway, I've managed to pinpoint the problem. This is, without a doubt, a bug in Mountain Lion.