Tired of color desat when opening in Bridge/Lightroom. HELP!

Question

I am going insane in my attempt to keep consistent color management through all areas. Everything was fine, color was great, prints were matched to calbration, monitor calibrated, and then....I rebooted the computer since I hadn't done so for a week, and when I restarted Bridge, and Lightroom (yields same results), the color immediately drains from the photos. Similar to the screenshot, however when I initially created this screenshot, Bridge was still accepting the color. Now, the desaturation exists in all Adobe programs. (PS CS5, camera raw, bridge , lightroom 3.  I feel like I'm going in circles here. I have no clue what could have changed with the reboot. One thing I have noticed is that in Window before a photo image is generated in a folder is shows as a paint pallette. And, when asked in Windows Color Management of the program I would like to use to install a profile, I am give Microsoft Color Management System (which to my understanding is designed for Vista or XP). Tried to delete the program but was denied. Not sure if that has anything to do with it either.
If you have any insight and can help me stop the madness I would be so greatly appreciative!!
Thanks!
Windows7
U2410 Dell Ultra Sharp Monitor
Photoshop CS5 64-bit
Adobe Lightroom 3
Camera RAW
Adobe Bridge
NIVIDIA FX 580

Answer 1

Hi Connie,
Let me resume:
Non  colormanaged applications (like windows explorer) shows your images  right, managed apps like LR and Bridge, which have different  cache folders, shows them desaturated, even the previewed NEF.
Putting this  together, it can't a problem with the cache, harddisk, CF card. I mean, a  cache is a cache, and might needed to be updated from time to time, f.e.  when changing the monitor- or image profile. But I expect you always have done this.
That's it - most of the rest (the tests done) provides unreliable information, sorry. I'm aware that to most of them you were forced by others, so don't take my following statements to personal.
Nevertheless I believe what we see partitial is right: some of your images  are untagged (at least the PSD we see in one of the screenshots in here)
Untagged images should look the same  in IE and Firefox unless you set Gfx.color management.mode to 1 and assign the monitor profile to FF. Per default CM in FF is enabled for tagged images only and by this acts like IE <V9 on untagged images
Untagged sRGB should look oversaturated on wide-gamut monitors and browsers on which you can't apply a profile. Believe that is what you get.
You asked me
I'm confused which photos you viewed of mine that you found to be untagged?
all the images you presented in threads in here are untagged ;-)
Some might think different about that, but IMHO images always should have an embedded profile, even sRGB JPEGs used for web. You already get some hints on that in the other thread and the links to Ballard - even when his webdesign is a bit odd, its worth reading.
I believe your issue is a combination of untagged images, a faulty monitor profile and maybe false handling.
As implied above, personaly I can't trust any of the tests here, because they are (including the browser test I mentioned) not consistant done - I will tell you why.
What you see next are three of the images you provided here, but stacked:
#1 (RGB/8*)*
here the second * indicates, that the image was altered (either bei assigning a colorspace or bei normal editing) after it was loaded and in a colorspace which is different from Photoshops working colorspace, which is indicated by the first *
#2 (RGB/8*)
indicates images colorspace is different from Photoshops working colorspace - that's fine when the working space is aRGB and the image f.e. sRGB
#3 (RGB/8)
no *, no # in here indicates it is in Photoshops working colorspace.
(RGB/8#) at the top would mean it is untagged, but when when colormanagement was OFF in that moment, it also would read as (RGB/8) or (RGB/16) (without an # or *) at the top, but "untagged" in the info panel at the bottom, even when the image has an embedded profile...
On the otherhand - and this is the important part - the Photoshop (import) settings you provided here, tells that your PS is at "preserve embedded profiles" BUT "ask when opening" at profile mismatches. By this you will be asked whenever an image profile mismatches the working colorspace.
The latter should be unchecked, anyway.
So what have you been doing, when you were asked for image #1 and #2? With this settings and since their colorprofiles are different from PS working space, you must have been asked and have assigned a profile different from working space or you haven't been asked (because images colorspace and the working space was the same) and you assigned a different profile initially later.
Or you have changed settings again and again when taking those screenshots....
When you say you see images as untagged in Bridge but in Photoshops info panel as "Adobe RGB (1998)" this can be, when a profile was added (assigned) after the image was imported to PS. Bridge will not know about that until you save the image.
Will say: those of us trying to help, never know exactly what they are here looking at (maybe without realizing)
Do we see a sRGB under an aRGB working space (RGB/8*) for #2? And #3, is this an aRGB image under an aRGB working space or a sRGB image under sRGB, (both would appear as RGB/8)? Or was the image untagged and colormanagement was off?
Seems a bit chaotic, sorry.
At least this is nothing on which I'ld be able to tell for sure what is going on.
Next: the monitor  profile you sent to me, turns my U2410 dark and too much purple/reddish.
Of  course there should be a differences (different monitor, different  environment light and my old eyes), but this is far to much - it hurt my eyes
As  far I know, LR internal uses the Melissa color space (which is larger  than aRGB)  - I wonder what happens when RAW were processed via Meliassa  to aRGB with a too reddish monitor profile and are saved as untagged  aRGB....?
I also wonder how LR can be configured to export to PSD without  they being tagged...?   Nevertheless, I was able to reproduce this once. For one of my PSDs the profile was removed, but at the moment I don't know how to reproduce that again.
As said just make sure you images are tagged. But don't just apply a profile to those images already processed, when you don't know what really happend to them - it might get worse.
Anyway.
To solve your prob, you should forget about LR for  now and remove the monitor profile made with the Spyder, set the DELL  profile which comes with the CD and process images from scratch.
Means  straight from NEF in one colorspace only -> via Photoshops ACR (output as aRGB and make sure aRGB is your  working space in PS), save them as PSD or TIFF and make sure they get tagged as aRGB. See if it makes a difference (color shift or not), when viewed  in Bridge.
If there is no shift, start over with calibrating your monitor. Calibrating means setting the hardware right, by making sure the monitor was set to aRGB and brightness and contrast was adjusted, before you profilling it with the Spyder.
If the problem still exists with this new profile and with images, which were processed by the above workflow and by the new conditions (make sure of that, the already processed images might be messed up) again let some one with an U2410 check the new profile.
If its still have a huge red shift on another U2410, it might point to a hardware fault (either Monitor or Spyder)
@MJOrts
I notice that "Use Windows display calibration" is checked on in your
screenshot. 
AFAIK this setting means, that Windows is loading the LUT and not a third-party LUT-Loader, coming with the profiling device.
Message was edited by: ablichter
#1 (RGB/8*)*
was edited - wasn't able to mark the wrong part by formating it <s>"striked"</s>, so I removed and corrected it