Tools to fix Adobe png files & add ICC profiles?

Question

I want to submit and use pictures in a lossless format like png, but I've noticed that my colors don't get reproduced as vividly when I save in png vs. jpg or tiff because Photoshop (CS5/windows) seems to have broken png support (I guess it gets worse in CS6)... storing color profiles in png's while not widely done, have been part of the standard for over a decade. 
Given Adobe's place a providing the premier image editing tools, It's hard to believe they'd not support accurate color in lossless images for the web, but I've yet to see any Adobe produced png that that contains a profile.
I do note, that libpng, the most widely used library for pngs, does have the ability
to read and store ICC color profiles.
Maybe I'll have to write a post processor to add them on... as some programs do read them... and at least once, recently, in reading in a png file, I got a profile mismatch from Photoshop -- indicating that it can read profiles (OR, the file was only named .png, and
was actually a .jpg -- if only I could remember what file it was...sigh...)...
Maybe adobe could release an addon that automatically adds & prompts for
profile settings on saves (assuming PS can use them)...
Any work flows where people add them?  Does PS read them in properly?
Tools used?
Thanks...,
A*a

Answer 1

Astara_ wrote:
Yes -- it does save a color profile, but it doesn't save it in a way that renders the same as tif and jpg in either Explorer or FF. or a ICC-color handling -in-hw photo view program.
when I read it in, told me about  a color profile mismatch, so I allowed it to convert to my current profile
I'm not sure why you chose to convert the image to a different profile.  That muddied the water.
Generally speaking, properly color-managed applications will interpret PNG, TIFF, and JPEG images per the profiles embedded by Photoshop, and the images will look visually the same, though you may see small differences in the color numbers.
That's shown here by my having saved three equivalent images, in PNG, JPEG, and TIFF format, all tagged with the ProPhoto RGB format.  I then opened them in Windows Photo Viewer, Photoshop, Safari, Firefox (which does not open TIFF files natively), and IE9 (which does not open TIFF files natively, and does not do a complete job of color-management on images).  I also showed the thumbnails in Explorer, though to be fair that's the same codec code interpreting the images as in Windows Photo Viewer.
Keep in mind not all applications are properly color-managed, and what you see from those that are not (e.g., IE) can be subject to settings on your own system.
Beyond that, not every color-management system produces perfectly accurate results (including Photoshop's under some conditions), nor does every one necessarily use the same options (black point compensation, etc.) so the color numbers will be seen to differ a little. 
Also, JPEG compression can result in some color inaccuracy.
Oh, and capturing your screen and publishing an image should involve a conversion, or at least publishing the image tagged with the monitor color profile, because RGB values pulled off your screen are of course expressed in your monitor's color space.
You'd think in this day and age that things would be more nailed down than they are, but it is what it is.  Bottom line, though, is that if you're SEEING VISIBLE DIFFERENCES, you probably have a color management problem on your system or you're expecting better color-management compliance from an application than it's actually delivering.
It's too late and I'm really far too tired to get into a deeper conversation on color-management.  Such a thread could go on for days, and they usually do.
-Noel