How To Fix Windows Photo Viewer Displaying Yellow Or Orange Tint For White and Transparent Images

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Recently, my work machine displays any image in Windows Photo Viewer with extra yellow or orange tint. It’s not over saturating or color imbalance.  It replaces any white or transparent color into those ugly yellow or orange tint color. Initially, I thought it might be due to some out dated graphic driver, or my monitor settings problem. But I soon realize this is not because of my video card nor display driver out dated nor my physical monitor. The problem is a Windows Photo Viewer specific issue. You can determine that by switching to a different photo viewer, and you will see your photo are displaying correctly.

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So Why Windows Photo Viewer is Displaying any white or transparent color into yellow and orange ?

Apparently, this is due to an incorrect color management display profile. Here is a fix if you ever encounter such issue.

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Go to Control Panel > Color Management

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Within the Color Management, pick the corresponding display (if you have more than one display). Enable check “Use my settings for this device”, then go to “Add…

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Select “sRGB IEC61966-2.1” click OK

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Now make sure you set the new ICC Profiles “sRGB IEC61966-2.1” to default, by clicking “Set as Default Profile

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Now if you go back and view the image again woha ! You now have a clear image displays all the color correctly.

Hope that helps if you ever need to change and fix the display. Sometimes the problem is not where you think might be at.

33 COMMENTS

  1. Thank you for sharing this vital information. Just switched to windows 8 and i thought it was normal because the background on the windows photo viewer was yellow, might have affected my eyes. But when i opened an image using photoshop, white still is turned to yellow so i said to myself, this is no longer normal. I googled the problem and got to your site. Worked flawlessly! CHeers!

  2. Thank youu !! but i still have one more problem.. all photos i see on
    my firefox browser still look yellow and when I save the image on my pc I see the
    original color of it , is there any solution?

    All the other browsers look fine but i prefer to use firefox and am on win 8 and am new at it so any help?

  3. done doing this but sir my monitor still show yellowish tint T_T
    i also tried to do some changes on regedit it was able to change the background to black but not to white

  4. Thank you very much for the great advice!! I was in the middle of editing photos for a deadline when I noticed the yellow tint (started using a 2nd monitor)… got super confused and thought have to redo all my work, but this article saved my life!

  5. Also very thankful to you Jonathan. It was really a strange problem I was not understanding its reason.

    I appreciate Windows Photo Viewer as a very handful quick image viewer, and not wanting to change it, because: I browse often through huge folders in my PC, filled with images, and often, after spoting an image, I want to open it in full window, without waiting for a big program to initialize. And besides, I want to be able to move along the adjacent images in full screen back and forth really quick, as to compare small changes between them.

    But precisely after retouching several images, and wanting to compare the mood differences, I got strucked, and also scared about having lost my time in those “ugly” change colors. Until I reopend the images in the other sofware I worked them in detail (GIMP) and saw everything was right as artistically intended. Also Windows Paint showed them correctly (the one did’nt fit my need to move along adjacent images in full screen), just but Windows Photo Viewer was wrong.

    Nice to have applied this solution. IT WORKED INSTANTLY !

  6. Thank you so much! I’ve been putting up with this for years, and using 2 different photo viewers as I prefer the way the Windows one works, just the colours were slightly off! Now, thanks to you the colours are just right 🙂

  7. Thanks,
    I recently had to do a multi-hour Windows 10 upgrade and this is one of the multiple things that now needed fixing. This did the trick for the ‘all new’ Orange Photo Gallery. Thanks again.

  8. Sadly didn’t work for me. All my images in window picture viewer are orange and over saturated – this is killing me!

  9. Sadly – The fix didn’t work for my Windows 10 (which just started doing this, even though it’s been fine for several years). Help Are there any other suggestions out there?

  10. Thank you. Been using my laptop for a few years now with no problem and just noticed that this issue started within the last month. Glad I found your fix!

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