Windows Photo Viewer Applies Yellow Tint to Photos

When previewing images using Windows Photo Viewer or Windows Photo Gallery (part of the Windows Essentials suite), the viewer background, as well as the image, may show up with a yellow tint and appear off-colored.

Solution

Option 1: Remove all color profiles

1. Click Start, search for Color Management, and open it. Or run colorcpl.exe via Run dialog.
2. Select the monitor from the list of devices (For example, Display: SyncMaster SA300). It’s important that you select the monitor you are looking the photo into!
3. Enable the “Use my settings for this device” check box.
4. Under Profiles associated with this device, remove all the profiles listed, by selecting each profile and clicking the Remove button.
5. Restart Windows.

If that doesn’t do the trick, then try the following:

Option 2: Add sRGB IEC61966-2.1 and set it as the default

1. Select the correct monitor from the list
2. Enable “Use my settings for this device”
3. Remove the current color profile.
4. Add a new profile and select sRGB IEC61966-2.1 under ICC Profiles.
5. Click Close.
6. Restart Windows.

Note: If you don’t want to remove the existing color profile, you can add the new one and select it as the default profile (“Set as Default Profile”).

The same issue was widely reported by Windows users long back. Here are a couple of Microsoft Knowledgebase articles that address the issue

• How to remove the association between the display and a color profile when pictures are being displayed with bad color
• When you view an image in Windows Photo Gallery, the image is yellow

Instructions in this article apply to all versions of Windows, including Windows 10/11.