OS: Kubuntu 16.04
Software: RawTherapee 5.0-r1-gtk3 and GIMP 2.9.6
I’ve been trying to calibrate my monitor using a Spyder5 and DisplayCal. Once the monitor is calibrated, I cannot get the ICC file recognized by colord and used by the OS. I’ve been on the Displaycal forums, the colord support page and this page. All I want to do is edit pictures, have them look good online, and when I have them printed, have them look on paper the way they look on my monitor.
It occurred to me that I only really need a calibrated monitor for my photo editing software: Gimp and Rawtherapee. Can I just give up on trying to get my whole desktop to acknowledge the ICC calibration file, and just tell GIMP and RT to use the file individually?
Or am I missing something?
I really hate to do things twice. Once I edit a photo, I don’t want to go back to it again if it comes back from the printer looking wrong, so I want to have things set up right from the beginning. Can I just take the ICC file that Displaycal generates and then assign it in GIMP and Rawtherapee?
Just using it in GIMP/RT won’t work, there is also a global part in the profile that has to be loaded into your graphics card.
How many monitors do you have attached to the computer? More than need extra care in setting things up.
You could try installing darktable and then using darktable-cmstest to see what profiles are set up in your system.
You can tell displaycal to load your ICC profile when you log in, without using colord (I seem to remember having some issues with colord on kubuntu as well – not sure because I don’t use it anymore).
Then, you can configure a recent version of RawTherapee (>= 5.1 – but 5.2 is recommended) to use the system-wide color profile for your monitor. You should be able to do the same with GIMP too.
I already have darktable installed (though I never use it). So for fun, I just entered:
$ darktable-cmstest
DP-0 the X atom and colord returned different profiles
X atom: _ICC_PROFILE_1 (766452 bytes)
description: B286HK #2 2017-08-30 12-16 2.2 F-S XYZLUT+MTX
colord: "(none)"
description: (file not found)
The “B286HK…” mentioned in the output is the profile that Displaycal gave me to use after running the tests with my Spyder5. So the “X atom” is using the profile that I want and colord nothing. Does this mean I actually do have everything working right?
Also, I am running 2 monitors, but only use one of them for photo editing, so I am not going to bother calibrating the other one.
The problem in your case is that the calibrated monitor is the 2nd one, so the X atom is _ICC_PROFILE_1. Most software, including GIMP, only looks at the old _ICC_PROFILE from the first monitor, so GIMP won’t be able to auto detect your profile. It’s easy to point it to the right one though in the preferences. I am not sure how RT handles these things.
About colord, there aren’t many applications that actually use the profile set there. darktable does. GIMP does not. So setting up colord wouldn’t help you.
I have 2 monitors: my good one, and my old one. I do my photo editing on the good one, which is bigger. Usually I use the smaller, old monitor to hold the menus and toolboxes for GIMP, to give more space on my big monitor for the photo. I never use the smaller, old monitor for working on pictures.
Anyways, I think I solved my problem. I told Display Cal to apply the same ICC profile (calibrated off the good monitor) and use it on the old monitor. So both are using the same ICC profile now. The software can pick the ICC from either monitor since both are the same now. This is fine with me.