Colors in output jpg differ from preview

Software darktable
1

I am editing this image of mine in darktable 3.6.0

and was surprised that these highlightish yellows look different in the preview than they do in my exported jpg:

grafik
grafik1576×794 499 KB

  • output color profile is set to sRGB
  • export settings are:
    grafik

Mh … weird, so I consulted the manual which mentions the option to switch on the slower LittleCMS 2 engine in preferences > processing.

After switching on LittleCMS 2, the output is closer to what I see in the live preview,

grafik
grafik1578×726 477 KB

but a difference remains.

Am I missing something? Is there anything I can switch on to make the previewed colors match those in my exported jpg? Export profile and output intent are image-specific settings, so I would expext them to be reflected by the preview.

2

What program are you using to view the jpegs? Is it color managed and is the color management configured correctly?

3

It is IrfanView which, unlike many other image viewers, renders colors identical to Adobe Bridge and Photoshop.
(My monitor is calibrated with DisplayCAL and that somehow seems to confuse many image viewers)

4

Yeah, all the programs you use to view images on a particular computer need to use the same display profile.

5

What if you just view the exports back in DT …do they look off in that case

6

yes IrfanView uses the display profile.

7

Stupid me, I didn’t turn on softproofing in darktable.

jpg produced through LittleCMS 2 (Dartktable in the background)

grafik
grafik860×751 321 KB

8

Your display profile could be off too. Maybe do three or four calibrations and see if your getting consistent results…???

9

I certainly need to recalibrate. It’s on my list for tomorrow.

10

Still, without LittleCMS 2 the softproofing does not represent what I see in the output jpg:

grafik
grafik851×657 290 KB

I guess it just makes sense to use LittleCMS 2 then.

11

I always have as I wanted to experiment with using relative and perceptual gamut mapping and I thought but could be wrong that you needed it enable to have these take effect…

12

You need a LUT input profile for the perceptual rendering intent. You don’t need SSF data or a large-patch-count target shot; with dcamprof you can make one with a matrix but the command line isn’t trivial…