Left to right is digikam, rawtherapee, gimp. I processed the original raw in rawtherapee, exported to GIMP for touch-ups, and exported to the jpg shown.
The digikam view (left) is how I remember the image when I finished the edit in GIMP. But now the GIMP version, both the exported jpg and the native gcf file, have a very ugly colour cast to them. This is also reflected when I open the image in Rawtherapee.
For comparison, the actual image is on Flickr:
On my browser, it looks close to the desired version, like the digikam view in the screenshot. (although on my phone the skin tone is a bit brassy).
Complicating things, this is a new monitor, and I haven’t figured out how to calibrate it yet. But regardless of the monitor calibration, the colour profiles of the three programs should at least match each other? What have I done wrong here?
Thanks!
EDIT: I checked, and the image EXIF confirms the icc is set to RTv4_sRGB, which should degrade to standard sRGB on apps that don’t recognize it according to the Rawtherapee docs.
I’m in my office now and I can’t recall when I calibrated this monitor last …its not my editing machine but to me in Chrome…on Windows …your Flickr image looks warmer light the RT or Gimp image and not the Digicam one…so that’s not likely helpful but that is what I see I will check my editing machine later…
Two separate issues. I had somehow set up some of my programs to use a color-managed display, but not all of them. This caused havoc when passing images among them, as you can imagine. Also, the fact that this made a difference at all suggests I haven’t properly installed my monitor profile.
Second, my monitor profile was not accurate. As this is my first attempt, I’m aiming for images posted to Flickr and viewed on Firefox ought to be somewhat close to my local versions. This was not the case - viewing with a web browser revealed harsh colour casts.
My current work around is to set all my programs to not use color-managed display settings. My new ProArt monitor is calibrated well enough that this will suffice for now, until I get a handle on how to properly a) create a color profile for the monitor and b) install that profile system-wide and for each program that recognizes them.
I think I have now successfully made a new color calibration and set it in GIMP, Digikam, and Rawtherapee. I’m not sure if it’s getting applied system-wide, but that’s a problem for another day.
As a final test, here’s my dad again, hopefully without the harsh orange colour cast and/or desaturated colors of previous efforts:
I use XFCE (with i3 as the WM, but that doesn’t matter here) under X11. I apply the profile using XFCE’s settings and leave DT at system display profile. In digiKam I have to select the profile myself, since it doesn’t seem to use the system profile at all. GIMP uses the system profile.
I’m also using i3wm, and have been trying to avoid any desktop managers. Only because I’ve got my system configured pretty well by hand, and I don’t want a DM to start changing things on me.
But colour management may be the thing that forces me to adopt xfce, as you’ve suggested before. I’ve had some very inconsistent success with xiccd and xcalib, but nothing that survives a reboot.
Aha! I had colord and xiccd installed, and colord was started automatically on reboot. But xiccd wasn’t. I added exec xiccd to my .i3/config file, and now everything seems to be set up with lovely, consistent, calibrated colors!
