In your case the best thing you could do is at some point get a color checker. The Spyder is not too expensive… Use it when you shoot anything you care about. Then you can use the CC module with the colorchecker section to nail the colors… This you can apply to images shot in the same conditions and you can make one from a general daylight shot and then save that as a preset making CC set to as shot… This can be a general color correction… Now this does not guarantee they will look good on your screen … if they do then your screen might be in good shape if not then likely the current settings on your screen are not generating very accurate color… that part has to be assessed with a calibration device but that is not an option for you…
You say everything else looks fine; the problem is that when you export from darktable, the images look wrong.
The surroundings can have an effect on how we perceive images. For example, an image edited using a dark theme in darktable, when displayed on a webpage with a light background (Facebook, Instagram) could look wrong.
Another possibility is that darktable uses the wrong monitor profile. Have you checked that? If all else fails, you could just set it to sRGB (provided that your display is close to sRGB). See:
And is image settings selected as the profile in the export module? Is there any style applied in the export module that could alter the image after you edit it?
If all of those are OK (not using a very dark theme; display profile is not set to some wrong value by accident; output & export profile, export style OK), you can try the following, without any hardware or expenditure:
in the darkroom, take a snapshot (button on top left) of the raw
develop the raw so that it looks ‘right’ in darktable
export the raw file
import the result of the export (e.g., JPG)
open it in darkroom
compare it with the snapshot.
Hopefully the JPG still looks ‘right’, and identical to the raw snapshot.
Now open the JPG in a browser (or whatever other software that you use). Does it look wrong?
Take a screenshot of the image, as it is displayed in the darkroom with an external tool. Take another screenshot of the JPG as it is shown in the browser/image viewer. Import both in the Gimp, resize to the same dimensions, add them as layers, switch the merging mode to difference. Is the image completely dark (= 0 difference), or are there areas showing discrepancies?
It’s not the surroundings. Like I said, I’m looking at the photos on my phone, chromebook, tablets etc and the issue is limited to just the photos I’ve recently processed on this new monitor; all other photos are fine on the different devices.
I’ve set the colour on the monitor so that I’m happy with it in windows, and I’ve tweaked the colours on Ubuntu using the NVidia tool. I’d like to replace that with a profile on ubuntu. I’ve not spent long on this yet but I suspect it’ll be the usual Linux rabbithole of deprecated software, old/misleading info on the net etc. (Ubuntu seems to think I have an 85" monitor - how does it get it so wrong?).
When you say “And is image settings selected as the profile in the export module?” did you mean “…as the intent…”? Because otherwise I don’t see the difference between that and your previous comment about setting output profile to sRGB. I’ll play around with those two values and see where I get to. This is the approach I was hinting at in my original post and I believe it’s the right one, so thanks!
I seemed to recall that filmic massages colours to fit into the output profile, and that would mean that if your override the output profile during export, you may get different output. However, I cannot reproduce that effect. Using image settings for profile and intent means using whatever is set in the output profile (not overriding them).
DisplayCal (actually, its usage of Python 2) is deprecated, but when using the FlatPak, you really don’t need to do anything special. You’ll need a hardware device to calibrate and profile the monitor, though.
Can you check what profile Windows uses for your display? And what Linux uses? On Ubuntu, are you on Gnome or KDE? Xorg or Wayland? (AFAIK, colour manager is not fully functional on Wayland, but I could very well be wrong; I use KDE on Xorg, and have no Wayland experience.) Can you take a screenshot of your Linux display settings?
While it’s probably the perfect solution, I think that current monitors can send a minimal profile (like primaries, gamma, resolution, dimension) to the host if requested (“better than nothing”).
Most importantly for calibration you need some sensor that is supported by the software.
Actually (falsely assuming that all monitors of the same type are identical) you can save the time and money if you find someone that does the calibration for you and sends you the profile plus monitor settings used (Getting the correct brightness depending on the ambient brightness and the whitepoint can be rather tricky).
This monitor seems more like a television/gaming panel. I could not even find gamut supported in the spec for it on Samsung or the downloaded manual. And it has gaming modes and picture modes etc. These will change the appearance of the screen to suit video play back for games and movies but might not really be the best technical solution for photo editing… I’m sure its a nice monitor but given what it appears to be targeted for this could explain why you are seeing some of the differences that you are… Monitors can be notorious for having a bunch of settings for color and sharpness to boost things using names like supersharp or vivid etc . These enhancements are not going to be available on other devices so they will of course be different…
If you read the OP again, you’ll see that @dave is actually asking for a way to automatically add contrast and saturation on export… not about trying to profile the screen. Dave, what you can do is open an image, in dt, apply the saturation/contrast boost (prob. in colour bal rgb), then in your history stack at the base click the ‘save as style’ button.In the dialogue de-select everything except the adjustment module you used, then name it and save.
Now in the export module, select the style you just created in the 'apply style menu"
Then, important, in the new option that appears below this one, select ‘append’ otherwise your export will loose any other adjustments you made before.
Hope this helps
Edit: it’s just occurred to me that doing this will overwrite any previous color bal rgb settings… should I have created a new instance of the module to start with?
If you read more he talks about having issue not viewing the same on devices as in the past…that is for sure some sort of profile issue… I honestly suspect that his monitor has some gaming modes or other settings that are creating a unique look that is not transferred when he looks at the exported edits on other devices… that is my take… bottom line I think is if you don’t profile your devices then you cant really custom tailor edits image by image to look the same…that’s the whole job of the profiles… and this doesn’t even speak to the point of what apps are being used to view the images on certain devices and what that might also do…
I just think image to image any compensation like that might not be consistent … in the end the technology and workflows are there to get a fully calibrated workflow from camera to printer if you want to take all the steps and if not I guess you decide when where and how to bend the rules…
Yes, absolutely. I have my screen calibrated, but not my printer… kind of wish I did but the extra cost of a colorimeter (if that’s the word I mean) that could do reflective readings as well as transmissive was a bit too much considering my printer only cost $90 and I don’t print much!
@Ulrich_Windl , I’d like to apologize for the tone of my reply to you - I was in a bit of a bad mood, not that that’s any excuse
ICC profiles for printing usually concern a specific combination of paper and printer, so you could try one of the large brands of paper for photo printing (Canson, Hahnemuelle, …)
But that wouldn’t really help OP anyway, as he wants images to show the same on all his devices, which means he will have to adjust the device(s). Or he will have to export his images separately for each device, with a dedicated output style. Setting that up from one single device is going to be “fun”
Thanks. I did a bit of research myself, and I found that Canon do supply profiles for their higher end printers, but not low end ones like mine, and second, paper manufacturers supply them too, as paper choice has a large impact on the colours, (as you say) and third, there are services that will make profiles for you. I think I answered my own question to a degree - I thought I edited my post with the info I found but somehow I didn’t actually save it. Sorry I took it off topic!
Isn’t this just monitor calibrating ? So color managed applications can account for the - apparently - habit to oversaturate of your monitor . But 'the rest ’ , everything that’s not color managed , like movies and games and most ui elements just use the monitor native response.
I did a bit of research myself, and I found that Canon do supply profiles for their higher end printers, but not low end ones like mine, and second, paper manufacturers supply them too, as paper choice has a large impact on the colours, (as you say) and third, there are services that will make profiles for you. I think I answered my own question to a degree - I thought I edited my post with the info I found but somehow I didn’t actually save it. Sorry I took it off topic!