more (wayland) color management confusion

Software darktable
1

I am running gnome with wayland and darktable-git. I assigned a display profile for my monitor via gnome settings and this actually seems to work. The profile itself was created in Windows using DisplayCAL, setting sRGB as the target - a gamut my screen covers almost entirely. However, by default it exhibits slightly greenish tint and some other minor issues which are remedied by calibration.

When I export an image in darktable however and open it with firefox/loupe/gimp/… the images have a slightly reddish tint to them compared to what I see in darktable - almost as if my display profile was accounted for twice.

When I enable the softproofig in darktable and set “display profile” to “sRGB”, the proof matches what I see in other viewers. Setting it back to “system display profile”, the darktable output is what I am actually going for.

Is there a way to fix this? I know there are threads and many, many posts about wayland color management, I am just confused as to what happens in my case and if it can be fixed by proper configuration.

edit: oh - I just noticed, the display profile-setting in the softproofing menu is active, wether or not softproofing is enabled or not. It feels wrong to set the display-profile to srbg, eventhough it somehow makes sense, considering I was calibrating for srgb and wayland seems to color-correct “globally”. Anyway - is this a viable solution for now or is this totally the wrong way to go (if I want to stick to wayland for now and not go for X11…)?

2

firefox needs an extension to work with color mgmt iirc.

did you tell gimp/DT to use the color profile? does loupe supports that?

3

Firefox supports color management for 15 years now.

Did I tell gimp/DT to use which profile? My display profile I assume? I did not set anything explicitely, assuming at least some programs concerned with presenting images would take a system-wide profile into account. And indeed, all of them show the same result - which is different to what DT shows me by default.

I also said that I had my “system profile” assigned in Darktable and that I switched it to sRGB which to an extend seems to solve my problem (but feels wrong).

So well…thanks for you input I guess.

4

I would suggest sorting this out in X11 first, i.e. getting the same colors in darktable and a color-managed image viewer, all configured to use the same display profile you created. Firefox can do color management, but needs to be properly configured. Also check what darktable-cmstest says. Once all is fine in X11, see what happens in Wayland.

1 Like
5

No offense, but what are these comments?

First reply tells me to use some extension which is clearly wrong advice - or superfluous at best since the problem is not specific to firefox but happens with basically any other program I tried besides darktable. Also it vaguely suggests to apply some profiles here or there. Thanks.

Second comment tells me to use X11, when I clearly stated I do not want to go back to X11. And also does not address the problem in any way, shape or form. Even if X11 fixes my problem - what does this have to do with my question?

I get it, wayland sucks for color work. At least it did with some things getting traction lately. X11 all the way! I tried to figure out what goes on in the very specific case I described and was hoping for insights like

Your workaround is viable if your calibration is really good and your calibrated monitor more or less matches sRGB colors

or

No, do not do that, it is totally wrong for reasons 1, 2 and 3…

or

What you described should work with the display profile in darktable set to your calibration profile - even under wayland. If it does not, something is completely off.

or

In your case this and that happens and it explains the behaviour you see. There is this or that possible workaround but to really get it right, we need more wayland color management developments in the future…

Something like that.

Or even a plain and simple

I don’t know, sorry…

Which is a perfectly fine! But in this case, no need to answer in the first place.

Instead it is “FF needs and extension” and “use X11”. Sorry for sounding a bit annoyed, but I am. This contributes nothing and people who stumble across the same problem at some point in time will need to crawl through lots of useless comments. I am not even sure if this question got answered somewhere here on the forums because there are tons of threads like this with a lot of spam in them. Not helpful in my opinion.

6

Since color management is supported in X11(to a point), it’s not a bad idea to see if everything works there properly, or if it’s a problem common to both things.

Unfortunately darktable doesn’t support wayland so you’re not gonna get help on that front from any developers or support folk, it is what it is unfortunately.

That said you could check using any exif tool, what profile is bundled or named on your exported pictures. After that it shouldn’t be that hard to do some tests around that and figure out what is happening.

1 Like
7

Person uses thing known not to work, complains about attempts to help. :-1: This is not the way, @sans-c

Use something that works or understand the limitations of the thing that doesn’t work. Being rude to the people trying to help is not acceptable.

2 Likes
8

Alright - thanks for all your useful input. You see, forums are there for people to ask questions and to advance everyones understanding, maybe to find workarounds, gain knowledge, exchange ideas.

I wonder how there is even any progress in darktable because new features clearly werent there when someone first considered them. “Its clearly not there - why do you attempt it?”.

I get your stance on wayland. You made it clear like a million times, no need to do it yet again. I take your answer for “I don’t know what happens in your case.” - in which case see my comment above. No need to reply in the first place. Or for “I know what happens but I don’t bother answering and instead tell people that their new shiny techonlogy is just unsuable.” In that case - thank your for your support.

It is not even support I am asking for - merely for insight. I am not here saying “THIS HAS TO WORK, DT IS WRONG!!1” I’d like to understand what is going on and if I can find a feasible way forward. I am not trying to get DT to work under X11, I am trying to figure out the best way for me to use it with wayland. I am sure it works flawlessly under X11. So this totally misses the point. This is frustrating. Thanks to @hatsnp I guess for the only polite way of telling me “I don’t know.” And thanks to the others for their effort. This thread can be closed I guess.

1 Like
9

Again, no need to be rude. You can also say nothing, as you wished everyone else did. Irony totally lost on you, obviously.

10

Well, you were asking about a software combination which is not supported. There’s probably a reason for that lack of support (But that could be anything from technological incompatibility to devs not being interested, keep in mind dt is developed by unpaid volunteers, who decide for themselves what they want to work on).

You want to get dt to work under wayland. Nice.
You run into problems, Not unexpected.
You start complaining about the replies you get. Not the smartest way to get help in the future.

11

This would make sense, as wayland should be already doing the color management unlike X11 where the app is doing the correction. It probably assumes that app unaware of wayland cm protocol as if it’s output is srgb. And then wayland does “srgb space”->“monitor space”. But darktable is x11 app and it already does the correction, so it would be applied twice. It’s my guess only tho.

3 Likes