I’m sorry to ask this question that has been asked several times before, but none of the solutions provided seem to work for me.
When I opened a RAW file in RawTherapee, the colours were very faded compared to the preview shown in other image applications. I adjusted the values until I was satisfied with the output, but then when I saved it to JPEG, the colours looked very different when I opened it in Chromium or Gwenview. The colours were rather oversaturated and the faces looked red. Interestingly, when I open the JPEG in Gimp, it looks the same like in RawTherapee, and when I save the JPEG from there again and open it in Gwenview/Chrome, it is still oversaturated.
I am on Arch Linux using RawTherapee 5.10. I have been using RawTherapee a lot in the past and never had this problem, so it could be that something has recently changed.
A lot of people seem to have this problem online, and the responses are always talking about colour profiles. My working profile is set to ProPhoto and my output profile to RTv4_sRGB. My monitor profile is set to None. Changing any of these preferences did not make any difference at all.
My goal is to share the pictures with others through the web. So I’m not looking for a way to make other applications display the images like RawTherapee, but for a way to make RawTherapee display them like other applications, so that when I’m editing them I can see what they will look like for others.
Other programs don’t understand “RTV4_sRGB”. Google around and get plain “srgb” output profile, then the other programs will understand and produce the correct colors.
I had tried before with the built-in “No ICM: sRGB Output” profile with no success.
In the setttings I found “Directory containing color profiles”, which was set to /usr/share/color/icc. That directory contained two sub-directories (colord and krita), and it seems that RawTherapee was not looking in the sub-directories. I changed the setting to /usr/share/color/icc/colord, and now I have much more profile to select from, including one called “sRGB”.
The problem is that still, the JPEG looks exactly the same no matter which Output Profile I select. I select it in the “Color” tab in the sidebar at the bottom of the “Color Management” section, maybe that’s the wrong place?
To be safe you should likely put the correct icc file for your display in that setting in RT. Then how are you opening the image in RT…there can be a massive range of outcomes from the neutral profile which would be the most dull to one of the automatch curves which could be dull or quite saturated…
If you take someone else’s JPG from the web, that looks OK to you in the browser, and open it in RawTherapee, does it still look good, or do its colours change?
If so, your ‘other software’ and RT most probably use a different display profile. In that case, if you install darktable, what does its darktable-cmstest tool report on the console? (I don’t know how to perform the check without that tool, so if someone can provide an alternative solution, I’m interested.)
Indeed a random JPEG displays with much more dull colours inside RawTherapee than inside other applications.
The output of darktable-cmstest:
darktable-cmstest version 4.6.1
this executable was built with colord support enabled
darktable itself was built with colord support enabled
primary CRTC is at CRTC 0
CRTC for screen 0 CRTC 1 has no mode or no output, skipping
CRTC for screen 0 CRTC 2 has no mode or no output, skipping
CRTC for screen 0 CRTC 3 has no mode or no output, skipping
eDP1 the X atom and colord returned the same profile
X atom: _ICC_PROFILE (1148 bytes)
description: 20S1S3P601
colord: "/home/cdauth/.local/share/icc/edid-00973f9d8193153d49e89143948789c1.icc"
description: 20S1S3P601
Your system seems to be correctly configured
I tried setting that ICC file as the monitor colour profile for RawTherapee, but it didn’t change anything. In fact, I haven’t been able to see any difference at all no matter what I set as monitor profile, working profile or output profile.
OK. On my system, I use a self-made profile (not one based on EDID), but output is similar:
kofa@eagle:~/darktable-master/bin$ ./darktable-cmstest
darktable-cmstest version 4.7.0+1276~g98c7c913e4
this executable was built with colord support enabled
darktable itself was built with colord support enabled
primary CRTC is at CRTC 0
CRTC for screen 0 CRTC 1 has no mode or no output, skipping
CRTC for screen 0 CRTC 2 has no mode or no output, skipping
CRTC for screen 0 CRTC 3 has no mode or no output, skipping
DP-2 the X atom and colord returned the same profile
X atom: _ICC_PROFILE (968116 bytes)
description: U2720Q #1 2023-09-13 12-10 D5000 2.2 M-S XYZLUT+MTX
colord: "/var/lib/colord/icc/U2720Q #1 2023-09-13 12-10 D5000 2.2 M-S XYZLUT+MTX.icc"
description: U2720Q #1 2023-09-13 12-10 D5000 2.2 M-S XYZLUT+MTX
The way I understand it, if your display provides valid data in EDID, and the display has not shifted much since it was manufactured (e.g. because of age), the profile should be reasonably good.
Here is a screenshot of RawTherapee, displaying a random JPG, with the display profile set to Use operating system’s main colour profile:
