I am having the same problem. After processing in darktable, the exported jpg is significantly lighter than expected, similar to the example in the original post. When I import the jpg into lighttable, it looks like it should, basically the same as the processed RAW file. But if I view it in any other program (like Windows Photos or Affinity), it is lighter.
Iāve tried a variety of setting for the profile and intent, but they all give the same results. I assumed that a profile of sRGB and intent of perceptual would work. Actually, none of the settings in the export module seem to have any effect on the exposure of the resulting jpg.
I found another forum with a solution, although it is a drastic one. I āresetā darktable, by moving all the files out of the āappdata>local>darktableā folder (on Windows). So I lost all my settings, but now the exported jpg looks like it should. (I used profile and intent both set to āimage settingsā. Setting them to sRGB and perceptual looks good, too. Again, no noticeable difference with the different settings.)
I just wish I knew which file/setting was causing the problem.
Donāt worry about intentā¦if you are using the default srgb profile of DT it cannot give you the different rendering intent as it doesnāt have the tables to do soā¦ Your last two comments would lead me to believe that affinity and windows were using the system profile and maybe in DT you were using something else. When you nuked DT then it went back to system for the default display profile and so now all your viewers were looking more like the sameā¦ I have a calibrated display and I only use known color managed applications. In those applications I explicitly specify the icc file to be used so that I know all apps and the OS are set to the same profileā¦ I think you just had a mismatch somewhere and the fact that it looked fine in DT makes me think that you had a profile there that was different because while I never trust WIndows Photo viewer Affinity should have handled the jpg fine and it should have looked the same in DT and Affinity if they were both set to use the same display profileā¦ or at least all things being equal they should have
Did you check the OPās solution?
I found the display profile setting - for some reason it wasnāt visible. All good now.
On my (windows) system I can right-click the little monitor logo:
I think system profile is usually the correct option.
Iām not that knowledgeable on this though!
Oh, so that fixed the issue? What was yours set to? (just out of interest)
I restored my original settings, and the display profile in lighttable was set to linear Rec2020 RGB. I remember reading somewhere that this was a good idea.
However, on that setting, images in lighttable and develop are very dark, and my adjustments reflected that. Exporting to sRGB resulted in a jpg lighter than expected.
Lesson learned. Stick with system display profile (or sRGB, which looks the same on my laptop) for the display profile, and sRGB for exporting so the exposure matches up.
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No, itās a very bad idea. I donāt know where you could have read that. Maybe you misunderstood? Rec2020 is good for a working profile, and some also recommend setting it as a histogram profile.
I can only think they read a post on the gamut warnings and how a bad display profile can clip them due to where it is in the pipelineā¦ There were some trouble shooting posts to set it to rec2020 so it wouldnāt clip and the warnings would be correct but I clearly note and I would think it would be obvious that the displayed preview would look wrong?? Or if they got confused about input vs display profile I think some old posts suggested it as a way to manage blue led lights a little betterā¦again a troubleshooting not operational referenceā¦
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Would there be a need to choose sRGB when exporting to JPG? Iām under the impression that darktable does that automatically if export to JPG is chosen.
You can override the export colour space in the export module, but the default (I think) is to use the space defined in the image (through the āoutput color profileā module). There is no automatically defined colour space as a function of output format: darktable gives you tools with as few restrictions as possible, how you (ab)use them is up to you. (and we have seen a few intended uses of various modules that were clearly outside the design use case)
I think there was some discussion about changing that mechanism (donāt remember how, sorry, but it should not affect existing images).