Cannot get ICC profiles to affect screen color under X11 on Plasma 6

haigioli · 2025-09-12 03:23:03

This is a long standing issue on Plasma 6. No matter what I do, I can't get icc profiles to have an effect on screen colour - laptop or otherwise.

I'm using colord. I've used xiccd, xcalib, argyllcms, and everything else you can think of. Nothing works. This is agnostic of graphics card and monitor type. It simply doesn't work.

The icc profiles themselves seem rather fine because they work on Wayland and on individual apps that support them. However, they refuse to work on X11. They once did, but not anymore under Plasma 6 X11.

What do I report to get started on figuring this out? I;m absolutely sure many other artists are going through the same thing, so let's see if we can fix it, or find out if it's a lost cause, until Wayland is feature complete.

seth · 2025-09-12 08:01:25

Does "xcalib -ia" invert the colors?

haigioli · 2025-09-12 21:25:00

Yes, it does.

Ftr, xcalib (at least mine) takes only separate options, so:

xcalib -i -a

Edit: When I use 'xcalib -d :0 -s 0 -v profile.icc', I get the following error:

XRandR output:          eDP
Warning - No calibration data in ICC profile 'profile.icc' found

I know these profiles work because they load and affect the display immediately.

Last edited by haigioli (2025-09-12 21:34:21)

seth · 2025-09-13 06:39:36

Can you upload that profile somewhere?

cat profile.icc | curl -F 'file=@-' 0x0.st

because they load and affect the display immediately

They're loaded by what exactly which you track how exactly?
(Ie. "things elsewhere work by for all I know some dark magic" is not a proof that this is a proper ICC profile, but this might also be a parsing tolerance thing)

haigioli · 2025-09-13 17:57:04

Sure. Here: Rec709.icc

I know that Wayland's colour management is still somewhat broken (makes a lot of assumptions on how scene space/display space work - I'm not sure they fixed all that yet), but at least I can see a change in colours on the screen. X11, I can't. And yes, you're right: it could be that X11 colord might be a lot stricter on profiles and makes fewer assumptions. But, there's no clear feedback, which is why I'm here.

They make a difference on Krita and other correctly colour managed apps (Davinci Resolve, as well). What I mean is that I can't see any colour reaction on the screen - correct or incorrect.

seth · 2025-09-13 20:00:39

Try https://github.com/OpenICC/xcalib/blob/ … bright.icc - probably will work?
What do you get for https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/ICC_profiles#xiccd and that profile? How was the latter generated?

haigioli · 2025-09-13 22:37:04

I tried `xiccd` first, when trying to find a solution.

What I get when running `colormgr device-add-profile xrandr-BOE icc-9d837fa76477aabaedd5785df351839a' on top of a running `xiccd` is nothing. There's no feedback.

Oddly, in Plasma 6's Color Manager, I can load and enable the test:blue profile and get a blue tint on everything. However, on literally ALL other usable profiles (Rec709, sRGB, all the CIE stuff, DisplayP3, etc) it all looks the same.

seth wrote:

How was the latter generated?

I have no idea. Most of these are included when installing `colord`. P3, as well as ITU-Rec709 are from color.org. I haven't generated anything myself for this machine, yet. The standards I use from color.org are usually my test profiles.

`argyllcms` will complain about:

Dispwin: Warning - new_dispwin: Expected VideoLUT depth 8 doesn't match actual 10
Dispwin: Warning - No vcgt tag found in profile - assuming linear

This was not the case on X11 in Plasma 5. A lot of people say to ignore that complaint, but to me, everything means something - big or small.

And, yes, ftr, the gamma 2.2 bright profile 'worked'.

Edit:

So strange that the test:blue and gamma 2.2 bright showed results, but test:swap red and green didn't do anything.

Last edited by haigioli (2025-09-13 22:49:13)

haigioli · 2025-09-14 02:13:24

Upon further investigation, it appears colour management under X11 in Plasma 6 is fundamentally broken. I'm definitely not the only one. The technical reasons behind it are known, but not relevant to solving this problem. There is no solution because X11 is no longer supported even for fixes to things that used to work reliably. The focus is 1000% on Wayland. Too bad they're not really listening (yet) to the professional artist community. It'll come, but not without a lot of nudging and even shoving from the community.

@seth, do I still mark this thread as solved even though there's no solution?

seth · 2025-09-14 07:40:29

It's not really solved, so that would be a misdirection - but you may reference the upstream discussion behind "The technical reasons behind it are known".
Do you have more success w/ the v2 profiles and have you tested this on not-plasma X11?

haigioli · 2025-09-14 17:49:23

seth wrote:

Do you have more success w/ the v2 profiles and have you tested this on not-plasma X11?

I've tried both v2 and a plethora of v4 profiles and they're almost all a bust. I'm a stickler for colour correctness in all things because of my work, so this is extremely annoying to me. However, the apps that I write and use are colour-sandboxed, so they'll at least use profiles correctly. I think maybe Firefox still is capable of using icc profiles correctly, so that'll help sooth my nerves when I'm viewing other people's content as they intended.

Wayland is going to be quite awesome... when it's ever feature complete and robust enough without patches. I'm going to have to nudge the devs hard on this.

Well... on to the next little problem.

Thanks, @seth.

apaz · 2025-09-15 07:28:35

@haigioli I am in the same situation as you. I am awaiting developments in Wayland.

Arch Linux

#1 2025-09-12 03:23:03

Cannot get ICC profiles to affect screen color under X11 on Plasma 6

#2 2025-09-12 08:01:25

Re: Cannot get ICC profiles to affect screen color under X11 on Plasma 6

#3 2025-09-12 21:25:00

Re: Cannot get ICC profiles to affect screen color under X11 on Plasma 6

#4 2025-09-13 06:39:36

Re: Cannot get ICC profiles to affect screen color under X11 on Plasma 6

#5 2025-09-13 17:57:04

Re: Cannot get ICC profiles to affect screen color under X11 on Plasma 6

#6 2025-09-13 20:00:39

Re: Cannot get ICC profiles to affect screen color under X11 on Plasma 6

#7 2025-09-13 22:37:04

Re: Cannot get ICC profiles to affect screen color under X11 on Plasma 6

#8 2025-09-14 02:13:24

Re: Cannot get ICC profiles to affect screen color under X11 on Plasma 6

#9 2025-09-14 07:40:29

Re: Cannot get ICC profiles to affect screen color under X11 on Plasma 6

#10 2025-09-14 17:49:23

Re: Cannot get ICC profiles to affect screen color under X11 on Plasma 6

#11 2025-09-15 07:28:35

Re: Cannot get ICC profiles to affect screen color under X11 on Plasma 6

Board footer