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Hello!

A while ago I bought a wide gamut monitor and suddenly discovered how much of an issue software without color profile management can be.

I use ArtRage for painting a lot and sadly, they do 0 color profile management. (and basically can't be arsed to add it, "it'd be difficult" was their answer when I suggested it)

It's especially a problem with reference - they have their own system for storing and displaying reference images, but they're not color profiled and so the displayed colors are wrong.

I bought PR mainly for use in Photoshop, but I'd happily use it in AR as well, if it could deal with color profiles.

Is it something you'd consider implementing?

Thanks,

Jan Pospíšil

Unfortunately we don't really have the resources to implement support for this as it is quite complex. We are using the Qt framework which does not have any kind of color management support at the moment. If they would add such support in the future we could definitely use their API to expose it to our users but for now it is not something we are able to do.

Hi!, what a great program this is :). But even the sun has it's spots I guess and I'm wondering, has anything happened with/is about to regarding this issue with color profiles?

It's such an excellent program and great for drawing from, also painting but depending on which monitor (main or secondary) that I use with my Mac the colors can get quite reddish. I'm using a color-calibrator with software to get as good a match as possible and with the quick view and preview window in osx, or displaying through corel Painter or my raw converter/photoeditor the colors match better. When drawing or sculpting from PureRef it works so well, but it gets really awqward with the shift in color and saturation when trying to paint from reference and/or doing color studies.

We answered this elsewhere as well but adding the same here for discoverability:

Not much has changed unfortunately, as said above we're using Qt and this has been a requested feature over there for a while as well: https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-6582

We're keeping our eyes open for news over there but we'll also see if there's any other solution we could apply if nothing happens on Qts side.

Bumping this thread to see if there's any development on Color Management for PureRef. I am using a WCG calibrated display (Around Display P3 color gamut) and experience over-saturated colors in PureRef. Without Color management settings that can keep colors within their embedded profile and default untagged images to sRGB, image RGB values basically get remapped to the monitor calibrated values and look over-saturated.

Following this topic if anything gets updated.

We've just released a beta of PureRef 2.0 that implements support for embedded color profiles. You can download it on the download page if you want to give it a go and see if it helps for your use cases!

Thank you for looking into this topic! Unfortunately, I still can't get images with other color profiles to display properly. You can try yourself by saving the red image at the top of this website below and pasting it into PureRef. If your monitor supports wide gamut, it should show a W inside the image (try opening on an iphone if it doesn't work on your computer - iphone uses DisplayP3). If your monitor or web browser forces sRGB, it only shows a uniform red square.
https://www.wide-gamut.com/test

For color management to work properly in PureRef, the user will also need to be able to select monitor profile in PureRef Settings so that a proper conversion can happen between the pictures embedded profile and the device monitor profile. It seems that currently, PureRef forces sRGB output regardless of monitor profile.

Thanks for testing and for the link! So in this case we're still limited by Qt unfortunately, but we'll keep an eye out for developments in there or if there's something else we can do in the future.

There should be color management APIs in all OS to get the device profile, but implementation is different for each OS. I would look at how it's been implemented in GIMP or Krita - they offer solid color managed workflows, are open source so you can look at the code and support cross platform.

Krita: https://docs.krita.org/en/reference_manual/preferences/color_management_settings.html
GIMP: https://docs.gimp.org/2.10/en/gimp-imaging-color-management.html

Would like to bump this thread to see if there's anything being developed for this. I have the exact issue as Calavera. Unforunately it renders PureRef unusable for colour sensitive tasks.

We've just released a beta version of PureRef 2.1.0 which includes a new experimental setting Use screen color profile. Please give it a try and let us know if it helps!

Hi Admin, thanks for following up on this thread. I have now tried the new setting of Use screen color profile and can confirm that it does seem to take into account the color space tagging of the image file and correctly output to the monitor profile that PureRef is reading by activating this setting. This is a great improvement!

The main suggestion I would have is to also by default interpret any untagged images as sRGB. Currently - even with this setting turned on - an untagged image passes through its RGB values to the monitor, still resulting in oversaturated images on a wide color gamut display. Since so many images on the web (especially PNG) are untagged, it would be much more preferable if they are also by default interpreted as sRGB. You can refer to the section "How does your browser interpret untagged images" at the following link where the same concept is explained for color management in the context of browsers.
https://www.wide-gamut.com/test

Thank you for giving it a try! We can indeed see that some formats are missing the transformation when there's no profile set and we'll try to get it fixed for the next version. Did you try any other formats than PNG?

PureRef Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Thank you for giving it a try! We can indeed see
> that some formats are missing the transformation
> when there's no profile set and we'll try to get
> it fixed for the next version. Did you try any
> other formats than PNG?

That would be amazing. Yes, I tried an untagged JPG and get the same behavior as with PNG - untagged images output their unaltered RBG values to the monitor profile. I work with a P3 display and if I open an untagged image, it looks the same as a P3 tagged image when it should assume sRGB.

The standard as far as there is one is to always interpret RGB values as sRGB unless they have an embedded profile that says that explicitly state that they are wider gamut like P3, ProPhoto, AdobeRBG etc.

We believe this should now be fixed in the latest beta, 2.1.0.beta3, if not, just let us know!

Heyy,
Thanks for the continued attention to this topic. I tried the beta3 today but it seems the problem still persists. I tried it both on Macbook and on my stationary Windows PC with a wide gamut Benq SW321c monitor. Here are the steps to repro:
- Use a PC with wide gamut monitor (Easiest is probably to use a recent macbook pro with P3 display) The wider gamut profile will have to be enabled in the OS color management for PureRef to use it
- Go to this website below and save 3 images at the top of the page - The ProPhoto tagged image, the sRGB tagged image and the untagged sRGB image
https://www.wide-gamut.com/test
- Open all 3 images in PureRef, preferably one by one so you know which one you're looking at
- The tagged ProPhoto image should have noticeable more vivid colors compared to the tagged sRGB image (This now works in PureRef since the last update, thanks!)
- The untagged sRGB image SHOULD look like the tagged sRGB, but it doesn't. It looks like the ProPhoto image - this means that PureRef outputs the untagged images RGB values as-is to the monitor, without transform. This will almost always be incorrect since 99.9% of images used are in sRGB space. So I'm suggesting that PureRef should apply a transform on untagged images to be treated as sRGB, that's how all browsers like Safari, Chrome, Edge etc treat untagged images. If you prefer, this could be an optional toggle like how IrfanView implemented their color management.

If you open the same images and toggle between them in Irfanview with color management enabled, untagged images get output to the display without transform (like PureRef does currently). In the color management settings, you have to enable an extra checkbox to make untagged images interpreted as sRGB. I think it should be enabled by default, but at least the option is there.

If you get this working, I will pay for the software again, promise!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2025-08-28 06:36 by Calavera.

Thank you for checking and for the detailed repro steps! We made a last minute change and messed up the non-png code path... It should work for png in beta3 but we'll get it working for other formats in the next one!

Hopefully third time's the charm and this is now working for jpegs too in the latest beta, 2.1.0.beta4!

I just tried beta4 and this indeed seems to work as expected from my first tests on mac. I'll keep my promise and pay for the app again, and will let you know if I run into any issues! Thanks a lot for these updates!

Glad to hear it, and thank you so much for the support and feedback!