Being in the process of switching over to Linux from Windows, I’ve found most things work incredibly well and the things that don’t mostly have native alternatives or runs well through something like Proton, Lutris or Bottles. But the one thing that is currently making me keep Windows around and regularly using it is color management and monitor profiling software, and I would really appreciate any suggestions.
This is, in my case, about KDE Plasma on CachyOS/Arch with an Nvidia GPU and I’ve spent some time trying to figure it out since the Wayland color management/HDR protocol was finalized some months ago, but have not had much luck. Plasma seems to have decent support for using ICC profiles in newer versions, but creating them in the first place is a challenge. I’ve tried a few things, but none of them give good results. First off I’ve tried running DisplayCAL as you normally would, and while it connects to my calibrator (X-Rite i1 Display Pro Plus) and gets through most of the process it fails at the very end before it would normally ask you to save and install the profile. It still makes an .icc-file you can find somewhere in the application data folders (I don’t remember the path at the moment), but using them gives obviously incorrect colors like the main color of the ArchWiki background being much redder than it should be. I also tried following the guide Xaver/Zamundaaa wrote a little over a year ago about exactly this, but that fails to start profiling at all. Lastly I’ve tried profiling on Windows and copying the ICC files over and using them as-is which also gives incorrect colors, as you would expect. I would’ve loved to use the vendor’s first party profiling software (calibrite Profiler), but they only support Windows and MacOS.
As I understand it, ArgyllCMS (with DisplayCAL as its GUI), was typically the recommended solution for this, but they do not support Wayland and according to ArgyllCMS (see the explanation under “Display color management and Wayland” on their website) “there is little immediate prospect of ArgyllCMS being able to natively support display calibration and profiling for Wayland” due to various issues working with the Wayland devs and lacking protocols.
Is Linux/Wayland simply not ready for this use case yet? Are there alternatives to ArgyllCMS/DisplayCAL that does support profiling on Wayland? Is it an Nvidia-related issue as it often seems to be?
thanks for checking it out.
I have also heard that icc profiles should be independent.
I would request you to try something. use some profile generated in windows, in both windows and linux. now take some sample file (ideally non hdr) and open it in a some program available in both windows and linux, so for example, mpv. even though mpv has some differences in it’s default config on these 2 systems, but try to use software encoding to prevent those differences. and ensure the output is fullscreened (ideally by a mpv cli option). now ideally same colors should be produced. if they are, then you have your problem solved, if not, well then we know same profile does not work.
Still thanks for trying. linux is currently weak in these cases, because much of these has been driven by artists who do color accurate work, who have traditionally only worked on ms and now apple stuff. so there has been very little work in fixing this stuff. also since many of these color production stuff is licensed, it requires manufacturer to test in linux while certification, which no one does. commercial interest is just not there.