Color spaces not working in Krita

[Pebbles]

Hi, I’m struggling to make sense of color management in Krita and getting my images to look consistent across applications (namely Photoshop and additionally browsers/Windows Photo Viewer). It looks like Krita’s color spaces aren’t working correctly, and show me the same results no matter what color space I select either for the file itself or in the Color Management settings.

I’ve used Krita for painting, Photoshop for adding final touches, and WPV to view my images for years. Previously when setting up a new PC, I’ve had minor issues with color consistency at the beginning, but setting the color profile to sRGB IEC61966-2.1 in both Krita and PS seemed to fix it. I recently got a new laptop (Windows 11, Krita 5.2.2) and am running into a similar issue as before, but I can’t get around it anymore, even after trying every combination of color management setting I could think of.

My specific issue is that the paintings I create in Krita look great in Krita, but once I open them in Photoshop/WPV/Chrome, they look washed out (dark grays look nearly black in Krita but too light in other applications, but pure black still looks pure black in all applications). See image.

No matter what color space or display setting I use in Krita (I have tried the 2.1 color space above, plus my native monitor space, plus the default Krita “elle” space), I don’t see any difference in how the left square looks. It always looks like the example above in Krita. While in Photoshop, with all the same settings (2.1) it looks like the square on the right, but if I change the color space to my native monitor space, it makes a huge visual difference and will then look identical to the Krita example. So changing the color space appears to work in PS but not in Krita.

From what I’ve gathered, the 2.1 color space is what most applications (including web browsers) use, so in order to post my paintings online, I would need to create them in 2.1 so that I know they will always look the same in every application. Right? Obviously it would be preferable to use my native monitor color space, as it seems to have a much wider color gamut, but I guess I have to sacrifice the extra richness of color for consistency.

I am at my wits’ end after attempting to troubleshoot this for a week now. Does anyone have any idea how to get Krita to accurately display my images in the sRGB IEC61966-2.1 profile? Should I be using a different color space altogether? What am I missing? Thanks!

[tiar]

Just to be sure, you did try setting up this:

to your wide gamut display profile? (There are always two profiles, one for display in general, one for a specific document).

[Pebbles]

I’ve checked again, and I had that set to the 2.1 profile instead. I’ve now changed it to my native wide gamut monitor profile and that looks just like the 2.1 profile in Photoshop, so I suppose this is the fix!

I’m confused about the logic behind this though, because you’d assume that if you set the profile to 2.1 in Krita as well as in Photoshop, then they would look identical. But instead I have to use my monitor profile in Krita and 2.1 in Photoshop and that somehow makes them look the same…? Also, why is it that the wide gamut profile in Krita then shows the image as washed out and 2.1 shows it as so vivid, if it should be the other way around?

Well, I hope if I keep these settings, I won’t run into the same problem again with new files, since there seem to be a lot of combinations of these settings. I just tested with a brand new file for a second and it seemed to look okay.

Thank you so much for this suggestion, I hugely appreciate it! I can finally get back to drawing. Thank you!!

[tiar]

Well, I’m not the biggest color management in Krita, but from what I know:

• There are two color profiles. Always both of them are used. They don’t have to match (in fact they often won’t)
• The one shown on the bottom of Krita is your document color profile, and it can change all the time, whether you work in CMYK, in wide gamut, in Lab or some other specific profiles. This is the color space and profile that Krita uses to blend layers together etc. That’s how the image is saved in the file.
• The one in Color Management → Display is your display/screen/monitor profile. It should match the correct color profile for the display you use to show the file. It won’t change until you change your monitor (or set your monitor up differently using the little plastic toggles on the side of the physical monitor).
  • it can be different for every physical monitor you have (so for example you can have an sRGB monitor and a wide gamut one, and set them up separately to use correct profiles)
  • I think those profiles are always RGB-based, unlike the document one.
  • In a professional setting, this color profile would probably be created with a colorimeter (and then set up and never touched again). In normal setting, it’s enough if it roughly matches (so if the monitor is wide gamut, it should at least be some wide gamut profile, not sRGB).
  • Usually users have sRGB monitors, so they don’t have problems, but having a wide gamut vs small gamut will obviously change the look drastically.
• The confusion from “wide gamut = good colors, so why washed out?” probably comes from the fact that an image you were comparing was sRGB (2.1 or not), so small gamut.
  • When a document is small gamut and the monitor is wide gamut, a good and well set up color managed program won’t show you the best green you can possibly get on your monitor - it will show you the green that the file is supposed to have, which is pretty lackluster, because it’s from within sRGB profile.
  • When a document is small gamut and the monitor is set to small gamut, but it’s actually wide gamut (like in your case), Krita will think that to show you the correct green, it needs to display the best green you possibly have. That results in overly bright colors that weren’t actually in the sRGB file. This is why your smartphone has “better”, more saturated colors than something you’d see on a computer with a normal cheap sRGB monitor - smartphone screens are usually wider gamut than sRGB, but they also often aren’t color managed, afaik. It might actually look better sometimes - but it’s worth remembering that in that case the colors you see are not the real colors.

Basically, wide gamut means you have a bigger range of colors, and it does include more saturated colors than small gamut. But Krita won’t use those saturated colors if it’s set up correctly and you’re looking at a small gamut file.

Color management is to make sure the colors are true and correct and the same everywhere, not to make what you see the prettiest. If you set it up super correctly and you know what kind of color profile your printer uses (it’s often either fogra or swop, but if it’s best to check the printer or ask the printing company), you could make it so that the colors you see on screen are the same colors you’ll see on a printed piece of paper. (Protips: use soft-proofing instead of/before converting to CMYK, and don’t work in CMYK because it has terrible blending qualities, RGB is way better, though afaik there are even better spaces, except that they usually work best in linear and linear is… something one needs to get used to).

There is a whole lots of documentation here: Color Managed Workflow — Krita Manual 5.2.0 documentation and here: Profiling and Calibration — Krita Manual 5.2.0 documentation (whole lots of reading, i know) . Note that Photoshop also talks about document profiles vs monitor profiles here: Work with Photoshop color profiles but it isn’t clear where you can set it up in PS; I think maybe it gets it from Windows registry/some kind of default etc., because I believe that what you set up is just the document color profile, not the monitor color profile.

[Pebbles]

Wow, this is super informative! I have looked at various pages of the Krita manual before, and there is indeed a lot to take in, lol. I will have a look at the docs you linked for extra information. I really appreciate the time and effort that went into your reply, it’s very helpful! I’m sure I will come back to this to refresh my understanding of color management again.