Washed out colors when exporting again

General Forums
1

Hello, I know this topic has already been covered a million times but I really understand nothing at all.

Im new to digital painting and Krita and I discovered that when I export my paintings to .jpg format, the colors are washed out when I display them on my phone or laptop screen.

Ive read many topics about other artists that struggled with this but its impossible for me to understand the difficult vocabulary of digital painting (and English is not my first language so its even harder)

All I know is that in Krita config > color management > display, it is “sRGB-elle-V2-srgbtrc.icc”
In the General tab of Color management, it is “RGB / Alpha 8 bits” blahblah…

Is there something wrong with my current settings?
What is the correct config so that the colors displayed on Krita stay the same when I dislpay the jpg on my phone?

Thank you for your help (im going insane)

2

:slight_smile: Hello @L_B, and welcome to the forum!

Your main issue will be that your displays aren’t calibrated, only calibrated displays are capable to show always the best possible and identical ‘‘expression’’ of your pictures.
The next thing would be the different capabilities of each display you use, similar to cars, all will drive you from A to B, but some are faster, others more comfortable. In the world of displays, this means that there are displays that can display more (or fewer) colors than other displays, some use different color-spaces, which you can think of like different dialects of one language, all of them tell the same story, but you can understand them more or less easy because they sound different.

Now, there are technical ways to make a picture looking nearly identical on every used display, but there are displays, like those from mobile-phones, that can not be calibrated from the end user, these will always show slightly different colors. And the ones that can be calibrated, must be calibrated and match some other conditions to show always a nearly identical picture.
I assume that you, with your understanding of this complex issue, do not use calibrated displays, this means in reverse, you will never experience nearly identical images on your displays, and if so then only by chance.

And from here on I am out, because I’m no specialist when it comes to color, I only can show you an overview of this.
But if you use Krita’s standard-settings, it is strongly advised to stay with them and to assume (and hope) your computer’s display shows the colors in the best possible way if it is not a (low-)budget display, and to assume the other used displays do a bad job. But this is only an assumption, and it can be a bad advice because I don’t know your display and its specifications.

I don’t know if the further advice of a more expert user will help you, but if you are not satisfied with my advice, then please ask for further clarification here, or even for advice on at least some remedial action.
But with not calibrated displays and not understanding the topic itself, it is often better to accept the current state, if you don’t want to acquire the needed knowledge by learning them.
But it may make sense for you to find a knowledgeable person to explain this topic to you in your language, then some hurdles in comprehensibility will be removed faster than by us, who can only try to explain it to you in English.

Anyway, I wish you a nice day and much fun with Krita!

Michelist

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The qualiti
3

I have two identical monitors, side by side as an extended desktop.
If I open an image in a viewer on one monitor then drag that window to the other monitor, I can see the brightness, contrast, and saturation of the image change as it moves from one monitor to another.

My ‘identical’ monitors have not been colour calibrated and I don’t have the equipment or the patience for that anyway. I’ve tried making adjustments but nothing I did made them both the same so I gave up trying.

If you consider that a desktop monitor, a laptop screen and a phone screen do not have identical displays and may even use different display technology and are not colour calibrated, then it is not surprising that the same image file, when viewed on different devices, does not look the same.

4 Likes
4

I have the exact same issue, and I guess most people do.

I make digital art in two places, in my workplace and at home.
At my workplace I have one monitor and when I finish a painting on it I have made it a habit to not export until I get home.
At home I have two monitors that behave slightly different (all three of these monitors have been callibrated using the windows setting for that, but results will vary unless you have professional equipment).
From experience I know that usually I need to darken and saturate my work when at home, this has to do with the make of the monitor and the lighting conditions in my workplace.
I then compare my work on the two monitors at home and pick an average to export.
That average .png will be uploaded to my personal discord server, from where I view it on my phone.
Usually that gives me a decent enough average.
In some cases a bit more tweaking is required.

TL’DR:

  • Make an average between your different screens and make that your final export

Beware that when you intent to print your work, extra steps are required!

The short story is that you have to soft proof your image and then set the color space to CMYK before exporting.
For this you are required to flatten all your layers into one.

3 Likes
5

Thank you very much for your answer, I understand better the problem.

I think I’ve found a solution by editing the color after with filters (even if I would have preferred a more accurate rendition of the colors from one screen to another because the difference is that huge…)

I should maybe change my computer screen.

Have a good day!

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