Is Color Management always on in Photoline?

[pixel8tor]

Hi all,

Am I doing something wrong or is CM always on in Photoline, no mater what the settings are? I have an image file with an embedded ICC profile. I *convert* it to a radically different color space. Say from sRGB to WideGamutRGB. Then I save that as version 2 of the file. In a color managed app the two versions will look extremely similar. Maybe you won't even be able to tell them apart. But in a non color managed app the two versions are noticeably different. In Photoline, I've *disabled* the ICC mismatch dialog, the "Activate Color Management", and the "Use Little CMS" options. Even so opening the two differently tagged files look extremely similar - just like they *are* being color managed. I've checked these two different files in other color managed apps by disabling CM and the two files *do* look very different. So my question is: Is it me, or is it Photoline? If it's me, can someone please explain why I'm getting different results with other apps?

NoCMview.jpg

Thanks for any help

- Pixel8tor -

[shijan]

I tested on both macOS and Windows and there is no problem. It behave as expected. Could be some bug in older PhotoLine version, or you may setup something wrong somewhere. Also it could be something due new CMS setting in some versions of WIndows 11 that could break normal color management in all apps https://www.reddit.com/r/Monitors/comme ... _trash_on/
P.S. "Use Little CMS" will not make any difference in this test, because it just switches color management system from native macOS/Windows system to Little CMS.

[pixel8tor]

Thanks for doing some testing, but I still get the results I posted earlier. I'm using PL 25.01 on Win10 for my testing. And most importantly the images display as expected with other color managed apps. So even though it seems to be something peculiar to my system, part of it is also *only* happening with Photoline. I even tried it with a brand new install of PL - same results. Very odd.

[Hoogo]

By the way:
Beiti made a nice article about color management. It's written in German, but I guess that's not so much of a problem anymore.
Main page
Explaining settings in PL
Some test pictures that make things very obvious

[pixel8tor]

Here's an odd twist. The Map panel (View->Panels->Map) does display the image as expected based on CM being on or off. But, as you can see from the screen grab, the image in the main window, at left, doesn't. What is going on?!

MapPanelCM.jpg

[pixel8tor]

Here's a bit more information. I had some older versions of PL archived, so I loaded them up one by one. Interesting results.

Ver. -------- Works/Broken
22.50 ------- CM works
23.01 ------- CM works
24.40B21 -- CM broken
25.01 ------ CM broken

So something, apparently very subtle, changed between Versions 23.01 and 24.40B21 to how the main display window gets color managed - at least on my system. Oh, and also, the Map panel displayed properly in all version. So this seems to indicate the issue *is* with Photoline.

[der_fotograf]

So this seems to indicate the issue *is* with Photoline.

I don't think so, because I don't have this behavior on macOS. It appears to me that this is a problem with PL on Windows.
Just had a book printed with images I edited with PL version 25.00b9 on macOS, and the colors are absolutely top.

[pixel8tor]

Well you might be correct, but my guess is that both Windows and Mac versions come from the same code base, and the different versions are generated using compiler directives. So for the Hubers something changed in the Photoline code. In any case, I'm not sure how your observation helps resolve this issue.

[Martin Huber]

I can't reproduce the problem either. I tested with version 25.01 on Windows and macOS.
What I did:
- I opened an sRGB image.
- I duplicated the document and converted it to ProPhoto with gamma 1.0.
- I placed the documents side-by-side. Both documents looked the same.
- I turned off color management and both documents looked different.

Then I turned on color management again. After that:
- I created a new document.
- I inserted the two images from the last test in that document. Both images looked the same.
- I turned off color management and both images looked different.

[pixel8tor]

Thanks for looking into this, but unfortunately this appears to be an edge case bug, and will probably be difficult to kill. When I follow your steps and turn off color management the images always look alike. As I mentioned in an earlier post, version 23.01 works as expected, but for all higher versions CM doesn't turn off for the main window. The "Map" panel always shows the preview as expected - when CM is disabled the images look different. So what happened between versions 23 and 24? Did you change, or update, your compiler. Was a library changed? All I can say is the something changed. If there's anything I can do to help debug this, like running a traceable test version, let me know. Take care

[bkh]

Just to make sure that this is not an issue with that particular image:

Does your problem occur with other images as well? Have you tried the test image mentioned by Hoogo (https://fotovideotec.de/browser_farbman ... t_test.jpg)?

Of course, you might also e-mail your images to the developers to see if they can reproduce the problem with them.

(Btw. if you want to help tracking down the specific version where CM breaks for you: older beta versions of PL can still be downloaded from the beta testers forum.)

[pixel8tor]

Thanks for taking a look at this, but I've tried all the different permutations and combinations I can think of. And of course I've tried opening multiple images. So I determined the inability to disable color management for the main image window happens with version 23.40b3. The earlier beta (23.40b2, and all earlier releases) works properly! Something was changed in version 23.40b3 that broke on my Windows 10 machine.

Just to be clear:

23.40b2 --- works
23.40b3 --- broken

[Martin Huber]

There was no change that should show this effect.

And we can't reproduce it on any system here. Other users don't seem to have this problem either.

I see only a small chance of “fixing” anything.
The only option I see is that you to turn off color management, close PhotoLine, and then send us your PhotoLine.xml and your two test images. We don't need screenshots, just the PhotoLine.xml and two PLD files (as small as possible). Perhaps we can reproduce it with your data.

[pixel8tor]

Here's another bit of information. When PL is installed the color management options are set to a default configuration. For Edit->Options...->Color Management->Devices->Screen it is set to "System". If I set the "Screen" device to my named monitor ICC profile, rather than "System", color management can be toggled on and off as expected. But if it is set to "System", then the main window can't be toggled off. Again, this issue started with version 23.40b3. So for some reason the "System" setting doesn't seem to be returning the proper OS ICC profile name, or something like that. Anyway, since changing the Screen device to my monitor ICC profile seems to work properly, I can probably live with it. But now I have to remember to change the Screen profile whenever I calibrate my monitor, rather then PL automatically reading the "System" profile. HTH

[Herbert123]

Seems to work for me on Windows 10 and the latest beta.
.

2025-09-11 22_39_42-#1.jpg

2025-09-11 22_40_03-#1.jpg