Images are washed out or colors are skewed in some apps (particularly Image Viewer and Chrome)

[Vague Entertainment]

Images are washed out or colors are skewed in some apps, notably Chrome/Chromium and Image Viewer (eog).

Workaround:

1. Settings > Colour > turn off the toggle switch for your monitor.

2. Restart any affected apps.

Originally reported in https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=675645

[Tayroni Alves (tayroni-alves)]

Confirmed for me.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Tayroni Alves (tayroni-alves)]

I configured the monitor profile on color management on settings.

I included a new profile after installing argyll as suggested by the color management program. After changed the default profile, eog had showed images correctly.

[Vague Entertainment (bflanagin)]

Latest round of updates seems to have fixed the issue here as well.

[Ivan Brasil Fuzzer (ivanbrasil)]

Here unfortunatly the problem persist.

[Tayroni Alves (tayroni-alves)]

Try changing color profile of your monitor.

[mediterran81 (kyoshuu)]

I don't see how the monitor is related to that bug.
I am also affected (12.04 Beta 1 Updated).
I tested in Three different monitors and the bug persists.

[Junior_sampa (juniorperes-ig)]

Here the color profile cannot solve the problem. Problem still persists.

[orkomedix (fsiepman)]

I can also confirm the bug (3.4.1-0ubuntu1) and want to add, that the wrong color changes when you change the "Background Costom Color" option from the preferences of eog. If I choose "white" as custom background color, the whole picture is white. Maybe there is some transparency issue or something?

[Klaus Reichl (klaus-reichl)]

Same problem here (partly)!

I'm on a desktop with Samsung SyncMaster P2250 Monitor and on an older laptop with fresh precise 12.04
installed.

The laptop is showing the picture as expected.
The desktop has the problem.

1) Only seen with eog. All of gimp, firefox, and shotwell show the picture as expected.

Is eog special with respect to color management?

2) System Settings->Color show
on the laptop: Uncalibrated as status
on the desktop: No calibration status

Is the (newer) SyncMaster based system expecting color profile calibration or even add-on
profiles, as Tayroni Alves (tayroni-alves) suggests in this thread? And then which and from where?

For the time being, I use shotwell, start to read Color Management Docu and wait for a brave sole to post
a solution here ;-)

Note: same problem reported in (https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/931174 )

[Klaus Reichl (klaus-reichl)]

Even more info:

The eog image properties show a small picture properly, where the displayed one is broken.
See attachment.

[Hanine HAMZIOUI (hanynowsky)]

same here.
After calibrating my desktop monitor ( Samsung SyncMaster XL 2370), nothing changes.
EOG can't read some pictures's metadata and alters the values of RGB.

[Felix Riemann (friemann)]

Could everyone still having the problem check if an ICC profile is set for his display by running:

 xprop -root | grep ICC_PROFILE

If none is set the grep should be empty (besides a possible _ICC_PROFILE_IN_X_VERSION entry).

If one is set unset it with

xprop -root -remove _ICC_PROFILE

the check the image display. If it is okay then, it is most likely an issue with the profile.

(NOTE: These steps may not work correctly on a multi-monitor setup!)

[Felix Eckhofer (eckhofer)]

For me, an ICC profile was set and removing it did indeed fix the problem. Why the profile was set in the first place, however, i don't know. (Ubuntu 12.04 on Acer Laptop with i915 video card)

[Ivan Brasil Fuzzer (ivanbrasil)]

Removing ICC profile works for me!

[Felix Riemann (friemann)]

You should probably contact gnome-color-manager developers about this as g-c-m is IIRC able to autogenerate a profile from your display's EDID data if display and driver support it.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks Felix, so the issue there is not with eog? What is setting the icc profile for those users?

[Felix Riemann (friemann)]

Well, I wouldn't exclude eog as the culprit, but for now it looks like an issue with the active display profile which appear to be autogenerated by g-c-m. So the g-c-m people should at least be queried for input on what could be wrong here (maybe it's just a simple fault). But considering that the first report is about eog-3.2 it could also be a problem with lcms2 (which is used since that version) too.

One can do another test to be more certain. Open an affected image in GIMP. Make sure that in Edit->Preferences->Color Management "Try to use the system monitor profile" is checked and "Mode of operation" is set to "Color managed display". If you see the same off colors it's most likely a problem with the profile or with lcms2 (assuming GIMP uses it correctly).

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

I was observing the same issue since a recent update in precise (I have upgraded to quantal since then and the issue persisted).
Unsetting the ICC profile as suggested by Felix in comment #14 solved the issue.

Before unsetting the ICC profile, I took the test suggested in comment #19 (opened the image in gimp, and verified that ticking "Try to use the system monitor profile" resulted in the same washed out colours observed in eog). So it’s definitely an issue with the profile, not eog itself.

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

A recent update in quantal re-added an ICC profile and the bug re-surfaced. Removing the profile with `xprop -root -remove _ICC_PROFILE` fixed it again.

[Joakim Ekberg (j-a-o)]

Having had this problem a few times before, I'm having it all the time since upgrading to 12.10. After each reboot, if I forget to run the xprop command, colours are off in some images in the image viewer or in Firefox (as pointed out, it's not really an eog bug.)

[Julian Perelli (jperelli)]

ICC profile was set and removing it did fix the problem for me

[Felix Riemann (friemann)]

To anyone still affected by this:

GNOME Color Manager developers are interested in verifying your autogenerated display color profiles.

See https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=675645#c11 and http://blog.pcode.nl/2013/04/14/display-profiles-generated-from-edid/

[Smilingsun (sunjizu)]

Felix Riemann (friemann) 's solution works well for me, thanks!

[Cyberangel (tomas8769)]

It also affects me, I'm using image viewer 3.8.2 gnome image viewer, Saucy Salamander Ubuntu

[Rodrigo (rbadinez)]

ICC profile was set and removing it did fix the problem for me, on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

[Mathew Shires (mathewshires)]

This also affects me, using Ubuntu 14.04 and Eye of Gnome 3.10.2
My wallpaper is blue with every other application (Firefox, GIMP, etc...) but when I open it in EOG it appears to be purple.

[ndstate (ndstate)]

Is thing going to be fixed?

[Philippe (philippepiatkiewitz)]

Using Ubuntu 15.04 and this bug is still there. For an image viewer this is pretty serious. Importance "low" does not really apply here I think.
Bug has been around since 2012.
Try it with an image with color #283449.

[FriendFX (friendfx)]

I confirm this bug on my Dell Latitude E6500 laptop (Intel graphics) running Ubuntu 14.04 and EoG 3.10.2.

I found a colour profile and removing it did help as described in comment #19 above:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/eog/+bug/938751/comments/19

Might be related to a Firefox problem described here:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2853227
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=629312

[vilnius-leopold (vilnius-leopold)]

Same here on 15.04.

[Ben Scholzen 'DASPRiD' (dasprid)]

I was wondering about this as well, but I figured that it doesn't seem to be a bug at all. The reason why it looks for some of you "correct" in Gimp is, because you don't have color management for your monitor enabled in the preferences (either set a specific monitor profile there, or tick the fallback option, which will make it use the color profile from the window manager).

Thus, what Gimp is showing you all is the image without your monitor profile applied, while EOG always uses your monitor profile. So when the image in EOG looks dull to you, that's actually how it's supposed to look like.

[Michael Korn (w-michael)]

Same issue with 14.04, solved with "xprop -root -remove _ICC_PROFILE".
I just wonder where that (totally wrong) profile came from.

[Jeff (jdorenbush)]

I had this problem on Ubuntu 14.04. Removing the ICC Profile, as suggested in comment #14, solved the problem for me.

I'm also wondering where that profile came from... Why do some users have it and others don't? I don't ever remember intentionally installing or making changes to ICC profiles.

[Fernando (fcuencamargalef)]

The same in 15.10

I don't agree this is a low priority issue.

[Enrique Agustini (enrique-agustini)]

4 years and a half later and in Ubuntu 16.04 the same issue, and what we got til now: LOW PRIORITY !
Total shame Ubuntu, but I'm commited to support you though.

[DanglingPointer (ferncasado)]

I've got the same problem. Everything is showing with blue tint.

I followed the instructions above and ran "$ xprop -root | grep ICC_PROFILE" and it indeed had a profile.

Looking at System Settings > Device Colour Profiles; both my monitors had a profile each. I used the remove option. Re-running the command above showed no profile and just returned the prompt.

I restarted eog and still all the pictures come out with blueish tint. All other image viewing software are fine. Why are they ok and not the built in viewer?

Please get this fixed as it is embarrassing for Ubuntu for such a trivial use-case for the vast majority of Desktop users. Photos and files and them uploading those to Facebook, Instagram, etc is a daily social networking task. If anything this should be higher priority and not a 4year old low priority!

[zhy (passerbythesun)]

Bug here in Thinkpad X250 with ubuntu 16.04.
I can't imagine this is bug with such a long AGE.

[The Bright Side (me-knowingme)]

Bug still occurs in Ubuntu 17.10, Xorg session (never tried Wayland).

Though all this probably known by now, a bit of extra information:

On my PC, this issue occurs with Gimp, Opera (probably other browsers too), Darktable. XnViewMP is not affected. As somebody mentioned above, it likely affects any app that uses the ICC profile set on your system.

Disabling the ICC profile does the trick. However, if you do it via command line as suggested in comment #14, the ICC profile will be back after you reboot. You'll need to disable it in the colors tool (accessible from Settings).

[Henry (hvanmegen)]

Can conform, I have the exact same problem in all apps described in previous reactions, with the inclusion of https://web.whatsapp.com/ .. all my images look washed out greenish.

PLEASE UPGRADE THIS PRIORITY!

[Karlis (klepzers)]

I have the same issue, while got new monitor to my T420 - tried to mess a bit with color profiles - set up test profile Blue and Green swapped. Actually monitor colors did not change, but jpeg images got skewed colors. Removed profiles, it does not help.

[Starbeamrainbowlabs (sbrl)]

For those saying that removing the ICC profile will fix the issue, what does this actually do? What am I losing by removing the ICC profile from my device?/

[skorasaurus (skoraw)]

Still experiencing this issue on ubuntu 16.04 for me, the issue is not exclusive to eog; I also have the same problem in gthumb (whereas the colors display properly in firefox and gimp).

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

(just merging data from duplicate bug 1785764)

This bug affects images rendered in Chrome/Chromium too.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Keith Briggs (keith-briggs)]

This renders eog unusable. I have images just a purple mess (screenshot). Other similar image files display correctly. The affected files display correctly in all other image viewers.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Keith,

That may be a different bug, or maybe not...

Please try removing/disabling your monitor's colour profile in system settings.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

In reply to comment #43:

> For those saying that removing the ICC profile will fix the issue, what does this actually do? What am I losing by removing the ICC profile from my device?

A colour profile tells the system (in great detail) how to modify all colours in an effort to make them appear more physically accurate, in theory. This is to compensate for measured inaccuracies in your monitor.

If you generated the profile yourself using colourimeter equipment then by removing the profile you would lose colour accuracy across the rest of the desktop (but fix a small number of apps like Chrome and Image Viewer).

If you didn't make the profile yourself and are just using the built-in one then you lose nothing by removing it. You will get the raw original colours from apps instead, and that avoids this bug.

[Another User (another-user)]

EOG also applies fullscreen profiles to image!
Notice most of preinstalled color profiles in Settings->Devices->Color does not support whole screen correction (they are marked with bulb icon). So this is normal application behavior to apply system-wide color profile to image. But when fullscreen profile selected, it used firstly in EOG for certain image and secondly by the system for final correction.
In my case screen has noticeable bluish cast, so ICC does significant color shift to compensate it. But when applied twice, it makes images yellowish in EOG. While Gimp and Shotwell display colors correctly.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Indeed, I have suspected for a long time that the color correction is being applied twice. So the final result looks wrong in such apps.

If that's true then we would probably want either to:

 (a) Not tell apps about the color profile at all, because it's already applied full screen; or

 (b) Tell apps what (if any) profile is already applied full screen.

[Theo (d-hypercube)]

Suddenly affected by this on Ubuntu 16.04. It just showed up yesterday without changing anything. I have the issue when converting CR2 files to jpeg through Shotwell.

Removing the ICC_PROFILE does not work for me.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Yes, I'm disappointed I haven't had time to get to this bug yet. But it is still on the list for consideration in Ubuntu 20.10:

https://trello.com/b/mxaCZTVc/ubuntu-desktop-common

[Daniel Rodriguez (newhacker1746)]

I remember having run firefox and chromium side-by-side once on the same website and noticed the colors were off. The colors on firefox's images matched eog and other local image viewers, while chromium's were skewed. I googled it once and found that setting

chrome://flags/#force-color-profile

(setting srgb) fixed the issues. This was in like 2019, the flag is not available anymore. Does that have anything to do with it? I believe the chromium change that removed this flag was on the basis of chromium now "properly" handling color profiles from the OS, so I wanted to bring it up.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

That flag is still available in Chrome at least :)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Mostafa Shahriar Kabir Shohab (shohabmsk)]

same happened to me. I've never got to experience Linux in my whole life.
my post is here if anyone interested- https://askubuntu.com/a/1301856/1162787
I install Linux/Ubuntu, looked at the colour, not satisfied, think I can accept and use, after a few days- I move to Windows again. Totally unacceptable colour of display. I just wanted a peaceful OS, not garbage like Windows but Samsung gave Proprietary motherboard software for display colours on laptop pcs. The only way is Intel HD Graphics Control Panel, I found after I change display colour profiles from "Samsung Settings" software, the HD Graphics Control Panel- Display values got changed. Thats good news, I can use those values and change in Linux. But the problem is I can't choose contrast, saturation in xrandr! I can't choose the exact value of "Brightness : -11(minus)", in linux xrandr (0.99? 0.991?) neither can increase contrast in xcalib. What can I do? I got no option.
Summery: Some motherboard software changes HD Graphics Control Panel Display values, you can exactly use that info. But you can't convert them nor use them correctly in linux. there is no way!
So low priority. Not a single software made to fix this. Nobody cares? Just buy a colourimeter hardware? If UI, Display experience is worse, no one comes to Linux just to have Privacy stuff.

[Henrik Toth (realthk)]

Same here.
Installed the Ubuntu-based Pop OS, used for a few days beside Windows 11 on the same dual-boot PC.

It was OK, but a subjective feeling started to grow that the colours are not so nice as with Windows: a bit washed-out under Linux on my HP U32, otherwise fine display. Especially the human skin was lifeless, lacking red. The contrast also seemed to be worse, shadows a bit too gray.

Then I noticed in Settings / Colour there is a profile called "Automatic - HP U32 4K HDR" is installed and selected.

Clicked on "Add profile" added a plain "Standard Space - sRGB" - and display quality is fine now! Quite similar, perhaps the same as in Windows.
Now it is easy to quickly compare the difference: switch between these colour profiles, open a photo in Image Viewer, and don't have to rely on memory of the same photo under Windows.

[Gael Lafond (gaellafond)]

Ubuntu 21.10
The issue still remain.

In colour setting window, the "remove" button is now disabled.

There is what fixed the issue for me:

Deny any access to any user to the folder contains the ICC files.

$ sudo chmod 000 ~/.local/share/icc
$ reboot

Here is how a track down the ICC folder in use:

1. Install gnome-color-manager
2. Open colour settings.
3. Click the colour profile in use and click the "View profile" button.
4. Find the path to the ICC file.
5. Deny any access to any user to the folder contains the ICC files.

[Zhart (zhart)]

Gael Lafond, I confirm it worked for me too. Thank you so much for a simple solution to a perennial problem.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

You don't need to remove a colour profile to fix the problem, just disable it:

1. Settings > Colour > turn off the toggle switch for your monitor.

2. Restart any affected apps.

[David (lost-geographer)]

Hello, I experienced this issue as well (EOG 42 on Pop!_OS/Ubuntu 22.04 LTS). I just described it here: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/eog/-/issues/289

I solved the issue by disabling the auto-generated colour profile in the gnome settings.

As I said in the description, I can't assess if this issue is related to some specific monitors (I have a ThinkPad T480 monitor), or it's a common problem.

[hifron (hifron)]

In Krita there could be seen(and set) various colour profiles ICC standards for images(could be seen on Create New Image).

If some vague generated colour profile for unsupported monitors or hardware vendors uninterested for such GNOME thing(may be different in other DE?) is lack of corporate funding interest on this area, but at least CMYK colour profile standard means that such image should looked same on monitor as printed, but todays advanced monitors support sometimes 10bit colours or 8+2computed and also not only advanced SRGB ~100% coverage of colours, but it is also towards 100% DCI-P3 coverage of possible colours and such thing should colour profile support and if "generated" don't, problem occurs(or shit images). Now is also OKLCH colour standard instead of RGB in CSS web.

More on advancement on this area in articles:
https://evilmartians.com/chronicles/oklch-a-color-picker-made-to-help-think-perceptively
and
https://evilmartians.com/chronicles/oklch-in-css-why-quit-rgb-hsl

Adobe software is maybe long standard in this area(maybe with web apps), but industry is much wider...