Windows Color Management, a Rant

Windows Color Management, a Rant

Microsoft is uniquely unable to solve a problem Apple solved ages ago.

I just got a new monitor, and it supports 98% of the P3 color space, a high gamut screen. I had a high gamut screen some 10 years ago. Just as 10 years ago, Windows is still unable to properly support this screen. The result is that on Windows, all colors are over saturated for everything.

Now, the monitor maker has some blame here. The associated profile seems to resolve in the sRGB color space, and Windows is applying that. But the problem is, there’s no easy or obvious way to simply select a better color profile (like a generic P3 color profile). And, even if I do go to the ancient, incomprehensible ICC screens (I’d bet $100 the developers who built that thing don’t even know how it works), it doesn’t actually apply to most apps! The app has to be aware of color management and tag the content appropriately. But even apps that are aware, like Photoshop, only tag the content you might be working on?—?so their own UIs are often over saturated. Even color aware apps on Windows aren’t properly color managed…

The problem is breathtakingly easy to describe, by simply describing the way it works on macOS. In macOS, I can simply choose a different color profile, including one that I produce myself with a color calibrator (Spyder or similar), and the result is that all the windows that aren’t color aware, are adjust to look not over saturated. It’s like magic! It’s also easy to describe why—macOS simply treats the unmanaged stuff as if it were sRGB, and adjusts it accordingly.

So why is this so hard for Windows to photocopy? All I want to do is apply a more appropriate color profile, and not have red icons stab me in the eye. It already works on macOS. So what’s the problem? Get out your photocopiers, Redmond, and make it work.

Maybe if this stuff worked right, we wouldn’t need “sRGB” mode, like this new monitor supports. What a crock?—?it should be called “Windows backwards compatible mode” because that’s what it is. Support for a hopeless platform. Maybe if this worked right, the associated profile could accurately reflect the capabilities of the monitor, instead of assuming broken, weak support in Windows, and using an insufficient sRGB profile.

And don’t get me started on HDR…