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Author Topic: Windows Auto Color Management (ACM) for Displays  (Read 244 times)
rebede
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« on: June 03, 2025, 05:06:19 PM »

I'm using Windows 11 with a hardware-calibrated EIZO CG2730 monitor.
I have enabled in the (Windows-) Settings > Display > Advanced Display menu the option "Automatically manage color for apps".
This feature enables non-color managed apps to show the correct colors, such as the Desktop Icons, even when I set the monitor
to a color space like AdobeRGB.
A detailed description of this feature can be found here https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/auto-color-management

When the "Automatically manage color for apps" feature is enabled, the colors in the Qimage UI are wrong. Looks like every
file is treated as a sRGB file (see the MS blog).

To get Qimage working with correct Colors, I need to enable the Compatibility Mode "Use legacy Display ICC Color Management" for Qimage.exe as
described here https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/wcs/advanced-color-icc-profiles
In this case, for the Monitor Profile, you must select the "Emulated Color Profile" (which is marked as the Windows Monitor Profile).

It seems to me that Qimage is not fully supporting Windows Auto Color Management as introduced by Windows in 2022. Is that correct?
Is there any plan to update Qimage to work with this “Automatically manage color for apps” (for displays) feature without this work-around?

Regards
Reiner
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« Reply #1 on: June 04, 2025, 12:37:17 PM »

Windows ACM is a bandaid: intended for apps that are not fully color managed.  Qimage has full color management and lets you set your monitor profile to anything you like (even something different than what is identified in Windows).

In addition, Qimage is fully compatible with ACM because since Qimage is doing the color management, all image data that is sent to your display is sent tagged as "display ready".  As such, Windows ACM should not be touching the data and there should be zero difference seen on your monitor whether you turn on/off ACM because Qimage has control and most importantly, it is telling Windows not to use ACM because the data is already profiled by Qimage.  If you are seeing something that disagrees with that, you have something else going on.  We have tested Windows ACM and have a lot of people who use it and I've never seen it cause a problem in Qimage.  Are you sure you don't have some other software (perhaps a utility) installed that overrides the intended Windows behavior, perhaps to "force" apps to try to use ACM even when they shouldn't?  I ask because ACM will not work with most apps: an app has to specifically "make itself" compatible with ACM.  You can't just enable ACM and have it properly color manage an old app that knows nothing about color management: those apps won't know enough to tag the image data so that ACM can use it.

Regards,
Mike
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rebede
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« Reply #2 on: June 05, 2025, 01:10:54 PM »

I did some more research on this topic. Win 11, nVidia A4000 GPU, Eizo CG3730 in AdobeRGB Mode.
To exclude any other cause (utilities etc as you suspected), I ran a side-by-side comparison of the same reference image
(ColorChecker image in AdobeRGB color space) in Photoshop and Qimage on the same Display.

The image in Photoshop is always displayed correctly, but when ACM is ENABLED for the monitor and the ICC compatibility mode
is DISABLED for Qimage.exe, the reference image in Qimage is displayed desaturated (like displayed an a sRGB Monitor).

The selected Monitor Profile in Qimage has no effect on the display in Qimage. It is only used for softproof (in all configurations).

Since the ACM feature is mostly beneficial for HDR monitors, I will disable this feature.
But I keep the ICC compatibility mode for Qimage.exe enabled in case I (or windows on an update or otherwise) accidentally enable ACM again.

Regards
Reiner
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