KDE Begins Laying The Groundwork For HDR Support, Wayland Color Management

[AndyChow]

You mean like Arcan?

Yes. I hadn't heard of it. Another user mentioned it, now I'm hooked. Plus it uses Lua!!! I'm in heaven.

[AndyChow]

What about Arcan and subprojects?

Thanks, I'll have a look.

[tildearrow]

There needs to be an alternative to Wayland. Wayland is too big and too impossible to do anything useful at this point. We need a new paradigm to handle displays.

Big? X11 is even bigger...

[gwgwg]

Yes, Wayland is here to stay. Deal with it (tm).

People who need to use applications where color accuracy is mission critical will deal with it by:
1) Using Linux distributions that use X11
2) Switching to Mac OS X
3) Switching to Microsoft Windows

Of course even non-color critical application users start to notice there is a problem when they attach a wide gamut and/or HDR display and notice that the display system has no proper means of coping with it.

Unfortunately it seems like we will see history repeated - there'll be a flurry of hacks to address the immediate problems, without much attempt to fix things for the long term.

[caligula]

Yes, that's still a tiny subset of all computer users. And the vast, vast, vast majority of them doesn't even consider Linux, not even *with* HDR support.

Why do you keep repeating this is a professional feature?

There are budget monitors that come with a small diameter CD. You might need a laptop optical drive to mount them since they're so small. Anyway those discs sometimes contain ICC profiles even for cheap displays. For example, I've bought one ~$200 USD 1440p display from Benq. It shipped with these files. Yea you might be perfectly happy without applying the profiles, but the truth is, those files still work for ordinary users as well. Also you can buy a used $15 display and $90 X-rite colorimeter, then run the calibration. This all works with X11.

The same is true for audio. You can buy any $15 shit tier pair of speakers, then a $79 UMIK-1 or something similar and use 100% free open source software to calibrate your audio. REW and Pulseaudio have supported these for years.

If you want to print perfect images, you don't need to own $100 000 printers. Just do the processing and buy the services from a local printing company. They will happily assist you with color profiles.

Also, tuning your camera for professional photography only requires buying a piece of paper and a cheap DSLR with RAW output.

[Vistaus]

You mean the feature used by professionals with $8K in costs between their camera, lens, and printer?

Yes, that's still a tiny subset of all computer users. And the vast, vast, vast majority of them doesn't even consider Linux, not even *with* HDR support.

[skeevy420]

Critical feature? You mean the one feature used by a very small group of people? Right.

You mean the feature used by professionals with $8K in costs between their camera, lens, and printer?

Because I'm going to trust KDE/Wayland/Linux to accurately reproduce those colors and then print them correctly when I can't even tweak some config sliders to fine-tune my screen using calibration videos, Pantone color swaths, etc? Nope. Sorry not sorry, that's one of those cases for Not Linux. I love GIMP, Krita, Darktable, RawTherapee, and all sorts of other Linux tools, but lack of professional level color calibrations, lack of a means to set baseline parameters, and not being able to ensure camera to screen to paper all looks the same means Linux provides hobby-level, meme-making tools. Until accurate color management, reproduction, and transmission are figured out, Linux will remain a hobby OS for imaging and video professionals.

In regards to corporations and them supporting Linux, I'm totally ignoring the elephant in the room of Linux isn't an Operating System. Linux is a kernel and a collection of open source software. Ubuntu and NixOS are Operating Systems based on Linux and that open source software. My point is simply: where is a company supposed to even start? GNOME or KDE? systemd or OpenRC? ALSA or Pipewire or JACK? mplayer or ffmpeg? Linux isn't macOS or Windows where everything is clear and defined. There aren't 57 versions of Windows with 487 combinations of doing things.

Linux's greatest strength is simultaneously its greatest weakness. That's why KDE doing this has me excited. I'm hoping that Flatpak, Snaps (don't go there today), and Valve can build upon it so Linux becomes more friendly to professional grade tools and features.

[gwgwg]

Critical feature? You mean the one feature used by a very small group of people? Right.

The one feature supported by operating systems like MSWindows and OS X and even Linux using X11, for the past 20 years.

It's simply inexcusable that this wasn't a requirement for Wayland from its inception.

[stormcrow]

Is this why Adobe doesnt bother in releasing anything on Linux?

Or as conspiracy theorists say, they dont do it because both Apple and MS pay them under the table of course, to continue ignoring Linux?

More like there's not enough Linux desktop users willing to use Adobe products to pay to offset the annoyances of trying to make a useful creative visual product that works. Not only would Adobe have to solve the HDR problem, they also have to solve basic color management across at least one DE stack suitable for non-technical users - and to make color correction consistent across video displays, printers, and professional presses. Right now that work is spread across Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, and third parties in the Windows/Mac world. That's not the case with Linux.

Right now, color correction support is highly inconsistent even inside the same DE ecosystem (like thumbnails don't exhibit correction in Plasma). It may work for 90% of the environment, but other pieces don't support it, or flub it. That's a lot of work that Adobe likely wants nothing to do with especially given the Linux community's traditional hostility to corporate actors - despite being dependent on corporate dollars for most of the stack's development.

[mSparks]

Like the Wayland fans tell you, it's not such a big deal. Just recalibrate the screen every time you do dual boot. Or write the RGB and other parameters on paper and reconfigure via the OSD GUI every time you reboot to other OS / desktop. Couldn't be any easier.

Nahh, Its nvidia's fault.
All you need is to DMABUF your driver and a gitlab link to a random unrelated issue and they will prove wayland does all this already and is perfect in every way.

heck, no one uses color monitors anyway, ultra low def black and white is the future and will be replacing everyone's desktop just as soon as IBM finishes reading the manual on how to use a power cable.