color vision

[Skaperen]

when i look at images on my laptop's display (System 76 KuduPro from 2014), they look fine with colors close enough for me. whites look white.

when i look at solid white (verified as 0xFFFFFF ... 16777215 decimal) it looks like beige-yellow to me. i have napkin on my desk and it looks white.

i suspect if i boost the blue (and a bit of red) to make these solid white areas look white, i'd end up adding a blue tint to all my images.

the form where i am typing this post is one of those solid white areas that looks yellow.

the napkin is reflecting room light (much of it from the sun outdoors coming in through a couple windows). the laptop display is emitting its own light (with a bit reflecting off the napkin). this has to be the cause of there being a difference. but why do the display's "white" area look beige-yellow to me? why that color? is there a way to change that while keeping everything else the same? could changing the color of my room light fix this for me?

[DPaul]

Hi Skaperen,
You touch on one of the biggest probs in digital photography.
The apparatus that took the pic, the one that shows the pic, the one that prints the pic,
are all different.
I have an Eizo screen with a built-in "spider" that once in a while "recalibrates" itself, providing
you switch off the room lights.
To answer your question: if (pure) white does not look white to you, the rest of the colors must also be off by a fraction.
You do not mention the viewing software, but eg. most photo softwares have a color picking tool.
As you hover over the whites, it should say +/- RGB 255,255,255 or thereabout. If it has an
overdose of something else, you can say: this is white, click, and everything is proportionally straightened out.
Red is also notoriously difficult.
And, ... if it looks right on the screen, it will not necesarily print right.
Paul

[Skaperen]

i view images mostly with Firefox (the versions over many years all look the same up to version 104 i have now). sometimes i view with other programs like feh or mpv (videos). there is no difference. when i capture an image with a large white area using a screen capture program, viewing that file looks just the same.

i suspect there is a mental aspect to color vision involving the background light. if there is no background light in a dark room then the display can look its best, however good or bad that will be. i should try some viewing in a dark room.

[DPaul]

If you view them in firefox, make sure the image is in the Srgb color space.
Makes a huge difference.
Paul

[Gribouillis]

Also you can perhaps adjust the colors with the graphic card configuration. On my desktop computer there is a GUI app named «NVIDIA Xserver settings» with plenty of parameters to adjust. Among them there is a «Color correction» tab for each display where I can set brightness, contrast and gamma. I can also do it for each R G B channel.

[Skaperen]

If you view them in firefox, make sure the image is in the Srgb color space.
Makes a huge difference.
Paul

how can i control that if i have no control over the web site? does Firefox have a setting for that?

[Skaperen]

I can also do it for each R G B channel

that sounds great! but i have seen nothing to support my laptop. looks like an Intel chip.

Output:
System:    Host: lt1a Kernel: 5.15.0-46-generic x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: Xfce 4.14.2 Distro: Ubuntu 20.04.5 LTS (Focal Fossa) 
Machine:   Type: Laptop System: System76 product: Kudu Professional v: kudp1 serial: <superuser/root required> 
           Mobo: System76 model: Kudu Professional v: kudp1 serial: <superuser/root required> BIOS: American Megatrends 
           v: 1.03.03RS76 date: 01/15/2014 
Battery:   ID-1: BAT0 charge: 56.6 Wh condition: 56.6/62.2 Wh (91%) 
CPU:       Topology: Quad Core model: Intel Core i7-4900MQ bits: 64 type: MT MCP L2 cache: 8192 KiB 
           Speed: 1056 MHz min/max: 800/3800 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1154 2: 1197 3: 1075 4: 1195 5: 1197 6: 1010 7: 998 
           8: 1006 
           Flags: abm acpi aes aperfmperf apic arat arch_perfmon avx avx2 bmi1 bmi2 bts clflush cmov constant_tsc cpuid 
           cpuid_fault cx16 cx8 de ds_cpl dtes64 dtherm dts epb ept ept_ad erms est f16c flexpriority flush_l1d fma fpu 
           fsgsbase fxsr ht ibpb ibrs ida invpcid invpcid_single lahf_lm lm mca mce md_clear mmx monitor movbe msr mtrr 
           nonstop_tsc nopl nx pae pat pbe pcid pclmulqdq pdcm pdpe1gb pebs pge pln pni popcnt pse pse36 pti pts rdrand rdtscp 
           rep_good sdbg sep smep smx ss ssbd sse sse2 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 stibp syscall tm tm2 tpr_shadow tsc tsc_adjust 
           tsc_deadline_timer vme vmx vnmi vpid x2apic xsave xsaveopt xtopology xtpr 
Graphics:  Device-1: Intel 4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics driver: i915 v: kernel 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.13 driver: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics 4600 (HSW GT2) v: 4.5 Mesa 21.2.6 
Audio:     Device-1: Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor HD Audio driver: snd_hda_intel 
           Device-2: Intel 8 Series/C220 Series High Definition Audio driver: snd_hda_intel 
           Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.15.0-46-generic 
Network:   Device-1: Intel Wireless 7260 driver: iwlwifi 
           IF: wlp4s0 state: up mac: fc:f8:ae:4a:ba:a5 
           Device-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet driver: r8169 
           IF: enp5s0f2 state: down mac: 00:90:f5:f7:55:14 
           IF-ID-1: tun2kepler state: unknown speed: 10 Mbps duplex: full mac: N/A 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 3.75 TiB used: 2.39 TiB (63.7%) 
           ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: HGST (Hitachi) model: HTS721010A9E630 size: 931.51 GiB 
           ID-2: /dev/sdb vendor: Crucial model: CT120M500SSD3 size: 111.79 GiB 
           ID-3: /dev/sdc vendor: HGST (Hitachi) model: HTS721010A9E630 size: 931.51 GiB 
           ID-4: /dev/sdd type: USB vendor: Western Digital model: WD My Passport 0748 size: 1.82 TiB 
Partition: ID-1: / size: 15.64 GiB used: 9.81 GiB (62.7%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1 uuid: e87bf798-e330-4830-9f3a-9227ce4067d8 
           ID-2: /home size: 884.32 GiB used: 781.43 GiB (88.4%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda4 
           uuid: 27d8f1fd-efb8-44a7-ad87-e4c044c2fda4 
           ID-3: swap-1 size: 16.00 GiB used: 2.64 GiB (16.5%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda2 
           uuid: ff4812c3-8093-4fb4-8bf4-52fbcfe9ada1 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 48.0 C mobo: N/A 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Info:      Processes: 1147 Uptime: 4d 2h 06m Memory: 15.55 GiB used: 6.35 GiB (40.8%) Shell: bash inxi: 3.0.38 

[DPaul]

I use lightroom, which has an "export setting" to export as sRGB.
This should be standard for any jpeg viewed online in a browser.
(I usually work with raw to jpeg. )
An original photo is taken by some apparatus that has some color space (eg. profoto RGB),
and you want to change that into sRGB for better online viewing experience.
My cam has a menu, so I can choose in which color space I take pics.
If I want it printed, i want yet another color space, because I'm not sending sRGB pics to the printer's shop.

For jpg to jpg conversion, you'll have to find a tool that has color space as a parameter, and do some tests.
Paul

[Gribouillis]

looks like an Intel chip.

I don't know about Xfce but in Kde in the system settings, there are controls to configure the colors of the display.

[Skaperen]

I use lightroom, which has an "export setting" to export as sRGB.
This should be standard for any jpeg viewed online in a browser.
(I usually work with raw to jpeg. )

so, how do i set up Firefox to use lightroom for all my web viewing, including videos and YouTube? and how will the lightroom discover what colorspace the image it gets is? i know formats like BMP and GIF don't have parameters to tell this.