Images displayed in viewer are too dark.

[paddy1]

Dear Mario - I have been a subscriber to iMatch for many years and I can testify that there are few, if any, image cataloguing programs that approach it in comprehensiveness. However, a problem arose about a year ago that I have been completely unable to resolve. Images in the viewer are consistently displaying too dark. The darker tones are especially affected, shadows tending to be rendered a muddy black with loss of all detail.
The file format makes no difference.  I work mostly with .tif and .jpg files, occasionally with .psd files, but the result remains the same - an image with good shadow detail in Lightroom or Photoshop is over-darkened in the iMatch image viewer. What is more, knowing that the iMatch viewer is closely associated with the OS image viewing settings, I have carefully viewed files in both Windows Photo Viewer and Windows Photos and, whereas the images are rendered correctly in both Windows native programmes, they remain too dark in iMatch.
More recently, I upgraded from Windows 10 to Windows 11 and hoped that the total upgrade of the operating system coupled with the reinstallation of all the relevant programmes from scratch, would solve the issue. Regrettably, it did not. The situation remains the same.
I understand how difficult it must be to solve these problems remotely but I cannot emphasise enough how much any advice or suggestions would be appreciated.
Thank you.

[Mario]

The Viewer, Slide Show and the Quick View panel are all fully color-managed, using the installed monitor profile (if any) and the embedded ICC profile in your images to map colors using the high-quality color management routines built into Windows WIC and DirectX. Basically, color-management is done in hardware, on the graphic card.

If this is not specific for a file format (e.g. only RAW files, which are a can of worms), I have no real idea why this should not work on your PC.
Did you check the monitor profile installed (if any)?
Do you have the latest graphic card driver installed?
Which graphic card do you use? Intel?

Very rarely, some users report that the shadows are too dark on their screens. They upload a screen shot and a sample image.
Then 10 other IMatch users, including me, download the sample image, pull it into the Viewer, and see no drop-outs in the shadows.

I recall one recent report, from a couple of months ago. And one from a few years ago.
In both cases, multiple users checked the sample images on their machines, and did not see any problem...

Since this always manifests on a single PC, there is virtually nothing I can do. IMatch does everything right, and when the rest of the color-management schema is properly functioning (graphic card driver, monitor settings and profile etc.) it works right out of the box. Note that Photoshop may circumvent the entire color management chain in Windows in favor of their "better" algorithms. I see no difference between Photoshop, Lr, Affinity Photo and IMatch, though. I have one monitor with a custom profile, and one monitor that does not use a profile (so I can test both scenarios). So far, the colors in IMatch were always right.

Please check all color-relevant settings in Windows, from the monitor settings, monitor profile etc. Make sure you have the most recent driver for your graphic card installed, from the vendor web site. The drivers included in Windows are often months out of date - or older...

[mopperle]

 I can confirm what Mario said. I do not see any difference, whether I view a picture in IMatch or any other of the various viewer I have on my system.
AFAIK there is not even a setting in IMatch which could influence how a picture is displayed in the Viewer.

[sinus]

This is really curious, because I have no problems with this, I use two monitors and even if I compare an image with Photoshop, they appears the same.
I have no clue, what this could be.

[Mario]

Precisely.

That's what makes this so puzzling. I guess that this is something caused by the graphic card driver or maybe the installed DirectX version.
Windows keeps DirectX up-to-date, but not always the graphic card driver.

Remember when some users reported repeatable crashes in the Viewer? And this was only on some systems and all had Nvidia graphic cards.
The solution was always to either a) install the latest driver or b) uninstall the Nvidia telemetry software ("Experience") which hooks deep into the system.
I've had maybe 20 reports about this in the past year, provided detailed crash logs to NVidia on several occasions, and they finally seem to have fixed it.

No idea about why on very few computers (2 I know of, including this one) the images in the Viewer render to dark. It is always the same render pipeline and always the same code. The only difference is the installed graphic card driver  - or maybe a setting the user has made for some games (?) which causes this...?

[paddy1]

Well, first of all I'd like to thank Mario and the other individuals who replied to my query for taking the trouble and for the rapidity of the responses. The problem still isn't resolved but I confirm that I do, in fact, use an nVidia graphics card. I don't think it can be a driver issue because everything was updated recently, during the transition from W10 to W11 but I shall check again for any possible updates. It's interesting because I recall that some years back a vaguely similar Nvidia/iMatch issue had arisen, related to an nVidia driver and I had had to revert to an older driver for a while until nVidia had fixed things at their end.
Is is theoretically possible for the ICC profile embedded into the image when editing is done (Photoshop) to somehow not be carried over into the iMatch viewer
or
is it theoretically possible for the installed monitor profile (the profile is calibrated by DisplayCal and is loaded and applied automatically) to somehow not be applied when the iMatch viewer is active ?

[Mario]

Is is theoretically possible for the ICC profile embedded into the image when editing is done (Photoshop) to somehow not be carried over into the iMatch viewer
or
is it theoretically possible for the installed monitor profile (the profile is calibrated by DisplayCal and is loaded and applied automatically) to somehow not be applied when the iMatch viewer is active ?

When IMatch fetches an image from the cache (opr reads the original JPEG) it applies the color profile found in the image.
IMatch also tells Windows to apply the monitor profile when doing the final transform in the render pipeline. This code is in place and unchanged for a long time.
It's pretty straight-forward and nothing to configure.

Note that Adobe products circumvent Windows color management AFAIK, which adds another variable.
I use Photoshop, LR and Affinity products and I see no color differences, whether or not my monitors use a color profile or not (provided the image is displayed on the same monitor of course).

[paddy1]

Ah well, I'll keep at it and let you know if I come up with a solution.
Thanks to everyone

[paddy1]

IT'S THE GRAPHICS ADAPTER !  Updating drivers made no difference. I eventually disabled it, rebooted and ... Eureka - the iMatch viewer image is now exactly the same as in 'Photos', 'Lightroom', 'Photoshop', etc.
Which leaves me with a fresh problem. I currently use an nVidia GeForce GTX 750Ti and it works perfectly well with everything else, only the iMatch issue is growing in significance. Good VGAs cost a fortune at the moment and I've no guarantee that installing a newer one is going to fix the issue. Does anyone have any bright ideas ?

[Mario]

I also use NVidia graphic cards in two of my PCs. No issues with IMatch and color management.
Maybe a setting you have made for the NVidia driver or some Experience setting? For gaming?

[paddy1]

Well, I eventually bit the bullet and installed an upgraded graphics card. The iMatch viewer works perfectly well now. I'm still not sure what combination of VGA-based circumstances led to a situation where the iMatch viewer wasn't quite rendering images correctly,  while 'Windows Photos' and all Adobe products did but, whatever it was, it's now sorted. My thanks to Mario and all others who pitched in with help on this vexatious issue.

[Mario]

I'm not sure if Windows Photos does color management.
And Adobe overrides Windows color management in favor of their own routines.

DirectX and all applications using it (including IMatch) do hardware-based color management on the GPU. So, if there was a problem with the driver, some driver settings or the GPU itself, it would explain this.
Also, sometimes users make changes in how the GPU renders things in favor of games using overrides or "application profiles". And this can mess up color management if the wrong settings are applied for the wrong application.
Just some causes for this type of problem I've encountered over time.