Unreliable Loading of Monitor Colour Profiles

I recently bought a Calibrite Pro HL colorimeter to calibrate my primary Viewsonic VP2770 dipaly and secondary Dell P2414H diaplay to 5000K and 90 Cd/m2 for photo editing.

On starting Windows, the correct profile is applied to the primary monitor and the colour balance is correct. However, on the secondary monitor the colour blance is wrong despite the correct profile showing as being applied. Applying the correct profile again manually sets the correct colour balance. It appears Windows is quite unreliable is correctly apply monitor profiles.

I fixed this issue by installing DisplayCAL 3.8.9.3 to use the DisplayCAL Profile Loader. This fixed the correct application of profiles to both monitors in my main user account. However, the profile loader doesn't start and show the tray icon in my other user account and admin account and trying to run the profile loader manually does nothing.

Please advise:

1. Is there a way to configure Windows to fix the inherent unreliable loading of monitor profiles?
2. Is there a fix for the DisplayCAL Profile Loader to ensure it loads and operates in all user accounts?
3. Can you recommend a better utility to correctly load monitor profiles?

DisplayCAL main dev quit the project for good - back in 2019, due to personal stuff. But there's a fork - a group of devs whom weren't whiling to give up on it, and turned-it into a passion project - intended to bring it up to date (modernize it - based on their claims). Still beta, but hey - worth trying even their latest nightly, at this point - might do better than a dead project:

I discovered the DisplayCAL profile loader only operates correctly for the first logged in user. You need to log off then log in to the other account for the DisplayCAL profile loader to start in the other account and load the correct profiles. Not ideal but it works better than the Windows 11 monitor profile management.

Would also recommend Disabling ACM (Auto Colour Management) - since it interferes with color accuracy - as set by the Display's ICC/ICM profile. As pointed out in next video...

neves said:

Would also recommend Disabling ACM (Auto Colour Management) - since it interferes with color accuracy - as set by the Display's ICC/ICM profile. As pointed out in next video...

Click to expand...

I see no Colour Mangement option in Settings

Steve C said:

I see no Colour Mangement option in Settings

Click to expand...

It's a couple of menus deep. System - Display, right click on the ">" to the right of the Color Profile.

ACM must be enabled for Photoshop CC to display 10 bit color, if you care about that.

I've verified (Wide Gamut - Test Page) that my monitor displays a wide gamut with ACM enabled.

I continue to use the original DisplayCal under Win11 25H2. (I have updated Argyll CMS, which is the CLI engine it uses.) Not sure what I'll do when Windows breaks it. I use a single monitor, so I can't comment about the effectiveness of DisplayCal's profile loader with multiple displays. I've tried the newer versions of DisplayCal, but I haven't seen one yet that is ready for prime time (within my limited understanding). One option would be learning how to use Argyll CMS using the CLI. Bit of a learning curve, there, though.

ACM must be disabled while running DisplayCal/Argyll, if you want to get the full gamut of a wide gamut display. It forces some approximation to sRGB. Some software can be configured to use legacy ICC, but I've not figured out how to do that for DisplayCal/Argyll CMS.

X-Rite included a profile loader with their software, but it appears that Calibrite does not. I have the Calibrite Profiler software installed, but I generally don't use it.

Steve C said:

I see no Colour Mangement option in Settings

Click to expand...

Maybe the Monitor doesn't support this feature - cause your Nvidia GPU is supported. Or maybe, it's even for some weird reason - as pointed out by others:

Enable or Disable Auto Color Management for Apps in Windows 11

Just to be sure: Win + R - > regedit

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers\MonitorDataStore

Check your monitors and make sure - you have AutoColorManagementEnabled set to 0

If you don't see it, but have the option AutoColorManagementSupported set to 1 (which means it's supported by the Monitor). Just - add is as a New - > DWORD 32 bit Value -> AutoColorManagementEnabled and set it to 0 - like shown in this screenshot - from above topic:



What can i say... Windows is a Very Low Budget OS handled by couple of devs, whom probably finished last in their class - so they still struggle to implement features properly. For past Updates - they kept breaking Windows in one way or the other - for some of its users, so hey... be glad it turns on - and works for most part.

In their defense - the hardware is not proprietary - so it's indeed, rather challenging to cover thousands of Displays. But it's not hard to implement a menu line - which shows if it's supported or not. So, that's still a lazy approach or low programing skills.