Desktop background color is dull/faded in Mint 19

[Rich52]

Hi there! I am fairly new to Linux. I recently installed Linux Mint 19 Cinnamon version 3.8.9 on my ASUS laptop alongside Windows 10 (dual boot). I noticed that the desktop background (wallpaper) in Mint is dull or faded looking. The image looks much more vibrant/saturated when opened with Xviewer or in Chrome where I originally downloaded the image. I also just noticed that it looks dull when I open it with Shotwell. I've attached a photo of my desktop with the same image open in Xviewer.

I found another forum that suggested the following command in Terminal, but it did not work for me (this worked for someone running Mint in VirtualBox VM which I am not). Switching the background to another image and back again also doesn't do anything.
gsettings set org.cinnamon.muffin background-transition 'none'
viewtopic.php?f=231&t=273812&p=1544926& ... d#p1544926

I'm not sure if it has anything to do with my graphics card, but I have an Intel Corporation HD Graphics 5500.

If anyone has any suggestions I'd greatly appreciate it! And let me know if you need any more information.

Thanks - Richard

[smurphos]

Interesting - I just did a quick test with a color picker (the one built in to geany) and a solid color wallpaper and there is no difference in the values the color picker returns . But I can just about see a difference using this solid color wallpaper. Not as dramatic as in your screenshot.



I note that xviewer by default has 'image enhancements' enabled, not that disabling them makes any difference.

Wild guess - xviewer and chrome are using different libraries to render the image than nemo-desktop / shotwell or are passing different rendering options to the same libraries.

My image is a jpg. The difference seems a little bit more obvious to me with png.

Can you link to where you got the image from?

[Rich52]

Here is the link to the image:
https://kbdevstorage1.blob.core.windows ... 19602_en_1

Which is from the Windows wallpaper gallery:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/18828

The same fading happens with other wallpapers I've tried as well.

Not sure if this helps, but when I take a screenshot of the image in Xviewer using Shutter and then use that screenshot as my desktop background, it looks great (not faded). But of course I'd prefer not to have to do that for all of my wallpapers.

Thanks for looking into this!

[smurphos]

Definitely a difference here too.

[smurphos]

So I opened the original jpeg in pix - it displayed as the less saturated version, used pix to convert it to png. The new png displays the same in xviewer, pix and nemo-desktop as the less saturated version. So i guess this is something to do with how xviewer (and browsers) render jpeg images which is different to how nemo-desktop, pix and shotwell render them - jpeg is a lossy compressed format so I suppose it might be to do with the way it decompresses and fills in the gaps....or maybe a color profile used in xviewer and not in the others? Also tried feh - that show the jpeg is the less saturated version.

[smurphos]

OK it's a color profile issue (or lack of one for xviewer) - open Colors in menu and experiment...

[Rich52]

I played around with the color profiles a bit. They change the image when I reopen it in Xviewer but my desktop background remains the same :/

[smurphos]

I think the color profiles implementation is a bit buggy / unfinished. I also don't understand what affects being allowed to set a profile for all users or not.

Interesting article on the color management modules (which are from gnome) http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entr ... -and-gnome

Going back to the original issue - I think the difference is down to the desktop and x-viewer using different defaults when there is no profile specifically set and the x-viewer using an over saturated default. At least for my eyes and my laptop monitor the less saturated version of that image is more 'natural' and setting a sRGB color profile makes everything 'match'

[Rich52]

Okay, that makes sense. Thanks for all the recommendations! I'll look into that article too.

It's really not a big deal, just one of those little things that bothers me, haha.