I set a keyboard shortcut to invert my screen colors at night. Only thing is when I activate it the effect only lasts for a few seconds. For whatever reason KWIN converts it right back. Any ideas why?

Moved to KWin forum.

If you activate the effect manually (without using the keyboard shortcut) does the invert effect remain applied?

how do you turn on the effect manually

I did try to turn on the option in Desktop effects and received an error about requiring OpenGL

okay. I managed to fix the issue by switching the compositing type to OpenGL and then binding a shortcut through Desktop Effects. However, Kwin's function still only lasts for a few seconds. I guess that's not a big deal/

What graphics card and driver are you using?

I'm using an Intel Integrated Graphics Controller with my Intel Core i3 (laptop naturally)

which kde version do you use? For my Thinkpad X220 it works fine under 4.9.2

4.9.1, running it on kubuntu 12.04 and a hp pavilion g7-1070us

At least for nvidia the XRR variant is currently broken (again) and the inversion only applied with the next XRR update (rotation or moving to VT1 and back)
This might be a bug in libxrandr rather than in the nvidia driver, though - try eg. rotating the ouput after applying the inversion, eventually -> VT1 -> VT7 will do as well