Okay, so I switched over from Photoshop to Krita and Gimp, I'm a little old fashioned so I never got into looking at my graphics on my phone and just recently got a tablet, and I realized all of my outputted art comes out very dark and tinted.

This is while using Krita's default color setup. It doesn't appear dark in my folders or in Windows, nor in Photo Viewer. But when I send to anyone, it's all messed up.


I found by switching to "sRGB Built-in" color space is the way I can seem to get my colors to looking right. But what is causing this and what can I do to make it right?

All color spaces seem to appear the same while working in Krita. I can select my monitor's color space... my monitor is very cheap, and I'm wondering if my monitor is making this hard. Like maybe it shows all color spaces the same, and I'm literally the one causing the problem using the wrong colors because of the monitor?


What is the preferred color space output? Any help helping me untangle this mess would be great.

It might be worth it to start by reading this: https://docs.krita.org/en/general_conce ... kflow.html

Basically, Krita is colormanaged, but many other programs are not, meaning that you will see distortions. Color management is mostly useful when you work with many different devices on the same project, and thus is commonly used in print and big studios. If you're just making images for the internet, using the default profile will be enough.

I remember that there were similar problems in previous posts, so I tried the Advanced Search facilities of the forum, searching with +dark +colour and with +export in Krita including sub-forums and came up with these:

viewtopic.php?f=139&t=153015&hilit=+export
viewtopic.php?f=139&t=160149&hilit=+export
viewtopic.php?f=139&t=162996&hilit=+export
viewtopic.php?f=139&t=155831&hilit=+dark+color

This: https://docs.krita.org/en/general_conce ... kflow.html
and this: https://docs.krita.org/en/general_conce ... gamma.html
seems to be interesting information and advice, until someone comes along with better information and advice for you.
(Edit: Like Thera did while I was composing my reply )

ahabgreybeard wrote:I remember that there were similar problems in previous posts, so I tried the Advanced Search facilities of the forum, searching with +dark +colour and with +export in Krita including sub-forums and came up with these:

viewtopic.php?f=139&t=153015&hilit=+export
viewtopic.php?f=139&t=160149&hilit=+export
viewtopic.php?f=139&t=162996&hilit=+export
viewtopic.php?f=139&t=155831&hilit=+dark+color

This: https://docs.krita.org/en/general_conce ... kflow.html
and this: https://docs.krita.org/en/general_conce ... gamma.html
seems to be interesting information and advice, until someone comes along with better information and advice for you.
(Edit: Like Thera did while I was composing my reply )

Well this is just great, thank you (again) ahabgreybeard, always helpful, in the post viewtopic.php?f=139&t=155831&hilit=+dark+color (the last link in the list above) seems to have fixed the problem. It may still crop up again, but at first glance it seems fixed. Exported png and jpeg and no issue yet.

the method described was to go to users/user/appdata/local change the kritarc file (not folder) to kritarc.bak and to rename the Krita folder to krita.bak, and create a new blank Krita folder and let Krita rebuild. -Just for anyone with the same problem.

So far it works. I will update if it happens again.

I'm glad it's working to your satisfaction now.

The kritarc file does contain a massive load of configuration information for all sorts of things so I'm not surprised that resetting it had an effect.
However, you now have to rebuild your personal settings/configurations (not a very big deal) and you have no idea which (if any) settings in there were causing a problem for you.

The krita folder contains mostly resources and the only things that could affect the situation (as far as I can figure out) would be your personally imported/loaded colour profiles (unlikely, since you have control and visibility of colour profiles within your working document) and the 'input' folder which has the profiles for various canvas input settings, including exposure and gamma.

Can you restore the old 'krita' folder to see if the problem comes back? If it does then that would point to the contents of the old krita folder being the cause of the problem, then you could swap back to the rebuilt krita folder and try to use the old kritarc file to carry on using your old configurations and personal settings.

If the problem doesn't come back when you use the old 'krita' folder then it would point to the old kritarc file being the cause of the problem.

If it turns out that it was the old kritarc file that caused the problem then digging around inside it and comparing it with the new/fresh one is not an easy task.
However, it would be interesting and may be useful to know which one was the cause of this.

I concur, I will try restoring the folder itself. I've had this krita install for a long time, and it's hard to tell if something had gone wrong along the way. It would be nice to keep my settings. I'll give it a try.

Okay, restoring the folder doesn't seem to restart the problem.