WHen I try to invert colors in Kwin the shortcut key inverts the colors for maybe 2-3 seconds and then reverts back. the only invert color shortcut keys don't work at all. is there any alternative? i need to use my screen late at night. in gnome there was the magnifier program which had built in color inversion.

kwin by default inverts the screen by altering the gamma ramps (like eg. xcalib would) - if it's turned back after a short time, that sounds as if "something™" would reset the gamma ramps periodically.
- what kind of GPU is this?
- are you running any screen related daemons/cronjobs? maybe some accessibility stuff?

If you're GL compositing, you can also invert the colors of individual windows - that's done via a shader program and does not interact with the gamma table of the screen.

my GPU is the intel integrated graphics with an hp pavilion g series laptop. I do run redshift at the same time. However the invert function works for a few seconds simultaneously.

I do run redshift

That's the cause - it operates on the gamma ramps as well.

You can
a) suspend (kill) redshift while inverting
b) patch out (and recompile kwin) the gamma manipulating code (moving directly to the shader based on)
c) resort to single window (instead screen) inversion

b+c require GL2 compositing (and imply an overhead compared to the gamma ramp manipulation)

I may try to disable redshift and use invert or individual window inversion. How do I accomplish the latter?

run "kcmshell4 kwincompositing", ensure compositing is OpenGL 2 (or 3) in the third tab, in the second tab, filter for "invert", enable the effect, click the config button and assign resp. shortcuts.

I just saw that there's still an explicit shortcut to invert the entire screen through the shader, so this should work for you (but will bear an overhead compared to gamma ramp manipulation)

Oh man. Your last post was money. Thanks