I use the smudge tool very often in GIMP while painting. Unfortunately, the algorithm tends to generate a much darker version of what the smudged color ought to look like. For instance, a normal smudge on GIMP looks like this:
But I want the smudged color to be a lighter yellow, sort of like this:
In general all smudged colors appear darker and I understand this has something to with GIMP working with sRGB colors as opposed to RGB. But I’d really like to know what setting I need to tweak in GIMP to correct the smudge algorithm (maybe blur too, but I use smudge much more).
[ I assumed sRGB takes the square roots of the original value, so when the smudge tries to average colors between two pixels ‘a’ and ‘b’, it takes $ (\sqrt{a} + \sqrt{b})/2 $, which is darker than $ sqrt(a/2 + b/2)^2 $. ]
Answer
GIMP 2.10 or higher
Image > Precision > Linear Light
GIMP 2.8 or lower
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Download the color profile
sRGB-elle-V4-g10.iccfrom e.g. here. -
Image > Mode > Convert to Color Profile... > Select color profile from disk... > sRGB-elle-V4-g10.icc
Additional notes
Store the color profile in C:\WINDOWS\System32\spool\drivers\color (Windows) /Library/ColorSync/Profiles (Mac OS X) /usr/share/color/icc (Linux) so it’s next to the pre-installed ones. None of the pre-installed profiles seem to do linear light.
I tested this with brush, smudge and Gaussian blur and they all worked. However, the preview for Gaussian blur showed me the wrong (perceptual gamma) colors, but produced the right (linear light) result when actually applied!
I also recommend the YouTube video “Computer Color is Broken” explaining the issue.
Source: “Radiometrically correct editing“
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : user1992705 , Answer Author : xjcl
