Color profile information on thumbnail labels

[Danny]

Currently you can see which color profile a file, say, JPG has assigned, if you click on it and look at the info pane (Color Profile > Description ="Adobe RGB)" for example.

I tried to add the same information as an additional row of the thumbnail labels, and added the only entry about color profiles: "EXIF: Color space". But that only works, if there's actually an according EXIF entry. Yet it clearly lists a color profile in the info pane, as mentioned.

So for some reason the info pane seems to look in more places. I would like to be able to have that more comprehensive lookup of the color profile also available for the thumbnail labels, not just the EXIF one.

[jkm]

The parsing of color profile information is a little more complicated than you realize.

Currently you can see which color profile a file, say, JPG has assigned, if you click on it and look at the info pane (Color Profile > Description ="Adobe RGB)" for example.

In fact, you can't. At least not consistently, all the time. Looking at that field (in the Properties tab) will not always give you accurate results, because that is only examining the embedded color profile (ICC_Profile:ProfileDescription), if one actually exists. If you've been depending on that to know if a file is Adobe RGB, then you've been missing some files.

Not all images that are intended to be processed as having a color profile actually have an embedded profile.

For example, with Adobe RGB, a file might have an embedded profile, or it might only be tacitly tagged as Adobe RGB. It might have a ColorSpace tag explicitly saying it's Adobe RGB, or it might not. Adobe RGB is commonly handled differently than other profiles, by relying on the InteroperabilityIndex tag instead of actual ColorSpace or ICC profile tags.

Adobe RGB files normally have the EXIF:ColorSpace tag set to "Uncalibrated". But so do files with no color profile information whatsoever.

You can access the required fields to really know the color profile situation in detail columns, labels, or the info panel using the Exiftool functionality.

Adding the following as a custom line in your labels will tell you what's actually going on with the color of an image:

Code: Select all

Color:{EXIF:Colour space},{Exiftool:InteroperabilityIndex},{Exiftool:ProfileDescription}

You have to look at the totality of these three fields, because for most images, at least one of these fields will be empty or wrong.

If you have the technical ability, you can create a single user-defined composite field in your .Exiftool_config file that will produce the correct result in all situations, which will then be accessible in XnViewMP by referencing it by name in the same manner as above. You can post in the Exiftool forums if you need help with that.

To learn more about using Exiftool fields in XnViewMP, refer to the documentation post I produced a while back:
viewtopic.php?p=212346#p212346

Hopefully this helps...