New option to access both system wide and custom ICC profiles

[TechXavAL]

Here I start a discussion about the convenience of adding a new option in Preferences, to have access to both system wide ICC profiles and custom ICC profiles (in a custom folder), at the same time.

Following out of topic posts in this discuss thread (from point 4 of that post onwards) where it is stated:

@Thanatomanic: The userICCDir can be anything set in the RawTherapee Preferences

• There is one caveat here: RawTherapee will also look in this folder for additional output and display profiles. Changing this, might not be the best idea.

@Xaval: A comment: in Linux that folder is by default the location where all color managed applications search and place profiles, so it may be a good idea leaving that option alone, but there are 2 scenarios where that won’t be suitable:

• if the user doesn’t have write permissions over that folder
• if the user doesn’t want an endless list of profiles, that most probably will never use: at least in my system not changing the default folder would mean I would have to choose from among 14 sRGB profiles… Perhaps it’s worth adding an extra checkbox setting to load system wide color profiles? And leave the current option to point to a user folder where he/she puts custom profiles?

@gaaned92: On W10, it is by default a Windows system directory C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color where I don’t understand why any app would like to put profiles except for display profiles (for instance displaycal). Furthermore, you need administrator rights to write here. So a safe and only way is to use a user defined dir. In the context of W10 I think the additional checkbox is useless. This should better be located by default in the config dir.

Well, I will start by adding that in Linux you also need administrator rights to access /usr/share/color/icc, so my concern remains: you need a different place to put your custom profiles, but you may also wish to have access to those system wide profiles.

As an example, in my virtual drives with Windows installed (both 8.1 and 10), in C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color there are only 2 ICC profiles (in fact they are ICM profiles): one is the sRGB profile, and the other one is SWOP. And there's a possibility that I wish to use that SWOP profile for soft-proofing, instead of having a duplicate in my custom folder.

In my Linux system there are a lot of profiles, most of them not useful to me in RT, but there may be like 6-8 profiles that I may wish to use from time to time. And I don't want to duplicate them in my custom folder.

So my suggestion would be adding an option with a checkbox and these possible combinations:

• on a clean install you would see the current custom folder option (Preferences > Color Management > Directory containing color profiles) set to None (no custom folder specified) and the checkbox reading something like Load system wide color profiles turned on (ticked). This will leave RT in exactly the same position as it currently is after installing it.
• leave custom folder set to None and the checkbox turned off: you will only have access to the bundled profiles (this is currently possible by just setting a custom folder with no profiles in it)
• set a custom folder and leave the checkbox turned off: you will have access to those profiles located in that folder, but not to the system wide profiles (this is exactly the same result as setting a custom folder in current commit)
• set a custom folder and leave the new checkbox turned on: this would be new and not possible in current commit, as you would have access to your custom profiles and the system wide profiles all at the same time

Does all of this make any sense? Would it be useful?

[ChasingShadows]

I think that is a good idea. However, in the folder option you should have the opportunity to have a comma separated list of several folders. That way you can add folders from other applications which also do not pollute the system folder.