Saved PNGs have washed-out colors compared to compositing viewport?


I first noticed this issue a few weeks ago, but whenever I saved my files as PNGs, it washes out the colors. It does this regardless of how I color grade the image, or in this instance, I have the look set to standard and it still does it. I made sure my export settings match the scene. Any ideas about what this issue could be?

I also made sure the color depth was 16 bit.

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its definitely a color management issue, although tbh this stuff has always been rather confusing for me.

i suspect this has to do with the fact that blender interally handles colors as described here:
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/color_management.html#ocio-config-default-color-spaces

particularly: " The reference linear Color Space used is the linear color space with Rec. 709 chromaticities and D65 white point."

meanwhile blender’s render output seems to be constrained to sRGB. i can recover the color in other software like davinci resolve by setting the display profile to rec 709 or p3.

that said, i feel like there is still bugginess in how blender represents color to the user. i constantly observe the a viewport flickering between more vibrant colors and the more muted sRGB output simply by moving the mouse around - depending on what panel i’m hovering over or whether i’m clicking or not will change how colors are displayed, and this feels extremely messy. i don’t think its a monitor or OS color settings issue either, since the issue persists if i’m in srgb, rec 709, p3, etc, and these colorspace representations are rock solid in quite literally any other piece of software i use.

curious to hear the opinions of people who have a better grasp on this stuff than i do, though.

also some more about the issue here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/blender/comments/skeiqo/exact_same_blender_files_display_much_more/

it seems there are alternate OCIO configs people can download for more modern monitors, although they ALSO talk about known issues with this setup too, so the whole thing still seems to be incredibly finicky.

Have you tried EXR? PNG isn’t a great format for Blender renders

Just saw this, EXR is great but not so much for sharing which is what the intent of the renders is.