Color management

The problem

Modern Mac displays are wide-gamut (Display P3). When an app draws #ff0000, macOS converts that sRGB red into the display’s colors before it reaches the panel. A naive picker reads the converted value back and reports something like #fb0007. Not what the designer wrote, and it drifts every time it’s picked and pasted.

What Dabbit does

Dabbit reads pixels through the display’s ICC profile and converts them back to sRGB, so a pick of #ff0000 gives #ff0000, on any display, with any profile. That’s the default, Display profile, in Settings → Color, and it’s right for almost everyone.

The two overrides are for unusual setups:

• Assume sRGB: treat screen pixels as already sRGB, skipping the conversion. For a display whose profile is wrong or missing, or when you want the raw framebuffer numbers.
• Assume Display P3: read the pixels as P3. For picking colors that are genuinely outside sRGB (a P3 photo, a color(display-p3 …) swatch) and keeping them that way.

The pane lists your connected displays with the profile and scale each one uses, which is a quick way to spot a display running the wrong profile.

Out-of-gamut colors

With Show Display P3 values and out-of-gamut warnings on, a color that can’t be expressed in sRGB is flagged in the loupe and readout with its P3 value (outside sRGB · color(display-p3 …)). Hex and RGB formats clip it to the nearest sRGB color; the Display P3 and SwiftUI (P3) formats keep the full value.

Color vision

View → View As re-renders the library window as someone with protanopia, deuteranopia, tritanopia or achromatopsia would see it. It’s a check, not a conversion: nothing you copy or export is changed.