# Color management

> Why Dabbit gives you the number the app used, and what the Color settings change.

Source: https://dabbit.app/docs/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. Colors that are genuinely outside sRGB (a P3 photo, a `color(display-p3 …)` swatch) are read as Display P3 and kept that way, and the loupe shows the screen in its full gamut, so a P3 yellow looks like the yellow on screen, not a paler sRGB one. That's the default, **What the display uses**, in Settings → Color, and it's right for almost everyone.

![Settings → Color: screen pixels read through the display profile, Display P3 values and gamut warnings](https://dabbit.app/_astro/settings-color.v2dqUePG.png)

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 every pixel as P3, sRGB content included. The default already keeps wide colors; this is for when you want the P3 numbers for everything, off-by-one and all.

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, Hex (Display P3) and SwiftUI (P3) formats keep the full value.

A Figma file set to Display P3 shows its hex values in P3 coordinates, so its `#FFFF24` is not the sRGB `#FFFF24`. To read the numbers Figma shows, copy as **Hex (Display P3)**; the plain Hex format gives the sRGB color, which for a wide yellow is the clipped `#FFFF00`.

## 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.