In the last few days, I noticed that the generated images look differently in the Windows Photos app and on the site in my browser. I dug deeper and fell into the rabbit hole of the ICC color profiles...
Turns out the color profiles are used mostly by photography professionals for photo editing. But the AI chatbot kept telling me that using the display-specific color profile is the correct setup for viewing the images.
Different image-related apps behave differently by default, including different web browsers, so I spent some time figuring out the settings for each app that I use. For example, Chromium-based browsers use the display profile but Firefox-based browsers don't!
My crude method to check if the profile is actually used by some app is to use some RGB test image, open it with the app, then make a screenshot and using color picker check if the color on the screenshot matches the source color. If they don't match, the profile is used here. In one of the displays that I checked the difference is more noticeable for me:
That's why I was seeing the difference on CivitAI images!
If you are interested in using your display profile in some app, default file location for installed profiles on Windows: C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color\. One of the files there will be the profile specific for your display which you can use in some apps like GIMP.
Are you using your display color profile?