PixInsight's color management subsystem does not support the non-portable WCS color profiles introduced by Microsoft in Windows Vista and Windows 7. PixInsight only uses standard ICC (International Color Consortium) profiles, and fully supports the ICC specifications 2 and 4. For more information on the ICC and the ICC profile format, please visit ICC's website:
http://www.color.org/When a WCS profile (for example, the sRGB.cdmp profile) has been selected as the primary monitor profile on Windows, PixInsight correctly states that the current monitor profile is not a valid ICC profile upon startup; however, the PI Core application crashes when any image is loaded or created (that is, the first time a color management function is used).
The workaround is simple: use only standard ICC profiles. You'll get exactly the same functionality with ICC profiles in a standards-compliant, fully portable and cross-platform way.
If you experience this bug, follow these steps to associate an ICC profile with your primary monitor:
1. Right-click on a free area of your desktop.
2. Select the "Personalize" option from the context popup menu (usually the last option).
3. Click on "Screen configuration" (at the bottom of the explorer window that has just been opened).
4. Click the "Advanced Configuration" button.
5. Select the "Color Management" tab sheet.
6. Click the "Color Management" button.
7. Select your screen on the "device" list box.
8. Be sure the "Use my configuration" check box is checked.
9. On the profiles list, you must only have the sRGB profile (with a .icc or .icm file extension) listed. Otherwise, click the "Add" button and browse the list of available profiles to select it. If there are more profiles listed besides sRGB, use the "Remove" button as necessary.
(Note: If you find no sRGB ICC or ICM profile —which is rare— then abort the process here, install the "sRGB_IEC61966-2-1_no black_scaling.icc" which you can
download from ICC's website and restart from step 1)
10. Click the "Close" button and accept all previous dialog boxes. Now you have selected the sRGB ICC profile for your monitor.
11. Launch PixInsight and everything should work fine. You don't need to reinstall PixInsight; this is just a Windows configuration problem.
I'll fix the crash bug in the next version of PixInsight. However, adding support for non-portable color profiles in PixInsight is much less probable (approximately impossible, actually).
