Extracting Dell colour profiles on macOS without Windows

Dell is notorious for not really supporting Apple’s operating system very well. It’s not just their monitors, but other accessories like their USB-C docks.

It’s a shame. I think that Dell has pretty high quality gear.

I recently acquired a Dell S2721QS, and wanted to extract the files that are provided in their Windows driver to determine what exactly what was in there. After a quick look, it turns out, not that much. That being said, the ICC/ICM file provided with the driver pack may be useful for use on macOS.

Either way, I recently wanted to install the colour profiles that come with Dell monitors (or can be downloaded from the Dell website) on my Mac, but could not find an easy way to extract the ICC/ICM files and install them.

Starting with the downloaded file, DELL_S2721QS-MONITOR_A00-00_DRVR_KTRRG.exe I extracted the file using Binwalk.

# binwalk -D '.*' --extract  ./DELL_S2721QS-MONITOR_A00-00_DRVR_KTRRG.exe

DECIMAL       HEXADECIMAL     DESCRIPTION
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0             0x0             Microsoft executable, portable (PE)
90592         0x161E0         7-zip archive data, version 0.4

Here I had two extracted files. The 7-zip archive is the one we were looking for.

# cd _DELL_S2721QS-MONITOR_A00-00_DRVR_KTRRG.exe.extracted
# ls
total 616
drwxr-xr-x 4 tim staff    128 Jul 19 17:06 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 tim staff    128 Jul 19 17:06 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 tim staff 358345 Jul 19 17:06 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 tim staff 267753 Jul 19 17:06 161E0

# file 161E0
161E0: 7-zip archive data, version 0.4

# 7z x 161E0
Everything is Ok

Files: 5
Size:       756506
Compressed: 267753

Now that the extraction is complete, there should be 7 files in the directory.

# ls
total 1360
drwxr-xr-x 9 tim staff    288 Jul 19 17:09  .
drwxr-xr-x 4 tim staff    128 Jul 19 17:06  ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 tim staff 358345 Jul 19 17:06  0
-rw-r--r-- 1 tim staff 267753 Jul 19 17:06  161E0
-rw-r--r-- 1 tim staff 540216 Jul 22  2019 'Dell Monitor Driver Installer.exe'
-rw-r--r-- 1 tim staff   2600 May 27  2020  S2721QS.icm
-rw-r--r-- 1 tim staff   3071 May 27  2020  S2721QS.inf
-rw-r--r-- 1 tim staff 200360 Mar 28  2012  _x64help.exe
-rw-r--r-- 1 tim staff  10259 May 27  2020  s2721qs.cat

Indeed, there is. That S2721QS.icm file looks like it’s exactly what we are looking for! Simply copy it into ColorSync

# file S2721QS.icm
S2721QS.icm: Microsoft color profile 2.0, type KCMS, RGB/XYZ-mntr device by KODA, 2600 bytes, 30-4-2020 12:15:03, PCS Z=0xd32b "DELL S2721QS Color Profile,D6500"

# sudo cp S2721QS.icm /Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Displays

After that, you should be able to glaze into your Dell monitor with all the correct colour curves.

We managed to extract the required file for this Dell monitor, without a Windows install. Sadly, the file that we needed was 2.6KB, while the whole .exe file was 350K. It would be nice if Dell could start making the icm files available as a plain download from their support site.

Download the Dell S2721QS icm colour profile here.

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