Question :

In the past, I used to create my own custom Quartz-filters in ColorSync Utility, and they were instantly available system-wide in MacOSX. Now, in OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion and OSX 10.9 Mavericks ( and OSX 10.10 Yosemite and OSX 10.11 El_Capitan ), I don’t have access to my Quartz-filters anymore…

What is wrong ? And how can I fix this ?

Answer :

In the latest versions of OSX [*], there seems to be a bug preventing OSX to find Quartz-filters stored outside of the ‘official’ “Filters”-folder that is inside the “Library”-folder in the “System”-folder… so, since all custom-made Quartz-filters are stored inside the “Filters”-folder that is inside the (invisible) “Library”-folder in the User’s “Home”-folder, your custom-made Quartz-filters are not found by OSX…

The solution is to just move them into the right (official) “Filters”-folder. [**]

(Yep, it’s that easy…)

For an in-depth step-by-step guide for doing so, follow the procedure outlined here.

NOTES :

[*] this bug was solved/removed with the introduction of macOS 10.12 Sierra

[**] put differently :

In all versions of OSX from OSX 10.8 Mountain_Lion up to OSX 10.11 El_Capitan,
new Quartz-filters created in Colorsync Utility are/were automatically saved in :
~/Users/[username]/Library/Filters/
But all other applications (including e.g. Preview) weren’t able to access or use them as they could only load Quartz-filters from :
~/System/Library/Filters/
and – only if you created the following folder manually – from :
~/Library/Filters/
So you had to manually move your custom Quartz-filters to :
~/Library/Filters/
to be able to use them in Preview.app and alike