An apparatus and method for converting color data from one color space to another color space. A driver determines that a set of shader program instructions perform a color conversion function and the set of shader program instructions are replaced with either a single shader program instruction or a flag is set within an existing shader program instruction to specify that output color data is represented in a nonlinear color format. The output color data is converted to the nonlinear color format prior to being stored in a frame buffer. Nonlinear color data read from the frame buffer is converted to a linear color format prior to shading, blending, or raster operations.