KLE-France

Excellent!

Because this discussion has sent me down the rabbit hole again, I'll add the following links, because one of the huge challenges I have with all of this is a terminology and a pseudo-synonymy that, at least for me, is extremely confusing. So, in the hopes of helping some future person who could fall upon this conversation and be as confused as I am, here are links to the Wikipedia articles (for what that's worth) for: Color model Color space (particularly useful because it summarizes model, space and gamut in its first paragraphs) and Gamut And here is a link to a gnome.org article for Color profile This last one does not have a specific Wikipedia article and I think that it in particular suffers from a "synonym use syndrome," popping up here and there when a person is actually speaking of a color model or a color space... Bref, as is obvious from my posts above, I could be wrong about that. Re-Cheers!

To NotMyFault and pbasdf, thank you so much for these explanations and resources! Color management (EDIT: and color science!) is just such a monster; once I start thinking I'm understanding a bit of it, I fall on yet another gear in the motor, and re-realize that there is still so much I need to grasp before I can truly understand that motor in its entirety. But thanks to your insights, I'm a bit closer to that than I was a few days ago. Again, thanks, and a thanks also to Affinity (and the other program developers) for making the use of the program as idiot proof as possible. Cheers! And happy shooting to all.

Thanks NotMyFault, I appreciate this quick response. As they say, "trust but verify." Where is this documented? At Edit > Settings... > Color > RGB Color Profile, I have sRGB IEC61966-2.1 set. So, if I'm understanding you correctly, when I open a raw image, it should be constrained to the sRGB color space. Now, a raw will also have 16-bit (more precisely 14-bit) color depth, so that is going to broaden greatly what can be done with color. But, if I'm in the sRGB color space, that would mean that the colors in the raw, but outside of the sRGB color space would not be available to "rotate in" to what I see on the screen, right? But that doesn't seem to be the case. Again, 16-bit depth, yes, but I can push, pull, squeeze and wring the daylights out of my underexposed and/or gradient-rich and/or high-contrast and/or high-saturation images, and never really run into problems related to a constrained color space. Moreover, when I test this by changing the Settings color profile to ROMM sRGB, nothing seems to change in my ability to push, pull, squeeze and wring; It neither increases nor decreases. BUT, I am conscious of the fact that I'm looking at all of this on a monitor that can only show in its entirety the sRGB color space. But still, I do wonder if the Serif Labs raw engine doesn't innately use ROMM sRGB as the "holder" color space, as do RawTherapee and Lightroom (if the above link is correct)... It would be great if a developer could sound in on this.

Hello to all. Color-managed workflow on a Windows 10 home and in Affinity Photo (AP) Version 2.5.5, if that matters. Here is a good primer for what I'm about to ask, and especially this part of that article on WORKING profiles, and this one on OUTPUT profiles. I am speaking of developing images from the raw file, but this may extend out to simple modifications on a jpeg as well. TLDR: What is the innate WORKING color space used by Affinity Photo? I am mostly curious about the Develop and Photo personas. I'm asking because this is not indicated anywhere in AP, as far as I can determine: AP's help on color management is not clear on this, the Color tab on the Settings menu lets you assign profiles but does not indicate if those are working or output color spaces, and the only other place I know of where a color profile can be assigned is in the Develop Persona, where the Profiles tab only lets you assign an "Output Profile." In the "good primer" link above, it is explained that in RawTherapee, the working color space is ProPhoto, and that it is the color management process that is going to adapt what is seen on the monitor to this latter's gamut. The output profile will be attached to the file that is exported: if the output profile is set to sRGB, that will be embedded in the exported image. Now, if, like me, you're on a color-managed system with a monitor only capable of showing sRGB, you've been looking at only the sRGB color space all along. The working profile is an under-the-hood thing, but that larger color space under the hood lets you develop the raw image with greater flexibility, pushing colors in to or out of the monitor's gamut as needed. For what it's worth, this Digital Photography article says that Lightroom works the same way, and even doesn't give you a choice about it. So, my questions: is Affinity Photo, like Lightroom and RawTherapee, using ProPhoto ("ROMM RGB" in Affinity-speak), as the 'under-the-hood' working color space? If not, will selecting "ROMM RGB: ISO 22028-2:2013 at Settings > Color > RGB color profile make it do so, OR, is that setting only for the output profile? Of course, if it is, setting ROMM there would be a very bad thing to do. What does "Output profile" mean on the Profiles tab in the Develop Persona? Is it just preparing AP to assign X (sRGB, Adobe RGB...) profile to the image at export, OR, is it converting the working color space to X profile when it develops the image toward the Photo Persona? Is so, that would mean that once in the Photo Persona, you are now working in a constrained color space. In this scenario, would it be correct to set the ROMM space there, before developing to the Photo Persona? Hope all of that is clear, and thanks to all in advance for your enlightenment.

A very big +1! Indeed, the Adjustment Panel desperately needs organization at least of some sort. I don’t know: first everything that’s predominately tonality (exposure, levels, curves, highlights/shadows, etc.) then everything that’s predominantly color (HSL, selective color, color balance, etc.); logical order of use;… hell, even alphabetical would be better than what it is now. That said, the best of all worlds would be that each user can organize things as they see fit as suggested here by Eugen.

+1 and frankly, a gamma slider could simply replace the brightness slider, which, for me at least, seems perfectly useless as currently implemented.

+ 1 for all of this, but especially for centering the anchor.

There have been a few responses pointing to Affinity Photo's local contrast options. However, I think Torstein is speaking of microcontrast as defined, e.g., by RawTherapee. Indeed, if I'm not mistaken thereto (do let me know, Torstein), Affinity Photo has no specific tool for that. So, a "+1" on my part—again assuming that my interpretation of Torstein's meaning is correct.

Well, it doesn't have to be yellow. Or an exclamation point. It just needs to be something. And there's a long history of indicating layer states in AP: the locked layer indicator, the FX indicator, the brush indicator... There's no reason why a deactivated-layer-in-a-group indicator would be any more distracting than those others. Indeed, and should Preflight ever make it to AP, that's a good idea. However, this is also a problem during processing itself (you forget you deactivated a layer, you change something elsewhere, then you remember and reactivate the layer, and that change elsewhere now has to be re-modified or deleted...). Hence the need for an indicator on the layer group itself.

Hello to all! This suggestion concerns at least Affinity Photo. Beyond the very good suggestions concerning groups of layers made here and here, I also want to suggest adding some iconography to indicate when a layer is deactivated within a collapsed group of layers. For example, here is the Layers panel with a group of layers called "graffiti": All of the layers in it are activated: But if I inactivate a layer: then re-collapse the group: there is nothing to indicate that one layer is inactivated in that collapsed group, and thus it is very easy to forget about it, continue the development of the image and then export it with that layer still deactivated. I'm not speaking from experience or anything 😐 Thus, yes, there needs to be some indication—a simple yellow exclamation point would do the trick—that a or several layer(s) are deactivated in a collapsed group. Thanks for hearing me out!

Have to sign in against this request. Having a neutral zone around the entire image is necessary for judging it correctly. Ctrl+0 should always maintain the negative space around the entire image. Enlarging the image to true window width/height could be assigned to Ctrl+Shift+0, or something along those lines, why not, but AP does default "fit to window" correctly.

The famous "+1". All the more so in that the clone tool does this already—or does it remember the last use? In any case, that would be fine too.

Thanks @walt.farrell, and good to know that one can't accidentally import an ICC. At C:\Users\[Me]\.affinity\Photo\2.0\profiles, there is only the empty "Blacklist.txt" file, which we had seen the last time. And at C:\Users\[Me]\AppData\Roaming\Affinity\Photo, there appear to be only remnant 1.0 files in both \Common and \Photo. Following through in this latter to \Profiles, there is again only an empty "Blacklist.txt" file. So, at least that's ruled out. Already a good thing. Thanks again and happy shooting to you.

Hi @Lee D Thank you so much for your interest and sorry for the slow response; I was away this week-end and only checked the forums last night. So, Here is my C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color, noting that in the Folder Options, "Show hidden files, folders and drives" is activated: I don't have screen recording apps on my computer, but here is the Soft Proof's Proof Profile list, one screen after another (left column then right column): And perhaps more usefully, here's everything together: Notice that in the "C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color" image, there are no "PICTO" or "WW" (Whitewall) profiles. The "ghost" profiles from those two printing companies are indicated with red arrows. ("U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2" is highlighted in blue only because it is the "default" profile when a Soft Proof layer is opened.) Again, I first reported this problem back in AP V1. Note particularly that the file I had used as an example in that original post, "PICTO_Lambda_Coul_RC_Brilliant_3.icc", is still present as a ghost profile even though I have now updated to AP V2. I'll add that not all icc profiles do this. Indeed, I've installed dozens and dozens of icc profiles, always from PICTO and Whitewall, and most behave as you described above: if they are deleted from C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color, they disappear from the Proof Profile list. Moreover, some previous V1 ghost files did disappear with the update to V2, but not all of them, like the PICTO icc in the preceding paragraph. And finally I'll re-mention that I never knowingly imported the ICCs via File > Import ICC Profile... But is there maybe some keyboard shortcut that I infinite monkey-ed? And if so, where do I need to look in V2's folder structure? Again thanks a million, and happy shooting to you.