Monitor color profile not read

[mchla]

Hello.

I have three monitors running on the latest Windows. One is a NEC, calibrated and profiled with its native software, the other two are calibrated and profiled by DisplayCal.

My problem is, Affinity Photo (version 1.7.3.481) doesn't appear to read my monitors' color profiles correctly. I'm always testing using a greyscale gradient image. Photoshop and Krita display the image as expected, a smooth gradient. However, Affinity gives me some really bad results. The image I get doesn't look like if there was no color management at all; in that case, there would be no banding. What I get is lots of banding and then, if I assign the image the ICC profile of the currently used monitor, then I get a correct image. This way I know it's not working properly, it should not work this way!

I've read this article and it's in line with what I did already: https://affinityspotlight.com/article/display-colour-management-in-the-affinity-apps/

EDIT: I've learned it's working as intended. One shouldn't get a perfect gradient due to the discrepancy between the gamma curve of the display and the sRGB profile. What fooled me with other programs is that Krita had color management turned of and Photoshop's output just looks way better (almost as smooth as without color management). Perhaps the function that applies the monitor's color profile?

Edited February 5, 2020 by mchla