Affinity not showing colour as output is shown

[Sparkie Shock]

Hi, So I have tried to find an answer to this and frustratingly no one seems to have asked this questions anywhere. Here is the deal

I have a Samsung 49 inch Widescreen monitor. I have downloaded the colour profile for it and am currently using it. Affinity seems to default to assigning the sRGB profile no matter what although I can change this.

I'm trying to do colour correction on images but once exported my images are darker than they appear in Affinity. If they were lighter then I could assume this is simple the preview of the image being displayed with that reduced data contrast thing (whatever the hell it's called .. where an image has not quite as much black or white brightness to render it broadcast safe).

So how do I do this? All I want is that my output should look like it is in Affinity .. otherwise colouring is just guess work and I don't believe in this day in age that THIS is the state of things. Can someone please tell how to turn on the 'What you see is what you get' thing .. so that I can actually see what this is supposed to look like as exported.

Much obliged for any and all help.

Sparkie

[walt.farrell]

5 hours ago, Sparkie Shock said:

I have downloaded the colour profile for it and am currently using it.

Where are you using it?

[Sparkie Shock]

I have the profile installed into the windows display system .. so everything I see should be correct for this monitor.

The problem I'm finding is that despite everything the output from Affinity is NOT the same as what I see in the Affinity window. The image as display in Affinity is lighter than that of the output. So one can't tell me the profile is to blame .. at worst everything should look the same .. there's something going on in the output which is making things darker. I just want the image I see in Affinity to look the same as the output.

[walt.farrell]

2 minutes ago, Sparkie Shock said:

there's something going on in the output which is making things darker. I just want the image I see in Affinity to look the same as the output.

What application are you using to view the output?

And what profile have you specified for the document in Affinity Photo?

[Sparkie Shock]

I have tried specifying the samsung profile in affinity but it seems to not change anything. I change the document profile manually (cuz it doesn't wanna apply it automatically) to the samsung one.

Previewing the image I've tried several apps .. photos, the windows explorer preview .. and quicklook. In each case the preview is darker than affinity. I then look at the output image on my ipad and other computers and the image is darker there too .. this is most annoying as I go to all the trouble to affect colour change and then find I have to 'best guess' affinity's levels in order to lighten things up and get what I want.

I don't understand what profile affinity is using .. or why it just can't show me what the image actually looks like.

[walt.farrell]

Just now, Sparkie Shock said:

I have tried specifying the samsung profile in affinity but it seems to not change anything. I change the document profile manually (cuz it doesn't wanna apply it automatically) to the samsung one.

You should not do that. The Samsung profile is a monitor-display profile. Your document needs a document profile, such as sRGB.

2 minutes ago, Sparkie Shock said:

why it just can't show me what the image actually looks like.

I don't think there is any such thing as "what the image actually looks like". There is only "what the image looks like when interpreted using some selected color profile" and using a correctly calibrated monitor. Additionally, there are applications that do not do color management at all, and simply assume everything (including the display) is sRGB. And there are monitors that cannot display the full range of colors and intensities contained in some images. (And, of course, there's always the possibility that the photographer's eyes and the viewer's eyes may operate differently; there's no way to account for that.)

This Affinity Spotlight article may be useful: https://affinityspotlight.com/article/display-colour-management-in-the-affinity-apps/

[Sparkie Shock]

Fair enough .. doesn't change the fact that on the same screen I see the image in affinity with a different contrast to the output image. This is on the same screen so something is going on and I need this fixed. Photoshop had a WYSIWYG mode (What you see is what you get!) .. why is there nothing like this on Affinity? This is a bit of a deal breaker for me using this app because if it can't accurately display what the out looks like then this is ludicrous.

[Sparkie Shock]

I have also just tried this in Photoshop (elements 6.0) .. and the image exports EXACTLY as per the image seen in Photoshop. So something is definitely up with Affinity. Somehow the preview i get in Affinity is not reflective of what is going to be outputted. Is there tech support for Affinity? Cuz I really need to solve this problem.

 

[walt.farrell]

Photoshop does not do color management in the same way as Affinity, from what I understand. And you may need to do things differently when using Affinity. Have you tried following the recommendations in the Spotlight article?

This is the tech support area for the Affinity forums. Often answers are provided by users (such as me); the Affinity team will get to this eventually, but it might take ashile (especially as you're posting on the weekend, not during normal working hours in the UK).

Or, possibly another user will have the solution for you.

 

[Sparkie Shock]

Yes I looked at the article you suggested. Though it did give me clarity on a few points it offered nothing that helped my current problem. I sent a tech support request to Serif .. so I'm hoping someone there will have an answer. I can't possibly be the only person with this problem.

I have no desire to go back to photoshop (seeing as the only version I have is Elements 6.0) .. but I need colour accuracy as Affinity is not giving me this right now. But thanks for your suggestions thus far. It is appreciated. I'm just frustrated because I have a lot of art panels to get done with post work and this inconsistency with colour and light value is putting a right spanner in the works.

 

[R C-R]

14 hours ago, Sparkie Shock said:

Fair enough .. doesn't change the fact that on the same screen I see the image in affinity with a different contrast to the output image.

Yes, it may be the same screen but it is not the same application that is displaying the image. As Walt explained, different applications handle color management differently, so "what the image actually looks like" will not be the same in all of them.

[komtur]

On 9/12/2020 at 11:18 PM, Sparkie Shock said:

Yes I looked at the article you suggested. Though it did give me clarity on a few points it offered nothing that helped my current problem. I sent a tech support request to Serif .. so I'm hoping someone there will have an answer. I can't possibly be the only person with this problem.

I also have the exact same problem. Did the tech support figure out how to fix it? It's a bit annoying because only Affinity Photo displays images this way.... All other apps that support color management show the same images as slightly darker. Weird.

[walt.farrell]

10 minutes ago, komtur said:

I also have the exact same problem. Did the tech support figure out how to fix it? It's a bit annoying because only Affinity Photo displays images this way.... All other apps that support color management show the same images as slightly darker. Weird.

We will probably need more details of what you are doing, what applications you are using, what OS you are using, what kind of monitor, and what system/application/document color settings you're using. Screenshots and (if possible) sample documents that illustrate the issue would also help.

[komtur]

I use DxO Photolab to develop RAW files. The files exported from it look correct in the system browser and in Faststone Image Viewer. They are identical in DxO and in the mentioned browsers. The same (exported) file opened in Affinity Photo is slightly brighter (it shows up well in the dark parts of the image). I attach screenshots showing the difference.

[v_kyr]

On 9/12/2020 at 9:48 PM, Sparkie Shock said:

I have also just tried this in Photoshop (elements 6.0) .. and the image exports EXACTLY as per the image seen in Photoshop. So something is definitely up with Affinity. Somehow the preview i get in Affinity is not reflective of what is going to be outputted. Is there tech support for Affinity? Cuz I really need to solve this problem.

 

Well Photoshop (PS as does PSE) has it's own color management engine, which is different from Affinity's LittleCMS based one.

However, usually it's as @walt.farrell already told you, you don't assign the "Samsung monitor profile" inside Affinity documents. Instead that monitor profile is installed system wide in the OS (Windows in your case) and every app which deals with color management reuses the Monitor color output informations from there (...the OS system).

For an Affinity document you just tell it which "Document icc profile" to use, which will be in most cases sRGB for output and preview to display devices. sRGB is here, so to speak, the lowest common denominator for all display/screen devices (computer monitors, tablets ... etc.). - If instead you would generate a Document especially for printer output (something which should be printed or go to a printing service) you would probably assign a CMYK profile to the document, as far as the printing service tells so and doesn't make any auto-conversion from sRGB into the CMYK color-space.

But back to screen/display documents, as said you normally use sRGB for Affinity documents here ...

... and thus work in that display related color-space. Now when you are ready with your image etc. and are going to export that one (let's say as a JPG) you export that one from inside Affinity (File > Export ...) and there under the Export panels "More ..." button, you can embedd the "sRGB" profile used in the document (that should be the default) ...

... so the exported and generated JPG file will have that sRGB icc-profile embedded, which in turn allows other third party software (if it's color management aware) to show things up as they have been setup and defined. - Even if another third party software isn't color management aware, it usually should be able to show up the JPG image in the right way here, since sRGB is as said before "the lowest common denominator for all display/screen devices"!

So it depends highly on what an Affinity document was setup here (usually sRGB, or if it's a document for printing CMYK, where the later CMYK shows up usually darker on screens than sRGB documents).

-------

Another completely different story is the Affinity RAW development engine, which as default usually shows up to develop RAW files from certain cameras darker as other RAW converter software if not tweaked accordingly.

[komtur]

This is all understandable, but the question of why Affinity Photo displays a slightly brighter image than all other applications (Adobe, FastStone, system browser) on the same computer still remains unanswered... I'll keep experimenting, maybe I'll finally be able to discover something.

[NotMyFault]

Besides assigning the sRGB monitor profile, it is essential to adjust all settings like brightness, contrast, sharpening, gamma, white point etc in the monitor settings. Some monitors have different color modes.

On Windows, there is a calibration function which displays several test images to check the setting (currently on iPad, can’t test myself).

Or use one of the numerous test images to check that the monitor (hardware) settings are compatible to the sRGB std profile used on OS.

This advise does not directly answer you question.  But working on a mis-calibrated monitor makes all editing wrong, and Affinity does not tolerate any mis-configuration. Other Apps might be more forgiving.