Colors when opening screenshots

[tinygrasshopper]

Hi All,

 

I'm experiening an odd issue with both Affinity Photo and Designer whereby opening a screenshot (taken using the built in Mac screenshotting tools) seems to mix up the colors. For example, here is an original screenshot:

 

 

here is a screenshot of opening the original in Preview:

 

 

and here is a screenshot of opening the original in Affinity Photo:

 

 

and here is a screenshot of opening the original in Affinity Designer:

 

 

Not sure if this is a bug or I've just mis-configured something? (I think my settings are all just the defaults).

 

I'm using Affinity Photo 1.3.5 and Affinity Designer 1.3.5 (but the issue has occurred in all versions i've had (from the app store).

 

The issue does not occur on photos taken from digital cameras or other sources.

 

Cheers,

Chris

[MattP]

Hi tinygrasshopper,

 

Wow, that's quite a difference! :o Basically, what's happening is that the screenshots you take have the current display's colour profile embedded within them and when Affinity loads the file it honours this profile and it arguably isn't what you want in this scenario... It's a very strange result, but  you should be able to easily fix it by just going to Document Setup (in Designer, for example) then going to Colour and changing the colour profile to sRGB (it may say sRGB IEC61966-2.1) and then choosing 'Assign' and hitting OK. That should make the colours appear how you'd imagine: You're basically telling Affinity to assign the colour profile back to the default sRGB profile, overwriting the 'Display' colour profile that is causing the strange colours. I'll have a chat to the team today about whether this is deliberate or desirable default behaviour for screenshots - because if nothing else, it's a bit confusing! Sorry about this in the meantime... :(

 

In fact, what's weird is that if I open one of your screenshots, mine works just fine - and that seems to be implying that there might be a problem with your local 'Display' profile maybe? I notice from your colour wheel (showing all hues mapped through the current colour profile) that you basically don't even have red hues in your Display colour profile - which is quite something!? :(

 

Here's your example.png opened in my Affinity Designer:

 

 

Can I ask what Mac you're using and in System Preferences->Display->Colour what display profile you're using? Also what version of OS X are you using? :)

 

Thanks,

Matt

[tinygrasshopper]

Hi Matt,

 

Thanks for getting back to me.

 

I can confirm that changing the image profile to "sRGB" seems to fix it.

 

Re my display profile / system:

 

I'm using a Macbook Pro 15" (2014) and OSX Yosemite (10.10.5 currently but the issue occurred on previous versions also).

 

My current display profile (just using the built-in LCD) is "Color LCD" but the issue occurs whether i'm using the built in display or a monitor connected via HDMI.

 

As far as the color wheel is concerned, it looks correct before i open the screenshots: 

 

 

but not after i open the screenshot:

 

 

Once i "assign" the sRBG profile to the document, it goes back to normal.

 

Out of interest, i changed Designer's active profile to "Display" and tried opening the screenshots again but it didn't seem to help. I would have thought there should be no transform when the active profile is the same as the image profile?

 

Cheers,

Chris

[tinygrasshopper]

Btw, I guess it's worth noting that the color cast issue doesn't occur on the screenshot images when using any other imaging software that i've tried (various preview applications, Pixelmator, or Photoshop Elements in Windows) - seems like there must be some way to recognise this particular case...

[tinygrasshopper]

Hi Matt

 

Just wondering if there's any update on a resolution to this issue? Still seems to be present in 1.4...

 

Cheers,

Chris

[MattP]

Thanks for the update, Chris.. My best guess is that there is actually an issue with some machines' "Color LCD" profile but that other programs don't show the problem because they don't attempt to generate the colour transform at all when the source and destination profiles are the same (your screenshot contains an embedded profile of the display, and your display uses it, so the source and destination are the same). I'm guessing the answer is to simply not colour correct in this scenario, so I'll see if I can make that work...

 

Thanks again,

Matt

[tinygrasshopper]

Hi Matt,

 

I guess just some additional info - looks like the same thing happens with screenshots from other Macs as well - I had my friend send me some screenshots he took on his Mac and the same issue occurs.

 

Interestingly, screenshots from Windows work fine.

 

Cheers,

Chris

[Tekl]

Shouldn't Affinty respect the embedded profile as Preview or Quick Look do? Changing to sRGB helps in simple cases, but when I a drop another screenshot into a document, the new layer is color shifted again. And it seems, that I can't correct this directly in the document. I think this topc should be moved to the bug forum.

[Tekl]

Sorry for splitting up the discussion. I examined this bug on a different thread:

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/4712-color-management-weirdness/&p=87466

[JW1956]

It is now 2020 and I am using Affinity Designer 1.8.1 and this issue still exists! When importing screenshots into Affinity, their colours get screwed up (blue becomes purple, white becomes sickly green) and no changing document settings affects this in any positive way!

There is a workaround, however: import your screenshot as picture into a word document, and while in this word document, select the screenshot and "save as picture". When you next open the saved picture into an Affinity document, the colours stay normal.