Swatches are wrong

[SkwithOv]

I have a standard set of colors I use as background colors for designs. 
This issue has been going on for months, probably over a year for me. I ended up just exporting plain images using each solid color and that worked okay for what I needed at the time, but my swatches are still wrong and it's infuriating. 

It happens every single time, in every document. It doesn't seem to matter what tool I use. It may just be this one swatch palette, I'm not sure, but it's the only one I actually use.

The swatches in the panel look correct, but when I use them, they're very wrong. Black is grey! The original sample I took was definitely pure black. 

 

1. Are you using the latest release version? Yes I just updated and it's still happening. 
2. Can you reproduce it? Without fail
3. Does it happen for a new document? Always 
4. If you cannot provide a sample document then please give an accurate description of the problem for example it should include most of the following:

•    What is your operating system and version (Windows 10, OSX Mojave, iOS 12 etc)? MacOS Catalina 10.15.6
•    What happened for you (and what you expected to happen) above
•    Provide a recipe for creating the problem (step-by-step what you did). Took samples, which look accurate, but when using them, they are very different than what's shown in the sample panel and very different from the original image the swatch was taken from.
•    Screenshots (very handy) or a screen capture/video. included
•    Any unusual hardware (like tablets or external monitors or drives that may affect things) or relevant other applications like font managers or display managers. I use a drawing tablet, which I've had longer than this program, but it happens regardless of if I have it plugged in.
•    Did this same thing used to work and if so have you changed anything recently? (software or hardware) I THINK it used to work in 2019, but maybe it's just getting worse and I didn't notice at first... 

Screen Recording 2021-05-22 at 11.20.49 PM.mov

[SkwithOv]

I tried taking some swatches and then using them and they look accurate so I don't know why it's doing it... 

 

I tried at an earlier point to re-do the entire palette (which takes a WHILE) and the same thing is happening with the "new" version too.  

87 Mandala Colors.afpalette

[walt.farrell]

Possibly a CMYK vs RGB difference? Or a color profile difference? What mode were you in when you created them, and when you're using them?

Can you give us an Affinity document that uses them and comes out wrong?

Is the error when Exporting, or when Printing?

[loukash]

7 hours ago, SkwithOv said:

The swatches in the panel look correct, but when I use them, they're very wrong. Black is grey! The original sample I took was definitely pure black. 

Your document is probably in the RGB/16 color format.
Unless you know what you're doing, you may want to use the RGB/8 format instead.

For the record: What ringed a bell to me was your initial white rectangle that displayed as R/G/B:235 rather than 255. That's exactly what happens to the default white fill if you open a new RGB document in 16-bit mode.

[lepr]

9 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Is the error when Exporting, or when Printing?

The video shows the appearance of the object in the Affinity document being distinctly different to the colour displayed in the Swatches panel each time a swatch is applied to the object.

[lepr]

17 hours ago, SkwithOv said:

I tried taking some swatches and then using them and they look accurate so I don't know why it's doing it... 

You are applying the swatches in an RGBA/32 document which has a linear colour space. The Swatches panel is not correctly colour managed with respect to the document colour space. The panel is showing the swatches' numerical definitions in a gamma encoded colour space despite the document having a linear colour space.

What is your reason for working in RGBA/32, anyway?

[SkwithOv]

I still have this issue, and I have the settings set to RGB/8 (I've checked about 50 times, it's in preferences as my default and also in document setup, and it shows as 8 bit in the color slider options), but it still starts with a "white" box being that grey color instead of actually white. 
I don't remember ever intentionally changing them to anything previously (just changing them back), so I'm not sure why it was anything different at any point before, and it did used to start as a white box months ago so it wasn't always an issue for me. 

[Dan C]

@SkwithOv Sorry to hear this - can you please recreate these swatches in a Document Palette and then upload a copy of your document here, so we can investigate further?

Do you have a custom ICC profile applied to your monitor, through your OS? This can change the displayed colour on your canvas within Affinity, sue to 'document to screen' conversion that Affinity applies.

Many thanks in advance!