Monitor Colour Problem

[DJohnstone]

Hi,

I own a ViewSonic VA-2719-2K-SMHD monitor. The drivers from ViewSonic are installed and Windows 10 is set to use the ViewSonic 6500K ICC profile for the monitor. The monitor has been physically set to its sRGB preset (it is advertised as being pre-calibrated for sRGB).

Within Affinity, the colour profiles are set to the default sRGB entries.

My problem is that any white (255,255,255) areas in my document come out as a pale shade of yellow, whilst white parts of the UI and the "page" itself are exactly white as they should be.

Any suggestions?

 

Regards,

Dominic

[NotMyFault]

Hi Dominic,

This might help:

 

Regards

[BofG]

Interestingly, newer v4 icc profiles are referenced against d50 white, whereas v2 profiles used d65. If you are assuming a d65 white point, then a d50 white appears yellow.

I suspect this isn't a Windows/profile issue and it's more a case that Affinity cannot correctly handle v4 display profiles.

[NotMyFault]

I never had an issue on 2 windows 10 PCs, first with Dell 2408 set to Adobe RGB, now LG34 5K with HDR & DCI-P3, and at least LG uses profile V4 (and HW calibration). So i cannot confirm @BofG that there is a general problem.

Both used with ootb profile first, and later switched to Spyder 5 calibration (or LG calibration studio SW & spider HW).

 

@DJohnstone: Can you try o open a test image with a modern browser (chrome, firefox, edge)? These are able to respect color profiles (whereas Windows Photo App, Explorer preview etc. can't).

 

[BofG]

40 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

I never had an issue on 2 windows 10 PCs, first with Dell 2408 set to Adobe RGB, now LG34 5K with HDR & DCI-P3, and at least LG uses profile V4

Thinking about it, I believe my X-rite creates v4 profiles so I'm using one myself without issue. It does seem odd though that this happens to quite a few people, I wonder what the actual cause of it is.

[DJohnstone]

13 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

Hi Dominic,

This might help:

 

Regards

@NotMyFault Thank you - this has solved my problem. By manually forcing the Windows default sRGB profile, whites look correct. I have tried to get in contact with ViewSonic about this but they are extremely unhelpful. They won't do anything in the way of answering questions, they want me to pay to send the monitor in for servicing when clearly the monitor itself works.

Thanks again for your help, and thanks too to @BofG for your input.

[BofG]

@DJohnstone can you upload your display profile here? I've just checked mine and it's using a d65 illuminant, so it could be that yours is d50. I'm just curious to see if that's the case.

[DJohnstone]

Hi BofG,

See colour profile attached.

Thanks

VA2719-2K_Series.ICM

[BofG]

@DJohnstone Thanks, that's been interesting to see (click to enlarge)..

Your profile illuminant is D50, as is mine. However, my profile is V4.20 and must contain a "chadtag" (https://www.color.org/chadtag.xalter) to convert to D65. Your profile is v2.30 and lacks that tag, hence your whitepoint is "yellow" by D65 standards.

Edit: I did a bit more reading and apparently a V2 profile can be created with the "chadtag" from the V4 spec. This might be releated to the issue.

As a side note, your monitor has a nice colour reproduction!

[DJohnstone]

@BofG That seems interesting, but I'm afraid the technical details are right over my head. 🤣 

From what you've said my understanding is that ViewSonic have not released an updated ICC profile for my monitor. Is there any way I could get around this, by using a different profile, say?

And about the colour reproduction, that's great to hear! How were you able to determine this?

[BofG]

3 minutes ago, DJohnstone said:

@BofG That seems interesting, but I'm afraid the technical details are right over my head. 🤣 

From what you've said my understanding is that ViewSonic have not released an updated ICC profile for my monitor. Is there any way I could get around this, by using a different profile, say?

And about the colour reproduction, that's great to hear! How were you able to determine this?

To be fair to ViewSonic, the specification for ICC profiles does seem to be a bit of a mess - and it might be partly that Affinity isn't reading some of the ICC file correctly (obviously it works on the OS level, so there's not a fundamental issue with that profile). If ViewSonic have a v4 profile available that would likely get around the issue with Affinity.

Looking at how close it is to sRGB though you aren't loosing much in terms of accuracy by using the sRGB profile in it's place when using sRGB document, with an Adobe RGB or another such wide gamut document you will be compromised a bit.

Top is sRGB (wireframe) vs your monitor (solid). Below that is compared to the wider adobeRGB, which is where you would loose some colour detail versus being able to use your custom profile (you can see your custom profile extends further to the green here than the sRGB does).

The tool is GamutVision http://www.gamutvision.com/

[DJohnstone]

@BofG Thanks for the clarification. I'll just tell the monitor to use the default sRGB profile then. That definitely stops the "yellow" tinge in Affinty.

[NotMyFault]

If you are really care about color accuracy, you should consider investing ~100-200€ into a calibration tool like spider, X-rite or similar. Or ask a friend who has one - after the profile is generated & imported to the OS, you won't need the tool any more - except you want to re-calibrate frequently.