New to editing. When I look at edited photos on PC they look good, but then when I look at photo on my iPad it looks totally wrong?

[One Whisper]

Hello, I’m completely new to editing so this might be something that most people know but I don’t know? I edit a photo on my windows PC and it looks fine. I export it and save it on my PC. Then I take the saved photo and save it on my cloud and when I open it on my iPad, it looks totally wrong - usually over saturated or too much contrast. When I open the exported affinity JPEG image on my PC, it looks fine, exactly like it did in Affinity. So is it just the difference in PC to IOS, it’s going to look different? 

I am using

6th gen iPad (IOS 15.0.2)

Windows 10 Home, Affinity 1.9.2.1035

Color profile info on affinity says RGBA/8 - sRGB IEC61966-2.1

When I export, I export it JPEG, Pixel Format is Use Document Format

[Dan C]

Hi @One Whisper,

Welcome to the Affinity Forums

This may be due to your colour profile in use by your monitor on your Windows PC, or possibly your display settings on your iPad.

Firstly, please open Windows Run (Windows Key + R) then paste the following string and press OK:

colorcpl

In the window that opens, please select your monitor from the dropdown list, then let me know if any colour profiles are listed as used here? (if no profiles are listed, the default is used)
Please also navigate to the 'Advanced' tab here, and provide a screenshot here for me so I can double check your settings.

Secondly, the iPad screen will use P3 as the colour profile for displaying images, which is a wide gamut profile and may visually affect the image.
I'd also recommend ensuring that 'Tru Tone' and 'Night Shift' are disabled in iOS settings, as this can affect the colours on the screen.

Please note that unless you are using calibrated colour profiles across devices (such profiles created in XRITE etc), there will always be a slight deviation in colour & contrast from display to display.

EDIT - I've since noticed your Affinity Photo version is 1.9.2 on Windows, but the latest update is 1.10.5 - is there a specific reason for using this older version please, or would you like me to walk through the update process?

[One Whisper]

Hello! 😊

I was thinking it must be something to do with that. In my search trying to figure it out, I had seen something that seemed similar to my issue but it was for photoshop and on there they said the photoshop is color managed but many applications like phones are not color managed and just send raw numbers to the display. So, to be safe when sending an image to web or like phone or iPad, export using “Save doe Web (Legacy)” and make sure “Convert to sRGB” and “Embed Color Profile” are checked. So, I thought something similar might be in affinity, but didn’t find anything about that when I looked. I did see something about using Export Persona for preparing photos to export for Web or applications. I haven’t tried using Export Persona yet.

I got the screenshots for the color profiles.

My regular laptop (HP) is old and slow so I recently got a different one just to use for editing (Acer Aspire 5 A515-45-R74Z) that runs windows Home 11. I e tried using Affinity on there and thought maybe I’d have better results, but the same thing happened. I also added screenshots of the color profiles for that computer too.

My iPad, I checked “Night Shift” is turned off. I couldn’t find anything for “Tru Tone” though? 

As for the update - I purchased Affinity through the website and usually when I open it if there’s a new version it tells me so I can update but it hasn’t. I tried opening it again just before I posted my reply to see if it told me about an update but it didn’t. So how can I manually tell it to update? 😊 

 

[Dan C]

Many thanks for the screenshots and further information provided!

33 minutes ago, One Whisper said:

I believe the above screenshot shows the possible cause of this, as your monitor is using a calibrated display profile, Affinity will use this to convert from document colours to render colours on screen and this may change how the image is perceived compared to on your iPad.

If you return to the above dialog, then select this profile and choose Remove, your monitor will return to using the default profile, which I can see in another screenshot of yours is the correct sRGB profile.

35 minutes ago, One Whisper said:

My iPad, I checked “Night Shift” is turned off. I couldn’t find anything for “Tru Tone” though? 

Apologies, it appears I misspelt this slightly, but not all iPads support the feature. If yours does, I believe this is found under Settings > Display & Brightness, where there should be a 'True Tone' toggle if your device supports this feature.

Please do note that even with these changes, images will still appear slightly differently on iPad screens due to the wider colour gamut support (P3) than most Windows laptops / monitors.

This has been previously discussed on other sites, such as here -

https://community.adobe.com/t5/color-management-discussions/colors-look-different-on-ipad/m-p/11753815

I hope this clears things up!

[One Whisper]

Thanks so much! 

I tried to go into the color profile and I clicked on the profile but the “Remove” stays greyed out so I can’t click on it. So do the other ones - “Add,” “Set as Default Profile,” and “Profiles”

It seems my iPad doesn’t support that. I did see a slider for color temperature, which is set right in the center, so I think that’s good.

I understand it will be slightly different, just would like it to not be so vastly different than I have now. Now, I have to edit on my laptop get it to where I like it, then export it and look at it on my iPad only for it to look crazy and have to go back to laptop and keep making small changes and exporting it to my iPad to see how it looks…frustrating! 😂 

Thanks! I’ll have to read that! 

I forgot to mention earlier, when I saw about photoshops export for web not being on affinity, I saw people mention reducing quality down to 80% and/or changing Pixel Format to like RGB 8-bit or RGB 16-bit. I tried that but didn’t notice a difference. Is it supposed to make a difference? 

[One Whisper]

In color management, I went into “All Profiles” tab and scrolled down to the “ICC Profiles” and found 3 profiles. When I click on each one, I am able to click “Remove” there. Do I just remove the “sRGB display..” one that showed in the “Devices” section (the highlighted on in the photo)? Looking at my Acer, it has 2 ICC Profiles - the “sRGB IEC…” and “Agfa..” one like my HP, but doesn’t have the “sRGB display…” one. So, only need to remove it on my HP

[Dan C]

On 8/19/2022 at 6:58 PM, One Whisper said:

I tried to go into the color profile and I clicked on the profile but the “Remove” stays greyed out so I can’t click on it. So do the other ones - “Add,” “Set as Default Profile,” and “Profiles”

Apologies, you may need to tick the bow 'Use my settings for this device' near the top of the dialog to use these options -

You can either simply Remove the current profile here, and the default should be used - or after removing you could 'Add' the sRGB profile, so that your Colour settings match mine above.

On 8/19/2022 at 6:58 PM, One Whisper said:

I understand it will be slightly different, just would like it to not be so vastly different than I have now. Now, I have to edit on my laptop get it to where I like it, then export it and look at it on my iPad only for it to look crazy and have to go back to laptop and keep making small changes and exporting it to my iPad to see how it looks…frustrating! 😂 

Of course, I certainly understand - hopefully setting the colour profile for your monitor on Windows should relieve this issue somewhat

On 8/19/2022 at 6:58 PM, One Whisper said:

I forgot to mention earlier, when I saw about photoshops export for web not being on affinity, I saw people mention reducing quality down to 80% and/or changing Pixel Format to like RGB 8-bit or RGB 16-bit. I tried that but didn’t notice a difference. Is it supposed to make a difference? 

I suspect the thread you're referring to was looking to reduce the file size 'for web', rather than anything colour related. I can confirm that the Quality slider would not affect the colours in your image, however exporting to 16bit RGB if your document is 8bit RGB may change the perceived colours. I'd always recommend using 'Use Document Format' here if you don't want your colours to be converted upon export.

On 8/19/2022 at 7:16 PM, One Whisper said:

In color management, I went into “All Profiles” tab and scrolled down to the “ICC Profiles” and found 3 profiles. When I click on each one, I am able to click “Remove” there. Do I just remove the “sRGB display..” one that showed in the “Devices” section (the highlighted on in the photo)? Looking at my Acer, it has 2 ICC Profiles - the “sRGB IEC…” and “Agfa..” one like my HP, but doesn’t have the “sRGB display…” one. So, only need to remove it on my HP

This option will remove the profile from your computer altogether, rather than removing it from the monitor specifically. I wouldn't recommend this option as we should be able to achieve the desired results by changing the monitor profile only!

Please do let me know how you get on here

[thomaso]

On 8/19/2022 at 3:57 PM, Dan C said:

I believe the above screenshot shows the possible cause of this, as your monitor is using a calibrated display profile, Affinity will use this to convert from document colours to render colours on screen and this may change how the image is perceived compared to on your iPad.

If you return to the above dialog, then select this profile and choose Remove, your monitor will return to using the default profile, which I can see in another screenshot of yours is the correct sRGB profile.

Can someone shed a bit light on this for me Mac user? – I have read in several threads a solution for Windows colour management issues is to remove a custom, possibly calibrated monitor profile but use a default profile instead. And, as far I understand, this indeed helped to solve unexpected colour deviations in Affinity.

Now I'm wondering: Where do Windows users set a custom calibrated monitor profile if Affinity doesn't want it set in the System CM Devices panel (such as in the instructions below)?

[Dan C]

This is the correct location for custom ICC profiles to be applied to monitors for both Windows and Affinity - simply there are some custom profiles that can cause issues with colour reproduction in Affinity.

I'm not personally too au fait with the exact colour science behind this, or for the specific conflicts within the Affinity app, but many 'factory calibrated' profiles, such as the ones Dell/Acer provide, tend to cause issues in Affinity, whereas user created profiles (such as when using X-Rite) don't exhibit this same behaviour.

For this reason, we always recommend using the default sRGB profile, or a custom user created profile for the most accurate representation within Affinity

[One Whisper]

7 hours ago, thomaso said:

Now I'm wondering: Where do Windows users set a custom calibrated monitor profile if Affinity doesn't want it set in the System CM Devices panel (such as in the instructions below)?

I had done it when I did it in settings…

In Windows, you can either search for “Calibrate” in the Start menu and select “Calibrate display color” from the results. Or, go to Settings by going to System > Display > Advanced display and then click “Display adapter properties for [Your Display]” then go to Color Management > Color Management > Advanced before clicking the “Calibrate display” button. 

Then follow the steps to calibrate.

Not sure how it is for Mac though.

But, deleting the custom one I had didn’t seem to help so I don’t know what else to do. I guess I’m just going to buy Affinity for my iPad so I don’t have to deal with the issues between my windows and iOS 

[One Whisper]

11 hours ago, Dan C said:

Please do let me know how you get on here

It didn’t seem to help unfortunately. The X-rite program you were talking about, is that something I’d download on my computer and ipad to calibrate and get similar results?

[One Whisper]

I’m not sure if it would help to add photos to show what I mean since I feel like they’d look different depending on what they’re looked at on?

[Alfred]

13 hours ago, One Whisper said:

I feel like they’d look different depending on what they’re looked at on?

Isn’t that what you’re trying to find out? It seems to me that it might be helpful for you to know if it’s just you or whether, for example, your photos also look oversaturated or too contrasty on my iPad Air 2.

[Dan C]

16 hours ago, One Whisper said:

It didn’t seem to help unfortunately. The X-rite program you were talking about, is that something I’d download on my computer and ipad to calibrate and get similar results?

I'm sorry to hear this!
X-rite' requires a specific hardware camera style device, that you attach to the screen which then reads colour values and creates a custom ICC profile for your specific monitor and viewing conditions - this was meant more as an example than a suggestion as it's mostly only used by high-end professional graphic designers who need pinpoint precision with colour representation 

16 hours ago, One Whisper said:

I’m not sure if it would help to add photos to show what I mean since I feel like they’d look different depending on what they’re looked at on?

If you take a photo of both device screens using the same camera/mobile phone, then attach both images here they will likely not be an accurate representation of the colours in your document, however this would show us the issue you're referring to, and as Alfred has confirmed it may help us to determine if this is a specific issue to your hardware, or simply what is expected across devices.

I note you have 2 different Windows PCs - out of interest, with the sRGB profile in use for both devices, does your image/document appear the same across these two machines (allowing for slight monitor variance, if both PCs use different monitors)? Is the main difference seen only when viewing on the iPad?

[One Whisper]

Sorry took me so long to get back, been busy with work.

I took a screen shot of an image with my Acer computer to show how it looks and then when looking at it on my computer it looks different. 

The 1st is showing the screenshot of it on my Acer computer it looks way brighter and colors not as saturated to me. The 2nd is that same photo on my iPad. When looking at that photo on my iPad, it looks darker and colors more saturated. The 3rd is a screenshot I took of the 1st photo with my iPad (I had transferred the photo from my Acer and opened it in my files on my iPad, and that’s what it looked like. Even though the photo is the same as shown in the 1st attached image). Hopefully that makes sense. Hopefully these photos will help!

The photos appear the same on both computers (Acer and Windows), it’s when it goes to my iPad it’s so different. I’ve had to start transferring photos to my iPad, seeing what is over saturated or too texturized, and going back in and adjusting it. 

 

 

 

[RichardMH]

Might be worth downloading some of the test images available to see what's happening, rather than use your own images. Sort of thing people do for prints.

https://www.digitalmasters.com.au/Calibration Print - Adobe RGB.html

But I think tablets are designed to look good rather than be colour accurate.

[One Whisper]

Okay! Thanks! I’ll give it a try! Do they all look about the same when you look at them? 

[Dan C]

@One Whisper,

No problem at all - unfortunately I can't see any images attached to your above post, can you please try uploading these once again for me?