Affinity Photo has different colors with certain ICC profiles compared to other software

[risussardoni]

I am using x-rite i1display plus to calibrate my monitor. Today I've realized that the color in Affinity Photo is desaturated when I use color profiles that were created with this tool (see attached picture). Αll other programmes show the same colors aside from Affinity Photo. Whenever I deactivate the ICC profiles in the Windows Color Management Profiles Affinity Photo shows the same colors like any other software. The problem also disappears whenever I switch to another color profile that was not created with the x-rite calibration tool. However, since the only software that has issues is Affinity Photo, I would assume that the issue lies here.

I would highly appreciate any ideas to fix this issue.

[Pšenda]

ICC profile for monitor in OS is OK? 

[risussardoni]

Yes the ICC profiles work well, aside from Affinity Photo.

[Pšenda]

1 hour ago, risussardoni said:

the ICC profiles work well,

ICC profile for monitor? 

[Pšenda]

13 hours ago, risussardoni said:

since the only software that has issues is Affinity Photo,

Affinity apps use ICC monitor profiles to display on the canvas, which other apps often don't do.

[risussardoni]

Thank you. I think this might be the issue. It seems that the ICC profile is applied twice: 1. in the OS (slight desaturation) and 2. Again in Affinity which leads to an even more desaturated image.

So it might be, that affinity uses the "correct" colors and the other apps are "wrong"?

[Pšenda]

3 hours ago, risussardoni said:

It seems that the ICC profile is applied twice

The ICC profile of the monitor (the result of the calibration of your monitor) is used to compensate the display of the standard color space (e.g. sRGB) on your specific monitor - so that the sRGB color space is displayed correctly on your monitor (therefore it must be set in the OS to be able to compensate with this profile any display - that is, if the application uses it). In Affinity, the profile in which the document is to be processed is then set - i.e. sRGB. Using a profile intended for a monitor/document in the wrong place will cause unwanted color change. Please provide a screenshot with ICC profile settings (application and OS), if you have it set up correctly.

 

3 hours ago, risussardoni said:

So it might be, that affinity uses the "correct" colors and the other apps are "wrong"?

This could be confirmed by displaying the calibration pattern in Affinity (displaying standardized colors), and checking them with x-rite (ie what is really displayed).

[risussardoni]

I've attached screenshots of my settings.

I was not able to follow your instructions with displaying the calibration pattern in Affinity. Do you have a link to a more detailed instruction on how I would do this? Thank you!

[Pšenda]

Hi,
I think you have the ICC profile settings correct (I don't know what the second/non-default monitor profile is for), but there have already been cases where the profile was damaged or had to be removed and added again to display correctly.

I would try to display some test pattern in Affinity (e.g. attached), and then use x-rite to read what values it reports for each color and if they correspond to those listed. You can then try this with your calibrated profile, with the default sRGB, or in other applications.

[risussardoni]

Thank you for your patience. I have spent the evening trying to read the displayed colors with x-rite but I didn't find a way to do it (sorry). I even tried DisplayCAL as an alternative and during this process I have created another ICC profile with exactly the same result.

[risussardoni]

I have just realized when I deactivate the ICC profile and open Affinity and activate the ICC profile after Affinity is started Affinity shows exactly the same colors like any other software. Maybe this helps to track down the problem?

[rvst]

40 minutes ago, risussardoni said:

I have just realized when I deactivate the ICC profile and open Affinity and activate the ICC profile after Affinity is started Affinity shows exactly the same colors like any other software. Maybe this helps to track down the problem?

It sounds like your calibration might have been reset by some other app and then when you activated the ICC profile after Affinity started, it reloaded the calibration as it should and you then see the correct colours. 

You might be running into problems with limitations of the Windows profile loader, which according to the developer of Displaycal, scales incorrectly and has poor 8-bit quantization. It's also possible to lose the calibration if some other process resets it as the Windows profile loader won't reload it.

https://hub.displaycal.net/forums/topic/q-regarding-dc-profile-loader/#post-14013

This is the reason that Displaycal comes with its own profile loader, which you need to check when installing the display profile after calibrating and profiling your monitor. This solves the problem and will reapply the calibration as necessary. 

I've never seen any colour difference between Affinity Photo and any of my other colour managed apps (the images look identical when viewed side-by-side). I use the Displaycal profile loader. 

I find Displaycal does a better job than any of the commercial software I've used. Try switching to Displaycal and using their profile loader and see if the problem persists. 

[risussardoni]

I have now removed all profiles from the color manager and recalibrated the monitor with DisplayCAL. After restart, the profile was correctly loaded but the problem still persists.

Edited January 31, 2023 by risussardoni

[risussardoni]

I have managed to fix the problem. I have used color calibration tool provided by the monitor manufacturer (LG). Now there are no discrepancies anymore between Affinity and other software. Additionally, it turned out that Affinity had the more accurate color represantation all along than the other software and windows applications.

I assume that this was not an Affinity bug but might be an issue with Windows and LG monitors and non LG calibration tools.

Thank you for your support.

[James Ritson]

On 1/30/2023 at 8:19 PM, risussardoni said:

I have just realized when I deactivate the ICC profile and open Affinity and activate the ICC profile after Affinity is started Affinity shows exactly the same colors like any other software. Maybe this helps to track down the problem?

This is inadvertently having the wrong effect: I believe the way Affinity colour manages on Windows means that the profile is applied during startup, but cannot be changed or refreshed during app use. Therefore what's happening is that you're disabling colour management entirely, launching Affinity with it disabled, then when you activate the ICC profile that change doesn't refresh within Affinity (until you restart). So the reason Affinity now looks the same as your other software is because nothing is being colour managed.

In your first post, the screenshot comparison with the slight difference in saturation might be because Affinity is colour managing your image correctly. I had a quick search for ImageGlass and colour management and came up with this: https://github.com/d2phap/ImageGlass/issues/43

There seems to be some confusion there between image colour profiles and display colour profiles. The software author is talking about embedded/referenced image profiles and being able to change them, but the key issue here is managing between the image profile and display profile. This is what the Affinity apps do—they will take colour values from the document or image profile (e.g. sRGB, Adobe RGB) and translate them based on the active display profile so that they display correctly when viewed on the monitor.

From reading the above issue on GitHub, it looks like the author implemented the ability to change the image profile, but hasn't implemented the actual translation from image to display profile. Therefore I wouldn't expect ImageGlass to be fully colour managed (only based on that observation above though, please don't just take my word for it).

On 1/30/2023 at 8:56 AM, risussardoni said:

Thank you. I think this might be the issue. It seems that the ICC profile is applied twice: 1. in the OS (slight desaturation) and 2. Again in Affinity which leads to an even more desaturated image.

As far as I'm aware, the Windows desktop composition has nothing to do with the document view in the Affinity apps, so you wouldn't have a situation where colour management is inadvertently applied twice.

It may be worth doing a quick test with an image that uses a wide colour space. I've attached a TIFF of one of my images that's been edited with a ROMM RGB document profile (I've compressed it in a ZIP to prevent the forum software from mangling it!). If you open this TIFF in Affinity and ImageGlass (plus any other software you use), do you notice a big difference in rendering? Affinity should be taking that ROMM RGB profile and translating the colour values based on the custom display profile you have created. Software that isn't colour managed will simply send those colour values to the screen with no translation. You should notice a big difference between a colour-managed and non-colour-managed result with this example.

 

3 hours ago, risussardoni said:

I assume that this was not an Affinity bug but might be an issue with Windows and LG monitors and non LG calibration tools.

I'm not really sure about this—I use DisplayCAL on both macOS and Windows and wouldn't consider anything else. It sounds like you should maybe just calibrate and profile with DisplayCAL, use its own calibration loader and then assume what you see in Affinity is correct. You can experiment with other apps as well, but do check that they perform document-to-display (or image-to-display) colour management, and don't just offer an option to override the image profile being used.

 

A useful diagnostic "hack" you can use within Affinity Photo is to go to Document>Assign ICC Profile (not Convert) and assign your display profile to the document—for example, mine might be UP3216Q #1 2022-09-19 11-11 D6500 2.2 F-S 1xCurve+MTX. This will effectively bypass colour management and show you what the image would look like if its colour values weren't being translated. If your document is only in sRGB, you might notice a very minimal change, if anything at all—you might see a small shift in saturation like with your first landscape image example. If it's in a wider space such as Adobe RGB or ROMM RGB, however, you should see a more noticeable difference.

And on that note, a general rule to observe: always use device or standardised profiles for your document (sRGB, Adobe RGB etc), never display profiles. Display profiles should only be used by the OS and software to colour manage between the image/document and display.

Hope the above helps in some way!

JR ROMM RGB_6030007 8-bit.tiff.zip