Background toggles between gray and black

[barnarjr]

Hi all,

Using Photo 2 on Mac, I noticed some odd behavior last night.  I have found a handful of photos that when I load into Photo 2, the back ground will switch to light gray, and the photo will be very washed out, when I move the mouse over it.  When the mouse moves out of the window, it changes back to normal.  So far all of the photos I've found that do this are from my iPhone 13 Pro (but I can't say for sure it doesn't happen with photos from other cameras) but it also doesn't happen with all photos from my iPhone.  I have plenty that behave normally.  I've included a video demonstrating this behavior below.  Anyone know what's going on?

Thanks,

John

[Pauls]

is your mouse moving onto a different monitor?

[barnarjr]

No.  It stays on the same one.  And the behavior happens on the MacBook display even when there are no external monitors plugged in.

[barnarjr]

It also happens when the mouse moves onto the toolbar on the left, without even leaving the application window

[Chris B]

Can you attach one of the offending files? I suspect some weird profiling issue.

[Hangman]

@barnarjr, looking at your screen recording, the particular photo you are demonstrating this issue with is a .tiff file which suggests it's not been taken with the iPhone's built in camera app as I believe this will only take images in either RAW, HEIC or JPEG formats.

Were the particular files in question taken using a specific camera app on your iPhone 13 Pro and if so which app?

[barnarjr]

Sure.  Happy to do so.  I'm attaching a few of them, in case more than one is needed.

[barnarjr]

@hangman, the photo shows as a tiff in Photo 2, but it's an HEIC and was taken with the iPhone built-in camera app.

[Hangman]

Just now, barnarjr said:

the photo shows as a tiff in Photo 2, but it's an HEIC and was taken with the iPhone built-in camera app.

Okay, perfect, thanks for the clarification...

[barnarjr]

And just as another data point, when I save the image as a jpeg and then open it in Photo 2, the issue does not happen.

[barnarjr]

Which I just realized probably means that the images I attached aren't going to be much use because I think they were converted to jpegs.  Is there a way to export as heic so I can upload it?

[Hangman]

If you Airdrop them from your phone to your MacBook they will be in HEIC format and you should be able to open them directly in Photo2 as HEIC files. It will be interesting to see if you have the same issue with the HEIC files...

Are the Tiff files exported from the Photo's app?

[barnarjr]

Ah, I just exported from Affinity Photo 2 as tiff format.  So I've attached a couple of them.  Maybe they will be more useful.

IMG_0629.tiff IMG_0755.tiff

[Hangman]

1 minute ago, barnarjr said:

Ah, I just exported from Affinity Photo 2 as tiff format.  So I've attached a couple of them.  Maybe they will be more useful.

If you reopen the exported Tiff files back into Photo2 are you still seeing the same issue?

[barnarjr]

So when I look at them in photos on my MacBook, they say they are heic files (I didn't airdrop, I just let photos sync them through iCloud).  But whenever I open them in Affinity, they show as tiff.  Is there a setting in Affinity to open them as heic instead of tiff?

[barnarjr]

1 minute ago, Hangman said:

If you reopen the exported Tiff files back into Photo2 are you still seeing the same issue?

Yes

[Hangman]

5 minutes ago, barnarjr said:

Is there a setting in Affinity to open them as heic instead of tiff?

Not that I'm aware off, try either airdropping one of the HEIC images directly from your iPhone to your MackBook rather than using Edit With in Photo's. Alternatively Export the image from Photo's using 'Export Unmodified Original' and that will export as an HEIC file and open in Photo2 as an HEIC file as well...

[barnarjr]

10 minutes ago, Hangman said:

Not that I'm aware off, try either airdropping one of the HEIC images directly from your iPhone to your MackBook rather than using Edit With in Photo's. Alternatively Export the image from Photo's using 'Export Unmodified Original' and that will export as an HEIC file and open in Photo2 as an HEIC file as well...

Having AirDrop issues at the moment, so I tried option 2 and exporting unmodified original works.  When I open the heic in Affinity, the issue doesn't happen.  Not an ideal solution, but since it only happens with certain photos, it is one I can live with for now.  Sure seems like a bug, so hopefully it is something that can be fixed at some point.

Thanks for all the help!

[Hangman]

27 minutes ago, barnarjr said:

When I open the heic in Affinity, the issue doesn't happen

Good to know, could you perhaps export one of the problematic images directly from Photo's as a Tiff file using the straight Export option and then upload that so we can see if there is anything odd about the Tiff export.

[barnarjr]

16 minutes ago, Hangman said:

Good to know, could you perhaps export one of the problematic images directly from Photo's as a Tiff file using the straight Export option and then upload that so we can see if there is anything odd about the Tiff export.

Yep.  Here is one of them in both heic and tiff format for you to compare.

IMG_0755.HEIC IMG_0755.tiff

[Hangman]

Well, there is a difference between the Tiff and HEIC colour profiles, the Tiff uses Apple's 'Wide Color Sharing Profile', which it sometimes does on iPhone (other times it uses sRGB), the HEIC image uses the Display P3 profile but I'm assuming that is the default profile you have set on your MacBook...

I'm unsure of your current Performance Preferences in Photo but if set, could you try disabling Hardware Acceleration and setting Display to OpenGL instead of Metal, then see if you have the same issue with the Tiff file opening it as you did originally from Photo's using Edit With.

Also after doing that, Quit Photo, relaunch and repeat the steps above and test again and let us know if that makes any difference at all...

[barnarjr]

5 minutes ago, Hangman said:

Well, there is a difference between the Tiff and HEIC colour profiles, the Tiff uses Apple's 'Wide Color Sharing Profile', which it sometimes does on iPhone (other times it uses sRGB), the HEIC image uses the Display P3 profile but I'm assuming that is the default profile you have set on your MacBook...

I'm unsure of your current Performance Preferences in Photo but if set, could you try disabling Hardware Acceleration and setting Display to OpenGL instead of Metal, then see if you have the same issue with the Tiff file opening it as you did originally from Photo's using Edit With.

Also after doing that, Quit Photo, relaunch and repeat the steps above and test again and let us know if that makes any difference at all...

That did it.  I did the two steps above and the problem goes away.  So that's great, but for someone who knows nothing about Metal vs OpenGL or color profiles, can you tell me the significance of doing this?  By not using hardware acceleration, will the performance of Photo be worse/different?  Also, could this have anything to do with the new MacBook Pro?  I'm using a MacBook Pro M2 Max and I never saw this before on my MacBook Pro M1 Pro.  I can't say for sure it didn't happen since I have a large photo library and it only happens with a few photos.

Thanks!

[Hangman]

I'm really glad that resolved the problem for you, at least we now know the cause...

As far as I'm aware this is a known bug which has been reported before... I can't confess to understanding the differences between Metal and OpenGL either but I'm hoping @Chris B can perhaps shed some more light on the issue and impact on performance of Photo and confirm the issue has already been logged as a bug...

I'm 99.99% sure this is not related to using a MacBook Pro M2 so I don't think you have anything to be concerned about on that front...

[barnarjr]

Good to know.  Thanks for all your help on this! I never would have figured it out on my own. 

[Hangman]

No problem at all, glad I've been able to help...