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Weird background level change in Affinity Photo 2


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I have version 2 of all three Affinity apps on my Mac Studio and M2 MacBook Air.

All work perfectly, except for Photo 2 on my MBA. The background grey gets brighter if I move the pointer onto or off the image I am working on, or if I click the trackpad. If I stop moving the pointer, it goes back to where it should be, until I move the pointer again.

I have tried adjusting all the preferences and settings for the Mac but nothing helps. I have tried changing the display profiles. It doesn't happen with any other program on the MBA.

This happens on all images and if I transfer them to the Mac Studio, they work normally.

The saved or exported file is normal.

I have tried doing a screen recording and screen still grabs but the problem does not show. I have attached a short video from my iPhone to demonstrate.

Any ideas what may be causing this?

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  • Staff

Hi @jkfrench,

Thanks for your report!

I can confirm we've seen a few reports of this issue previously, specifically on M2 based macs - though we've yet been unable to replicate this issue internally.

If you open the Affinity app and navigate to Affinity Photo 2 > Preferences > Performance and disable Metal Hardware Acceleration, this should stop occurring for you. 

However we'd like some further information to see if we can replicate this issue here. Can you please navigate to Apple > System Preferences > Display and provide a screenshot of your settings here for me?

Are you using an external monitor connected to your MBA, or the built-in display only? Are you using the trackpad, or a connected mouse etc?

Many thanks in advance!

Please Note: I am now out of the office until Tuesday 2nd April on annual leave.

If you require urgent assistance, please create a new thread and a member of our team will be sure to assist asap.

Many thanks :)

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Hi Dan,

Thanks for your helpful response.

I can confirm that turning off Metal Hardware Acceleration has fixed the problem but will that affect the performance of the app?

I have attached two screenshots from the Displays pane in System Settings, as requested.

There is nothing attached to my MBA, so I am not using an external display and only the built-in trackpad.

Screenshot 2023-03-15 at 15.11.14.png

Screenshot 2023-03-15 at 15.11.42.png

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  • Staff

Many thanks for confirming that for me!

1 hour ago, jkfrench said:

I can confirm that turning off Metal Hardware Acceleration has fixed the problem but will that affect the performance of the app?

Disabling Hardware Acceleration may slightly slow down the rendering of your canvas on screen, but thus far this is the only workaround we have found for this issue, our apologies.

1 hour ago, jkfrench said:

Screenshot 2023-03-15 at 15.11.14.png

Out of interest, if you change the Colour Profile in use here to the SRGB IEC61966 2.1 profile, then re-enable Metal and restart the Affinity app, do you see the same issue?

Can you also please open your document within Affinity Photo and navigate to Document > Convert Format / ICC profile and let me know what is in use for your document that shows this issue?

Many thanks once again :)

Please Note: I am now out of the office until Tuesday 2nd April on annual leave.

If you require urgent assistance, please create a new thread and a member of our team will be sure to assist asap.

Many thanks :)

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Hi Dan,

I switched to the SRGB profile in System Settings, re-enabled Metal and restarted Photo2. The problem returned, I'm afraid. 🙁

However, I think you are on to something with your second request. The attached is what it was set to. Changing to any other profile made the problem disappear. Switching back to that profile made the problem reoccur.

I am going to select the 'This MacBook Air Calibrated' profile in future, unless you think I would be better using the Generic RGB profile?

Hope this helps. 😃

Screenshot 2023-03-15 at 18.12.11.png

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  • Staff

Thanks for trying that for me!

16 hours ago, jkfrench said:

However, I think you are on to something with your second request. The attached is what it was set to. Changing to any other profile made the problem disappear. Switching back to that profile made the problem reoccur.

That's very helpful information, thanks for confirming that - in another report of this issue the user was using the same profile within their document, so I believe you have found the cause of this issue, which I'll be informing our developers of now :)

16 hours ago, jkfrench said:

I am going to select the 'This MacBook Air Calibrated' profile in future, unless you think I would be better using the Generic RGB profile?

In the meantime, I'd recommend using the 'Display P3' profile, as this will be a wider gamut than RGB whilst still being a generic profile.

If you were to use the Calibrated profile, when it comes to exporting and sharing the image the colours may look incorrect on other displays, due to the specific nature of a calibrated profile for a specific monitor.

We hope to have this fixed in a future update, so you can use the Wide Colour Sharing Profile as required - I hope this helps!

Please Note: I am now out of the office until Tuesday 2nd April on annual leave.

If you require urgent assistance, please create a new thread and a member of our team will be sure to assist asap.

Many thanks :)

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  • 8 months later...
  • Staff

The issue "M2 Mac flashing workspace - when using Apple Wide Colour Gamut" (REF: AF-473) has been fixed by the developers in internal build "2.3.0.2150".
This fix should soon be available as a customer beta and is planned for inclusion in the next customer release.
Customer beta builds are announced here and you can participate by following these instructions.
If you still experience this problem once you are using that build version (or later) please reply to this thread including @Serif Info Bot to notify us.

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