How to turn OFF assigned color profile in Affinity photo

[TKucey]

 I dont know what happened, but now all the images and screenshots coming in to affinity photo are desaturated. A pop up window says a color profile was assigned. I have no recollection of messing with the settings - how do I turn it off so they are left as were set by my scanning software and/or screencap settings?

 

thanks!

[kaffeeundsalz]

If Affinity Photo tells you that it assigned a color profile to your image, it means one of two things. Either you've enabled "Convert opened files to working space and warn" under Settings > Color, or your image didn't have a profile when you opened it. In the latter case, you can disable the warning, but not the operation itself because Photo needs some color space to work with. If that causes strange color appearance, check which profile you've set as your working profile, again under Settings > Color. For screenshots, it should be sRGB under RGB Color Profile.

[TKucey]

thanks, the first is not selected and I do not see anywhere to change for screenshots. Maybe you can and can direct. Ive been loooking too long at this I think haha

[Ron P.]

When you bring a image into AP, what does it show at the top-left? By what you post it seems it would be a CMYK profile. They would appear de-saturated, dull compared to a RGB profile. If so, you can go to Document>Convert Profile/ICC Profile and change it to an RGB-8 or RGB-16.

[RichardMH]

I suspect Affinity Photo isn't reading the color profile of your images. Maybe your software hasn't assigned one? What is in the exif data? 

You can assign a profile in the Document menu in Photo. Its probably sRGB so try that. 

I'm having this problem with Topaz Photo AI when it processes raw files.

[kaffeeundsalz]

@TKucey There is no specific setting for screenshots. I just wanted to point out that if you open an image in Affinity Photo that happens to be a screenshot, I would expect it to be in RGB color space. Also, most operating systems and external screenshot applications assign an sRGB color profile to the images they create. Your settings look just right, so there must be something else going on.

[NotMyFault]

3 hours ago, kaffeeundsalz said:

space. Also, most operating systems and external screenshot applications assign an sRGB color profile to the images they create. Your settings look just right, so there must be something else going on.

This might be true for Windows, but MacOS uses the current Display color profile and assigns this to screenshot files. Otherwise all screenshots on high gamut displays would get capped to sRGB - which is not the case.

[lacerto]

The reason your images look a bit desaturated might be that your display is wide gamut, which means that screenshots without a display color profile embedded, if opened in Affinity Photo, would be assigned with whatever color profile you have defined in Preferences > Color. Based on your screenshot, you are using the default sRGB. That would result in desaturated colors since your wide gamut display's color appearance cannot be fully represented in sRGB [and the colors within the spectrum of sRGB would be rendered with lower values than in sRGB so producing duller appearance when used in sRGB color space]. So you would get something like this (the difference can only be simulated here on the forum since all images are narrowed down to sRGB gamut, so the saturation below has been decreased by image manipulation):

If you want to open the screenshots in Affinity Photo in their original appearance, you would need to assign them your display color profile when you open them for editing. If you have a calibrated display this would typically be an .icm file that your calibrator has created, or something more generic indicating the kind of display you have (e.g. one provided by the manufacturer of the display). On macOS, screenshots typically have display color profile embedded and called just "Display".

If you then would want to have the screenshots in sRGB gamut (for public use), you would need to convert them from the display color gamut to sRGB.

UDPATE: At least system screenshots under Windows 11 do not have a color profile attached, and if they did, assigning sRGB would be totally wrong. Some screenshot apps might convert the display colors to sRGB, but this should happen on user's consent and be just an option and alternative to using display colors.