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Affinity Photo 2 colour issues with ICC profiles after File > New From Clipboard


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I’ve been having this issue with Affinity Photo, and have purchased an upgrade to Affinity Photo 2 in the hopes that this would fix it. However, it has not.

My issue is that when importing an image via the File > New From Clipboard, there appear to be issues with the colours/ICC profile upon saving and reopening the file.

The process to reproduce this, as shown on the attached image:

1) Find an image in Firefox, and copy this to the clipboard.
2) In Affinity Photo 2, select File > New From Clipboard. It’s not obvious from my image, but at this stage the image is noticeably lighter than when viewed in Firefox.
3) Select Document > Assign ICC Profile > sRGB ICC… At this point, the image darkens and appears to be the same as the original from Firefox.
4) Alter the image. In the case of this example I have covered the original text background and added new text over the top. The same colours are also in the exported image.
5) If I then close Affinity Photo 2 and then open the document again, the background image (from the original Firefox import) is again noticeably lighter. The alterations that I made in step 4 are now visible and do not match the background image. Note that at this stage, when the file is opened, for a split second the image shows at the correct colours and then reverts to this noticeably lighter profile.

6) The final image here is just to show the difference between the lighter (at step 2 and 5) and darker (step 1, 3, and 4) versions of this image.

Affinity Photo version 2.1.0.
macOS version 12.6.

 

AffinityBug.jpg

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Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

Please show us the Color section of the Settings dialog within Photo 2.

At step 4 in your screenshots, you say "Export". What format did you Export to? 

If you weren't Saving as a .afphoto file, does the same problem occur if you do a Save instead of an Export?

-- Walt
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Thanks. :)

Sorry, I should've been more clear about step 4, as I combined a couple of things:

- At step 4 I saved an .afphoto document. It is this .afphoto document that I reopen in step 5.

- I also exported a JPEG file at step 4, and the colour of this matches what I was working on during step 4 in Affinity Photo 2. The JPEG has identical colouring to the image in step 4.

I've attached a screenshot of the Colour section of the Preferences below.

Screen Shot 2023-05-26 at 10.28.26 PM.png

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Hi @cvnicks,

One additional question...

What ICC Profile does your monitor use, is it also using sRGB or Display P3?

I think the issue you are seeing may relate to Step 2, i.e., Select Document > Assign ICC Profile > sRGB ICC.

If instead you either...

  • Select Document > Convert Format ICC Profile > sRGB ICC instead of Assign ICC Profile > sRGB ICC
    or
  • In the Preferences, tick the Convert opened files to working space and tick warn as well

Then follow the steps 4 and 5 as before and see whether you still see the same issue?

Affinity Designer 2.4.1.2344 | Affinity Photo 2.4.1.2344 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.1.2344
Affinity Designer 1.7.3 | Affinity Photo 1.7.3 | Affinity Publisher 1.10.8
MacBook Pro 16GB, macOS Monterey 12.6.8, Magic Mouse

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Thanks for the suggestions.

Both of these result in the same outcome. They are able to save and then reopen the file without any change in the colour, however the colour is incorrect during the editing stage, the exported file, and when reopening (i.e. it is lighter than it should be, as is shown in step 2).

I should add that I also do not have this issue if instead of using "File > New From Clipboard", I simply save the image and then drag this from the macOS Finder into Affinity Photo 2. When I do this the image is darker (well, the correct colour, as shown in step 1, 3, and 4) and can be saved and reopened without the colour changing.

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  • Staff

Hi @cvnicks,

Welcome to the Affinity Forums :)

When using File > New From Clipboard the layer will be imported as an 'Image' layer, with an embedded colour profile - which may be different to the working profile within Affinity or the colour profile set to your monitor in macOS settings.

Therefore once you've used this option, if you right-click on the Image layer and select Rasterise, the layer will then use the colour profile applied to your Affinity document.

Does this allow for the expected colours to be shown, and not change when saving/reopening?

Please note that Affinity is a fully colour managed app, using both your document and screen colour profile to display colours - whereas I do not believe that Firefox is, so come colour variance may occur depending on your profiles in use etc.

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 @cvnicks,

Could you also provide a url to the logo you copied from Firefox so we can see if it's tagged or untagged as that has the potential to cause the issue you are seeing here... :)

Affinity Designer 2.4.1.2344 | Affinity Photo 2.4.1.2344 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.1.2344
Affinity Designer 1.7.3 | Affinity Photo 1.7.3 | Affinity Publisher 1.10.8
MacBook Pro 16GB, macOS Monterey 12.6.8, Magic Mouse

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Thanks, @Dan C . I can see that if I Rasterise the image between steps 3 and 4 then it does correctly show the expected colours after saving and then reopening, and I will use this method for now.

I'm not sure that I 100% understand what is going on with regards to colour profiles in my initial method, but I would think that it would still be considerred a bug to be able to see and save a document that looks one way and then to have it look another way when opened again.

@Hangman , the original image was copied from a Twitter post, and the URL can be found here: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fw4SksfaAAA4PYM?format=jpg&name=medium

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Hi @cvnicks,

Thanks for the link, I've been trying to work out what could be going on with your file in lieu of you rasterising the imahe layer.

Are you happy to upload your edited, layered Photo file so I can take a quick look at how it's been put together. There are a few things I can think off that 'could' cause the colour shift but it would help a lot being able to see your file first hand rather than speculating... :)

Affinity Designer 2.4.1.2344 | Affinity Photo 2.4.1.2344 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.1.2344
Affinity Designer 1.7.3 | Affinity Photo 1.7.3 | Affinity Publisher 1.10.8
MacBook Pro 16GB, macOS Monterey 12.6.8, Magic Mouse

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Hi @cvnicks,

Many thanks for your file which has confirmed a couple of things for me...

You source image is untagged, i.e., it doesn't have an embedded colour profile. When using New from Clipboard to add your image to Affinity Photo it's added, as you've seen, as an Image layer (using the Generic RGB profile) rather than as a Pixel layer.

When you assign a profile you are “preserving colour numbers”, so while the appearance of the file will change, sometimes dramatically, because the numbers in the file have not been converted, assigning a new colour profile changes the meaning of the numbers.

To demonstrate, copy your original image and use New from Clipboard twice so you now have two Affinity Photo documents. If you now assign the sRGB Colour Profile to one of the documents you will see the image appears darker overall and now matches the image appearance in Firefox (which is colour managed) but if you zoom into the same section of both images so you can see individual pixels and use the colour picker tool to select the same pixel in both images you will see the colour values are the same despite the two images looking visually different.

If you save both Affinity Photo documents, naming the unchanged version Unassigned.afphoto and the one where you assigned the sRGB Colour Profile, Assigned.afphoto and now close and reopen Assigned.afphoto you will see that both douments now look idential, this is because Image layers retain all of the data from the original image. To make the change permanent you first have to rasterise the layer prior to saving the document.

By assigning the sRGB Colour profile to your unprofiled document then using the colour values in the newly assigned file to make your edits means that when the document is closed and reopened the image layer is now using the data from the original image rather than assigned values which is why it no longer matches the colours in your edits.

If, instead of assigning the sRGB Colour Profile to you image you had either Converted it or you had enabled both the Convert opened files to working space and the and warn (for clarification) check boxes in the Affinity Photo Colour Preferences then when using New from Clipboard to add your original image to your document the Image, rather than maintaining the same colour numbers, would have been converted to a new set of numbers.

By converting your image you are “preserving colour appearance” which Affinity Photo does by referencing the ICC profiles of the source and destination colour spaces precisely changing the numbers in the file so that they produce the closest possible match to the original.

This would mean, even without having rasterised your image layer, the edits you made or added to you document would have matched even after closing and reopening you document.

Again, to demonstrate, copy your original image and use New from Clipboard twice so you now have two Affinity Photo documents. If this time you use Convert Format / ICC Proflie to convert (rather than assign) the sRGB Colour Profile to one of the documents you will see the image doesn't change visually and matches your other document but this time if you zoom into the same secion of both images so you can see individual pixels and use the colour picker tool to select the same pixel in both images you will see the colour values are different despite the two images looking visually idential.

Saving both documents as before, one as Unconverted.afphoto, the other as Converted.afphoto, closing and reopening the one named Converted.afphoto it will still look identical to the Unconverted.afphoto document.

Working on the converted document and making your edits would have resulted in a file where you saw no visual changes after closing and reopening it, despite at this stage not rasterising the Image layer because your edits would have been made using the same colour numbers as your converted background layer.

So, somewhat long story short, in situations like this, converting rather than assigning is the way to go.

I don't know if any of the above makes any sense, it's quite a complex subject to get your head around but as @Dan C says (far more concisely and eloquently) above rasterising the layer will 'fix' the colour values, again to demonstrate...

Copy your original image and use New from Clipboard, now assign the sRGB Colour Profile to your Image, duplicate the Image layer so you now have two copies of it and rasterise the duplicated layer. Add a small rectangle to a section of the blue backdrop and apply a graduated fill so you have a seemless blend between the rectangle and the blue backdrop. Toggle each background layer off and on individually and the graduated blue rectangle blends perfectly with both the rasterised Pixel layer and the non-rasterised Image layer. Save the document, close and reopen it and again toggle each background layer off and on individually and the graduated blue rectangle now only blends perfectly with the rasterised Pixel layer but not the non-rasterised Image layer because the non-rasterised Image layer is once again displaying the data from the original image which is what you've experienced with the file you've been editing.

I hope that helps to understand in some small way what is happening... :)

 

Affinity Designer 2.4.1.2344 | Affinity Photo 2.4.1.2344 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.1.2344
Affinity Designer 1.7.3 | Affinity Photo 1.7.3 | Affinity Publisher 1.10.8
MacBook Pro 16GB, macOS Monterey 12.6.8, Magic Mouse

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