Colors reversed when placing screenshots

[Benfischer]

This happens in both Affinity Photo and Designer.  If I import a Photo, from the camera roll, everything looks OK.  But if I import a screenshot, colors are reversed. Red is Green and other weirdness.

In the 1st image, Steve Martin in Red is the screenshot, which is the ccorrect color, and Steve Martin in Green is after importing to Affinity Photo.

The image that I attached is a screenshot.  Just to make you crazy, if I place THAT screenshot into Photo, the colors are swapped again.  Now the AP image is correct-ish (kind of crappy but at least it's red) and the actual screenshot is green.

the mac screenshots are in PNG by default. I tried exporting one to JPG but no change.  The color profile of the Affinity Document is RGB.

Help?

[Alfred]

7 hours ago, Benfischer said:

The color profile of the Affinity Document is RGB.

What happens if you change the colour profile of the document to CMYK before importing the image?

[Benfischer]

1 hour ago, Alfred said:

What happens if you change the colour profile of the document to CMYK before importing the image?

The same thing. Colors are reversed.

[MEB]

@Benfischer
Can you attach the original screenshot image here to see if we can reproduce the issue?
Can you also take a screenshot of the Colour section in the Settings please? Thanks.

[Benfischer]

Here's the image, settings and result after importing to Affinity Photo 2.1.  Placement policy is "embed"

.

 

Just to make sure it's not a OS bug, I imported the image to Mail and MIcrosoft Word and it imported correctly. 

thanks

[MEB]

Thanks @Benfischer. One more question: how are you importing the image? Dragging it from somewhere to the canvas, using file > Open command and navigating to the Media > Photos section in Finder, other way?

[Benfischer]

File -> place and drag and drop into the document both give the same result. 

[lepr]

@Benfischer

The profile embedded in your screenshots is a display profile named LS27A600U which contains localised description "Display".

Affinity apps on macOS (maybe Windows too?) have always (or at least the six years I've used them) had a bug affecting the handling of an image with an embedded profile whose localised description is "Display". Instead of using the profile that's in the image, the app instead uses the first profile whose localised description is "Display" that it has found in your Mac's system files.

Therefore, I suspect your Mac system includes more than one profile with localised description "Display" and Affinity is using the wrong one for your LS27A600U screenshots which are appearing inverted in Affinity.

[Benfischer]

I just tried it on my iPad and the screen shot imported ok. I both took a screenshot with the iPad and tried the image I attached above. Both imported ok. So the iPad version handles the profile ok. I guess?   
 

fwiw, the iPad screenshot uses a different profile sRGB IEC61966-2.1, but both import ok

weird

[Benfischer]

fyi, I played around with the color profiles on my Mac and found one called Display and it was pretty messed up. I deleted it and rebooted but no improvement.

Edited August 22, 2023 by Benfischer
Add info about reboot

[Benfischer]

So, after fussing around with this, I was able to fix things by manually setting my Mac's color profile to SRGB IEC....  Screenshots that were taken with the old color profile are still somewhat psychedelic, but screenshots with the sRGB profile are OK.

The color profile on my mac was set to LS27A600U as @lepr noted from the picture.  And that profile does exist on my mac under that name, but for whatever reason Affinity doesn't like it.  LS27A600U is my Samsung monitor.  interestingly, I plugged my macbook into a Dell monitor just once to see if it works and that profile shows up in the Affinity profile list, but my Samsung which has been plugged into my macbook for several weeks does not.  It doesn't seem to be dependent on the location of the file, but for some reason likes Dell over Samsung.

Finally, there’s still something off on the Mac version. Screenshots taken with both color profiles import fine on the iPad. 
 

I’ll stop spamming the forum now. 

Edited August 23, 2023 by Benfischer
Add final note about ipad

[lepr]

5 hours ago, Benfischer said:

fyi, I played around with the color profiles on my Mac and found one called Display and it was pretty messed up. I deleted it and rebooted but no improvement.

In case you didn't realise, I was talking about profiles containing localised description "Display", regardless of their filename. There can be several such profiles on your machine. For example, the LS27A600U one and the standard one for your MacBook, and possibly others for other displays you've used in the past.

[lepr]

4 hours ago, Benfischer said:

So, after fussing around with this, I was able to fix things by manually setting my Mac's color profile to SRGB IEC

Not a real solution (especially when a wide gamut display is in use) - that will make everything in every app be displayed wrongly unless your monitor is a perfect sRGB device.

4 hours ago, Benfischer said:

interestingly, I plugged my macbook into a Dell monitor just once to see if it works and that profile shows up in the Affinity profile list, but my Samsung which has been plugged into my macbook for several weeks does not.

Affinity lists the localised description of a profile, not the filename of a profile. Your LS27A600U profile has localised description "Display", so it would be listed as "Display" if listed at all. However, Affinity was finding another profile with localised description "Display" and using that for managing the colours in your LS27A600U screenshots.

4 hours ago, Benfischer said:

Finally, there’s still something off on the Mac version.

See my first paragraph of this post.

 

 

 

[Benfischer]

Well, then I can’t import screen shots on my Mac and will have to figure out a different quick and dirty import method. 

[lepr]

3 hours ago, Benfischer said:

Well, then I can’t import screen shots on my Mac and will have to figure out a different quick and dirty import method. 

You can use your Mac's ColorSync Utility to convert existing screenshots to sRGB and then Affinity will use the screenshots correctly.

Before making future screenshots, you can use ColorSync Utility to edit the localised description in your Mac's LS27A600U display profile to "LS27A600U" instead of "Display". Then new screenshots will be handled correctly by Affinity, with no need to first convert them to sRGB.

Edited August 23, 2023 by lepr
added info

[Benfischer]

It can be done in Preview as well, as i figured out this morning, but it's unlikely I'll remember that next time I want to do a study on something (in this case, drawing a juggler in action).  It's not like it's a showstopper, but it's a nuisance.  I mean, it works in other apps.  These images import OK in Inkscape, for instance, which is open source.  Perhaps some bright bulb can go through the code and figure out how it works there and not in Affinity Photo and Designer.

thanks for your help @lepr.  You pointed me in the right direction!

9 minutes ago, lepr said:

You can use your Mac's ColorSync Utility to convert screenshots to sRGB and then Affinity will use the screenshots correctly.

 

[lepr]

6 minutes ago, Benfischer said:

It can be done in Preview as well, as i figured out this morning,

Oh no! Preview can assign a different profile. That is not what to do. You need to convert your problematic LS27A600U screenshots to another profile such as sRGB. In ColorSync Utility, conversion is done by Match To Profile.

[Benfischer]

It's even less likely I'll remember that, lol.  Until all this happened, I didn't know there was such as thing as the "ColorSync Utility".

thanks for your help.

[Cliff and Gorge]

Even easier than that. Been mucking with the dreaded green cast for months. Solution: Open in Preview. >Tools > Assign Profile > change from coloursync 104a to Adobe RGB. Save.

Problem solved.