Publisher colour management issue

[MikeV]

Having an ongoing issue with colour management in Publisher – this issue has been occurring randomly in the last couple of versions of 2  including the latest. While a restart would usually clear the issue, with 2.2 that no longer seems to be effective.

Running Publisher 2.2 on Mac Studio with M1 Max chip on Monterey and now Ventura 13.5.2. Colour space is set to CMYK – this is a print project – and US Webcoated (SWOP) v2.

The images are linked Tiffs of pretty high quality. The randomly acquired blue casts is not consistent, and in past instances scrolling down rendered new images in the correct colour for a second before the cast appears.

While this cast appears on the main work space, the pages thumbnails mostly appear with the correct colours. Though changing the colour space in the Document Setup panel to RGB 16/sRGB did result in the blue cast appearing on the pages thumbnails.

Exported files, using the document colour or when specifying the colour space, now also have the blue cast.

Help! 

[NathanC]

Hi @MikeV,

Could we take a look at your document with this blue cast issue from your screenshots? I've provided a private upload link below. In case there's linked resources used, could you use the file > save as package function to save to an empty folder in finder, and then compress the folder and upload it so I have access to all of the files contents.

https://www.dropbox.com/request/mF3kS01G0vZAi5d0KezC

Many thanks!

[MikeV]

Hello Nathan,

I have packaged and sent the files. I have also done a bit more experimentation, and sent screen shots of a sample image in RAW, DNG through Topaz AI and JPEG and TIFF through Luminar Neo in an Apple Pages book file spread and a second screen shot of the same material in an Affinity Publisher file. These appear to narrow the issue.

Shout if you need anything else.

Thanks.

Cheers

Mike

[NathanC]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for sending over your files, I believe i've found the problem but not identified the cause just yet. All of your provided .TIFF files are RGB/16 ProPhoto RGB, but Affinity Photo think's they're unprofiled documents and as a result opening them with the default sRGB 2.1 profile so the image's are losing all of their vibrance and colour in exchange for a much duller looking image due to the smaller gamut size.

Evidently when you place the .TIFF's in Publisher it's also defaulting to sRGB as well. I'm still looking into this but thought i'd give you a quick update.

[NathanC]

Hi @MikeV

Just to confirm, were these .TIFF files processed in any app prior to being placed in Publisher? If so, could you advise which application they were converted from RAW to TIFF files in? I was quite surprised to see in the EXIF data that the date shot was 2005!

Back in V1 opening the TIFFs does retain the correct colours, however when looking in the colour profiles it lists as a completely blank colour profile, in comparison to V2 which treats it as a completely unprofiled document. In Addition, due to the age of the Camera model I've been struggling to find RAW samples online to compare against the samples you've provided me with.

 

[MikeV]

Hi Nathan,

Apologies for the radio silence. Things have been a tad hectic.

The premise of this project is to present photos from a digital archive created in 2005. 

The originals were raw photos from Pentax cameras set to the Pentax raw format PEF. For subsequent shoots that setting was changed to DNG, but the archive has sets of images in the RAW PEF format that will, hopefully, end up in other Publisher projects. I can provide a few 'undeveloped' PEF samples 'off line'  if that helps.

I  can't be sure how all the picture files were 'developed', but the two main paths were using Affinity Photo and Luminar Neo – the latter has great AI masking capability that allows for application of quite intricate mask adjustments very easily. A few were also run through Topaz Photo AI.

Does this help?

Cheers

Mike

[NathanC]

Hi @MikeV,

Thanks for the additional information, if you could provide the RAW .PEF files for comparison that would be great, I've provided an updated private dropbox link below for the uploads.

https://www.dropbox.com/request/lQh78YTK3vnCaTq1b1Rl

If you could advise when the files have been uploaded I'll then look into this further.

Thanks

[MikeV]

Hello Nathan,

I have sent six raw files from the second chapter – the area I highlighted in the original request.

Please let me know if there is anything else I can provide.

Cheers

Mike

 

[NathanC]

Hi @MikeV,

Thanks for sending over the RAW files, since we're now on 2.2.1 I decided to check through a few of the .TIFF files you sent me originally, and after opening them in Photo 2 to my surprise the colour profile/cast issue was no longer present! Opening the .TIFF files in Photo 2 was no longer assigning them the sRGB 2.1 profile which was causing the blue cast problem in 2.2.0, and after placing them into a Publisher document it was correctly retaining the ProPhoto RGB profile.

I've also just verified this on a separate Macbook pro, on 2.2.0 your images would fail to open with the ProPhoto RGB profile assigned to them, but following an update to 2.2.1 this was being correctly retained on import.

Therefore if you havent already I'd suggest updating your Apps to 2.2.1 and then try opening one of the .TIFFs in Photo, if this correctly retains the ProPhoto RGB/16 profile try placing that same image into a new publisher document to confirm the colour issue is no longer visible.

[MikeV]

Hi Nathan,

Thanks for the heads-up re 2.2.1. I usually update as soon as a new version is offered. Checked – I have all three apps on the latest 2.2.1.

To follow your latest note, I opened the book master file. For a couple of seconds the images appeared in a low-res form – soft/fussy – in the correct colour then as they 'linked' and the full quality images appeared in the document they reverted to the dark blue versions.

I duplicated that book file to created a new version of the file, closed Publisher, reopened Publisher, and opened the new copy of the book file. The images appeared in all their glorious correct colour?!? Went back and opened the previous file that had presented the dark blue versions of the images and that too opened with the images in their correct colour.

Not sure why?

As the issue was intermittent when it first appeared, I closed everything down and worked on another machine/project for several hours. Have just returned to the Studio, fired up Publisher, and opened the original file that had paused the images then presented them as blue-cast images. The file opened instantaneously, displaying the images in their correct colours.

Have left this for a couple of days. Reopened Publisher and the subject files to check. All still working correctly.

So, fingers crossed all is sorted.

Thanks for your assistance and persistence.

Cheers

Mike