Publisher 2.2.1 on a new Mac already lists the colour profile I need, but where does it come from?

[SpotColour]

To my surprise, I didn’t have to install the colour profile ISO Coated v2 300% (ECI) on a new Macintosh (M2, macOS Ventura); it already shows up in Publisher 2.2.1.

I want to verify if the existing profile matches the one my printer (Flyeralarm) recommends. But the existing .icc file is nowhere to be found, so I can’t double-check this. Maybe this isn’t an issue, but I’d rather be sure than mess up an expensive print job.

The .icc file isn’t in one of these places:

• /Library/ColorSync/
• /Library/Application Support/
• ~/Library/ColorSync/
• ~/Library/Application Support/
• Publisher’s app bundle (which contains several other .icc files)

So, I ran a system-wide search with Spotlight (using the “System files are included” setting). I found several other .icc profiles, but not the one I’m looking for.

Here’s what I like to know:

1. Are there different versions of ISO Coated v2 300% (ECI) in circulation, or is it always the same .icc file from 2009?
2. Where does the mysterious profile come from? Is it preinstalled with the Affinity suite nowadays, or does it come from an existing .afpub 2.2 document (that uses this profile) that I moved from my previous Mac?
3. Where can I find this .icc file on my computer?

Thank you!

[thomaso]

• The default Spotlight search may exclude certain file types or folders (according to your custom system preferences for spotlight).

• Spotlight might need to manually add the search criteria for "system files". (right click a criterium (e.g. "Name") and scroll down to open a separate dialog to choose from via checkbox)

• Don't use the full profile name as displayed in Affinity, profiles may have several names, their file name may vary.

• There may be various official versions but also any custom modified versions, so you would need to compare the profile's metadata.

Here the two file paths of mine:

/Library/ColorSync/Profiles/ISOcoated_v2_300_eci.icc
~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Color Profiles/ISOcoated_v2_300_eci.icc

[SpotColour]

Ah, so you also think there might be multiple versions of the ISO Coated v2 300% (ECI) colour profile, @thomaso? That’s good to be aware of. And thanks for showing me how to compare two .icc files!

As for the search, I already did a search that included the system files, but it didn’t reveal the profile. Adding the (in)visibility filter to the search query also didn’t help, but I wasn’t aware that this useful filter existed, so that’s already a win. 

What baffles me is that Affinity Publisher 2.2.1 shows me a profile that doesn’t seem to exist on my Mac. It shouldn’t, as I haven’t installed it yet. Most likely, Serif shipped it with the Affinity suite as a default profile. But if that’s the case, it should still show up somewhere.

I’ll probably end up downloading the profile from Flyeralarm’s website and installing it manually, but I still like to know where this mysterious profile comes from. Otherwise, I can never be sure if the default (?) profile matches the Flyeralarm profile.

Thank you for your advice, Thomaso!

[thomaso]

24 minutes ago, SpotColour said:

a profile that doesn’t seem to exist on my Mac. It shouldn’t, as I haven’t installed it yet.

It may have been installed with any previous app, perhaps years ago. I'd rather say you did not find it yet with your search.

What keyword(s) did you use? (Does Spotlight find the / all other .icc profiles on your mac?)

Alternatively you can try the search app FindAnyFile which is easier to handle, less restrictive than Spotlight (and offers some more search criteria + filters for the result list). If you press the option key when starting a search it searches as "root" with extended access rights (and asks for your admin password).

[thomaso]

Also the app "ColourSync Utility" lists all profiles on your mac and their paths. Use the pulldown menu to choose a sort option ('v' symbol right of 'Profile').

[SpotColour]

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

It may have been installed with any previous app, perhaps years ago.

It’s a brand new Mac, straight out of the box, so that’s not the case. The only things I did were installing the Affinity software and moving over two folders with my two current graphic design projects, but that’s it. I haven’t got around to copying any of my other files or installing any other apps yet.

 

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

What keyword(s) did you use? (Does Spotlight find the / all other .icc profiles on your mac?)

I’ve searched with separate queries for .icc, 300, iso, coated, and eci using the include system files filter and the (in)visible files filter. The .icc search returned 37 results, mostly from /Library and /System/Library/. Searching within the Publisher app bundle yielded another 47. But none of these is the one I was looking for. In the app bundle, there's a CoatedFOGRA39.icc profile, which I think is related to ISO Coated v2 300% (ECI). But that's the closest match I found.

The ColorSync Utility lists 22 colour profiles, which you can see below:

[thomaso]

8 hours ago, SpotColour said:

ISO Coated v2 300% (ECI)  (…) already shows up in Publisher

(…) does it come from an existing .afpub 2.2 document (that uses this profile) that I moved from my previous Mac?

Where in Affinity / in what dialog window or panel do you see this profile?

Note, every Affinity document may include various profiles, one for every colour space. Unless they did not get changed they correspond with those profiles that are set in the app preferences when the document gets created. So it may happen that you see a profile in the Affinity interface that is not installed on your computer. See the profiles in the attached .afpub for instance, open the file and check its current profile and switch to CMYK to see another profile. profiles.afpub

[SpotColour]

I can choose this profile when I create a new document or export a PDF file. For this reason, I suspect this profile is shipped with the Affinity suite nowadays.

[MikeTO]

The following colour profiles are bundled with Affinity Publisher 1 and 2. They are not listed in ColourSync because they are inside the app itself.

I will note this in the colour profile table in my manual in the next version.

[Oufti]

 

8 hours ago, MikeTO said:

The following colour profiles are bundled with Affinity Publisher 1 and 2. They are not listed in ColourSync because they are inside the app itself.

These above are to be found on second level in the app : 

But there are some more, well hidden, deeply nested here :

(Affinity Publisher v2.2.1 for Mac, from Serif store.)

 

Anyway, no ISOcoated_v2_300_eci.icc file to be found here in. 

(Using EasyFind, the only one I find on my Mac is in a dowloaded folder ECI_Offset_2009.
Instead of it, for printing in Europe I now rely on the newer but similar PSOcoated_v3.icc profile that I installed in my ColorSync library, and thus is also available in Affinity.) 

For info :

 

Quote

The ECI offset profile PSOcoated_v3.icc is based on the characterization data set “FOGRA51.txt” applicable to the following reference printing condition according to the international standard ISO 12647-2:2013:
Commercial and specialty offset, Premium coated paper, tone value increase curve 2013-A, white backing.

The profile was created using the Heidelberg Color Tool 17 with the following settings:

• black length 9 (starting point 10%)
• black width 10
• total dot area 300%
• maximum black 96%

 

 

 

[lacerto]

16 hours ago, SpotColour said:

I can choose this profile when I create a new document or export a PDF file. For this reason, I suspect this profile is shipped with the Affinity suite nowadays.

I think it used to be so that Affinity macOS  apps purchased from Serif store only could read the internal Affinity app bundles for location of ICCs, and then Affinity specific user libraries under Application Support. And it used to be separate for all three apps and versions (including betas), but it seems that they are now capable to read them more globally. But if you cannot find specific profiles in system-wide locations, you might find them in these kinds of app specific locations:

/Users/<user account>/Library/Application Support/Affinity Photo/profiles/ISOcoated_v2_300_eci.icc
/Users/<user account>/Library/Application Support/Affinity Publisher 2/profiles/ISOcoated_v2_300_eci.icc

...etc. 

But all these should be locatable when searching within Finder (not sure if they would be hidden when using Spotlight.

EDIT: I just tested this by deleting old user account specific profiles, and created a new user account, but Affinity v2 apps still could find profiles in Adobe created shortcut locations /Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Profiles and/or /Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Recommended, which in my situation point to

/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Color/Profiles. and
/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Color/Profiles/Recommended

where (at least) I have many of the profiles found by Affinity apps installed. If I delete these folders (and delete them from the Bin, too), part of these profiles disappear from the Affinity lists. But e.g. ISOCoated_v2_300_eci.icc still remains, so it is possible that Affinity apps cache them somewhere whenever embedded in Affinity opened files.  

EDIT2: I just tested and when the Adobe specific profile shortcuts are removed, Affinity apps on a newly installed user account no longer list profiles like ISOCoated_v2_300_eci.icc. So it is clear that Adobe created locations are read, but also, it seems that once specific profiles have been used in a file opened for editing, these profiles are saved in a user-specific cache.

Anyway, I think this is a feature, not a bug.

[SpotColour]

Alright, I found out what happened. I think it's a bug in Affinity Publisher, and perhaps also the other apps. Here’s the story:

Today, I went to a friend’s place because he recently installed a trial version of Publisher. He never fiddles with colour profiles, so his Mac would be the ideal test device.

The first thing I checked was his New Document panel. It does not list the ISO Coated v2 300% (ECI) profile. So, I can confirm that Serif doesn’t ship this profile with their suite. Thank you for pointing this out, @MikeTO.

But then, things got interesting. I brought my two current projects on a USB stick to test a few theories. Here’s what happened:

First, I opened an .afpub file created on my old Macintosh. Back then, I assigned the ISO Coated v2 300% (ECI) profile to it. A quick look in the Document Setup panel confirmed this.

Then, with this document still open, I went to File > New… to create a new document. The ISO Coated v2 300% (ECI) profile was not listed. So, I tried to refresh the list of profiles in the New document panel by switching the Colour format to RGB and back to CMYK. And lo and behold, the ISO Coated v2 300% (ECI) profile popped up! When I quit Publisher and restarted it, the profile was gone from the list. I don't think this behaviour is correct.

After a coffee, I went home and tried the same on my new Macintosh. And indeed, I could reproduce this behaviour. If a document with the ISO Coated v2 300% (ECI) profile assigned to it is open, you can select this profile in the New Document panel. Otherwise, the profile won’t appear in the list.

The trouble is that Publisher will also offer this profile in the Export panel. And worse, if you export a PDF with this profile, it won’t complain about a missing .icc file. It will just render the PDF for you.

So, it’s likely that the exported PDF hasn’t got the correct colour profile or possibly no profile at all. But I cannot confirm this theory, as I don’t have Acrobat Pro. I also can’t share the project files nor the exported PDF, as this is work for a client.

My conclusion is that this odd behaviour must be a bug.

[R C-R]

7 hours ago, Oufti said:

But there are some more, well hidden, deeply nested here :

I found the same ones at the same relative path for AD V2& for AP V2 .... seems like a lot of unnecessary redundancy.

[thomaso]

6 hours ago, SpotColour said:

The trouble is that Publisher will also offer this profile in the Export panel. And worse, if you export a PDF with this profile, it won’t complain about a missing .icc file. It will just render the PDF for you.

If you can choose this profile for export what makes you think there is "a missing .icc file" ? – Does the export not work correctly and, for instance, embed this profile if set as export option (e.g. for PDF/X)?

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

I found the same ones at the same relative path for AD V2& for AP V2 .... seems like a lot of unnecessary redundancy.

In what way "unnecessary redundancy"? – I don't see duplicates within one app package. That each of the three apps contains the profiles appears necessary for instance if you have only one app installed.

Or do rather you mean the colour profiles should be stored outside the app packages in one of the macOS Library or Application Support folders and get used shared? In this case there may be more redundancy for instance in the "liblibpersona.dylib" with its size of 1 GB in each app but apparently same content.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

In what way "unnecessary redundancy"?

Some of these profiles are already installed with the OS, although they have different version numbers than the ones installed in the usual places that all apps that can use profiles can access. Most if not all are tagged as Platform > Microsoft & Manufacturer > Sage, whatever that is. They also have "All Rights Reserved" copyrights & apparently can't be used for new work so it is not clear to me why they are included at all.

[SpotColour]

11 hours ago, thomaso said:

If you can choose this profile for export what makes you think there is "a missing .icc file" ?

I think the .icc file is missing for these reasons:

• Affinity doesn’t ship this profile as part of their suite.
• Apple also doesn’t preinstall this profile.
• I haven’t downloaded it myself yet; I’m working on a brand-new Mac.
• I didn’t install any other software yet that could have installed this profile on my computer.
• An extensive search, including system and hidden files, didn’t reveal this profile.

That leaves one possibility: associated .icc profiles might get copied into .afpub documents. That seems unlikely to me, as it sounds inefficient. Even though the profile I need is only one or two megabytes in size, all my files would increase that much in size. It makes more sense to have a single .icc file in the system or user library.

But even if that’s the case, it still makes no sense that Publisher offers such an embedded profile as a choice in the New Document panel (and later, in the Export panel of this new document). That means a client could inadvertently send you an .afpub document with a slightly different version or even a corrupt profile embedded, and Publisher would then happily let you copy that profile into a new .afpub document. This way, you can never be confident about colour profiles. You might think you’re using the correct one from your library, while you’re not.

Therefore, I think this is a bug, not a feature (although I understand your reasoning, @lacerto).

11 hours ago, thomaso said:

Does the export not work correctly and, for instance, embed this profile if set as export option (e.g. for PDF/X)?

The export works without errors—that’s what worries me. Preflight also doesn’t issue a warning.

I don’t know the nitty-gritty details of colour profiles. But I guess that during export, Publisher uses the .icc file of the selected profile as a look-up table to convert the document’s colours to match the calibrated profile of the printing press. You can see this when you export the same .afpub document twice but with different colour profiles. If you open these PDFs in the Preview app, they have noticeably different hues. So, in the PDF, the conversion is already done. I don’t know if this is the correct explanation, but this is how I always understood it.

The point is that Publisher needs the .icc file to do this conversion. But then we’re full circle: where does this .icc file come from?

As I think this is a bug, would it be possible to move this thread to the V2 bugs found on macOS list?

[R C-R]

3 minutes ago, SpotColour said:

That leaves one possibility: associated .icc profiles might get copied into .afpub documents. That seems unlikely to me, as it sounds inefficient. Even though the profile I need is only one or two megabytes in size, all my files would increase that much in size. It makes more sense to have a single .icc file in the system or user library.

But there is no guarantee that the correct profile & version would always be in the system or user library.

[thomaso]

30 minutes ago, SpotColour said:

I think the .icc file is missing for these reasons: (…)

(…) I guess that during export, Publisher uses the .icc file of the selected profile as a look-up table to convert the document’s colours to match the calibrated profile of the printing press.

This two sentences seem to contradict. The fact that we can't find an item in the file system doesn't necessarily mean that the item does not exist. <-> As you seem to experience yourself, this profile appears to be available for Affinity. For instance it could be stored 'hidden' as temporary item in one of its proprietary file formats.

35 minutes ago, SpotColour said:

That leaves one possibility: associated .icc profiles might get copied into .afpub documents. That seems unlikely to me, as it sounds inefficient.

In my understanding it is required and rather efficient that at least basic profile data get stored within the Affinity documents: For instance to have them available when the document gets used on a different computer – e.g. a print service – that does not have this profile installed. Furthermore it seems to be required to store at least two profiles within the document in case the user switched while working between RGB and CMYK and back with the Assign option used.

Test: create a new document,
-> switch its colour space, don't change the displayed profile,
-> note the profiles of both colour spaces.
-–> Then change your app colour preferences to quite different profiles.
–> Create another new document and compare the two profiles again.

The question whether Affinity documents contain profiles was discussed a while ago in this long thread (initiated by different file sizes of empty documents):
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/185363-empty-document-file-size/

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

In my understanding it is required and rather efficient that at least basic profile data get stored within the Affinity documents:

I think so too.

[lacerto]

7 hours ago, SpotColour said:

Therefore, I think this is a bug, not a feature (although I understand your reasoning, @lacerto).

However, there does not seem to be means to explicitly select the source of the color profile in a (common) situation that there are multiple with the same name available, but there might be order of preference even if possibly not documented anywhere.

I would imagine that the highest order is given to the user, app and version specific library folder, so if there is a profile with a specific name there, and multiple profiles with the same name in other places on the system, the one in the user, app and version specific folder would be used -- and the other profiles with the same name would just be ignored.

If this is true, a user concerned with a specific version (e.g., one recommended by the printer), could affect, which of the multiple profiles with the same name would be used. And if a user does not care, they would probably just be happy not needing to see the trouble of finding one on the Internet.

[SpotColour]

7 hours ago, thomaso said:

This two sentences seem to contradict. The fact that we can't find an item in the file system doesn't necessarily mean that the item does not exist. <-> As you seem to experience yourself, this profile appears to be available for Affinity. For instance it could be stored 'hidden' as temporary item in one of its proprietary file formats.

It’s either that or Publisher renders a PDF with a fallback profile, like websites render text using a default font if they can’t find the intended one. Who knows? It could even be possible that Publisher skips the entire conversion step (in the colour management section, the documentation mentions that it can do unprofiled exports). Your suggestion is probably more likely though. But that’s why I said earlier I don’t have Acrobat Pro to test my theory.

7 hours ago, thomaso said:

In my understanding it is required and rather efficient that at least basic profile data get stored within the Affinity documents: For instance to have them available when the document gets used on a different computer – e.g. a print service – that does not have this profile installed.

Yes, but if you send a project to a third party, you should create a package (File > Save As Package…). Next to the fonts and images folders, there could be a third one for the colour profile. In my opinion, that makes more sense than embedding the .icc file in every single file. So, there might be other reasons to embed profiles.

But if it’s true that .afpub files (and .afdesign) files have embedded .icc files—which appears to be the case—that would solve the mystery of the missing .icc file! It would be great if a Serif engineer could confirm this and explain the reasoning behind this design choice.

With all this in mind, I still think there’s a bug. Let’s assume that Publisher caches the embedded .icc profile of an open document, which is fine, but then it offers this profile as an option in the New Document panel. That’s odd. Maybe @lacerto is right, and this is a cleverly designed feature, but in that case, Serif should properly document it because colour management is a crucial part of the design process. Otherwise, it’s undocumented behaviour (aka a bug).

On a more practical note, I need to get this print job sent to Flyeralarm. So, I will set the colour profile of my .afpub document and all the embedded .afdesign files to a different profile and restart Publisher and Designer to ensure there’s no cache. Then, I’ll download and install the ISO Coated v2 300% (ECI) profile so I can be sure Publisher uses the proper one.

Thank you all for your feedback! I learned a lot from this thread! 😃

[SpotColour]

Sorry, I meant undefined behaviour, not undocumented behaviour.