Why is Procreate’s CMYK so drastically different to Affinity V2s?

[hkartte]

I use Procreate to illustrate and love to use Affinity 2 for colour checking and other design stuff.

I use an IPad Pro 12.9 2021.

However, I’ve noticed that Procreate’s CMYK is really quite dull in comparison to Affinity’s, especially with the reds. Do I have the right CMYK format in Affinity? Currently set to U.S. Web (SWOP) coated v2 with Relative Colourimetric.

Why is this? Do I simply trust Affinity to provide an accurate representation of CMYK?

Thank you for your help, this is really important!

[hkartte]

FYI, the image I provided has become super saturated when uploading and so kinda defeats what it really looks like on my IPad.

Image re-upload below.

Edited November 2, 2023 by hkartte
Image re-upload

[walt.farrell]

19 minutes ago, hkartte said:

FYI, the image I provided has become super saturated when uploading and so kinda defeats what it really looks like on my IPad.

Compress (zip) the image, or use TIFF format, and the forum should leave it alone.

[hkartte]

Image re-upload 

Untitled.tiff

[Bryan Rieger]

When using CMYK in Procreate you need to ensure you're using the same colour profile that you plan to use later in your workflow (or at least the closest you can find).

In the examples attached (see CMYK.zip) I've created a Procreate CMYK file with the SWOP 2005 Coated 5v2 colour profile assigned to it. Using this I can then export to PSD and TIFF formats ensuring the colour profile is embedded in the document. The exported files can then be opened in Affinity Designer (or Photo/Publisher) using the U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2 profile—which is the default with CMYK documents in the Affinity suite, and which tends to be a fairly common colour profile to work with in general (at least in North America). At this point the colours you see should still reflect the colours you had seen in Procreate. Keep in mind that there will be differences in the colours you see on your various screens as other colour profiles (and gamuts) are used on the iPad, and other devices—in other words, the colours are always being converted to provide you with the best approximation of your CMYK document on that specific screen. Also, not every application will render the image with the supplied CMYK colour profile (ie. Apple Preview, QuickLook, etc.) often causing the image to look washed out—just open it in an application that will use the embedded colour profile (Affinity, Adobe, etc).

By default Procreate uses a generic CMYK profile which won't always provide you with the best results depending on how and where the final image is going to be used. If you're using the Affinity Suite I'd suggest always setting your Procreate CMYK document colour profile to SWOP 2005 Coated 5v2 unless your printer requests something different.

 

CMYK.zip

[hkartte]

So grateful @Bryan Rieger thank you. I kept wondering why the generic CYMK just didn’t look right. Thank you also for what you provided. Really helpful to see. 
😊