Margin/Bleed/Grid/Guides Colorpicker should be independent from Document Color Profile

[kaffeeundsalz]

I was working on a grayscale artboard in Designer the other day, hence my document color profile was set to Generic Gray Profile. I then tried to change the margin color and it looked like this:

Shouldn't the colorpicker for on-screen elements be entirely independent from the document color profile? If anything, I'd expect it to represent the current monitor color profile. But the current behavior just doesn't make sense. As can be seen from the screenshot, while the color wheel is in all-grayscale, the selected color is correctly displayed.

I can reproduce this behavior in all three Affinity applications on macOS, in the 2.2 retail versions as well as in the current 2.3 betas. Also, the problem is not limited to margins – the grayscale colorpicker (and swatches, sliders etc.) also shows when changing other on-screen colors such as for guides, bleed and the grid.

I don't know if this has been reported before, but I couldn't spot anything related in a quick forum search.

[loukash]

31 minutes ago, kaffeeundsalz said:

I don't know if this has been reported before, but I couldn't spot anything related in a quick forum search.

There were a few somewhat similar issues in the past going back to v1, often concerning CMYK colors being displayed as RGB in those flyout menus/panels. I think I may have even posted such a bug report a few years ago. As far as I recall, some of those bugs have been claimed as fixed.

34 minutes ago, kaffeeundsalz said:

Shouldn't the colorpicker for on-screen elements be entirely independent from the document color profile?

I'd definitely say it should. The question remains if it can.

[kaffeeundsalz]

7 minutes ago, loukash said:

I'd definitely say it should. The question remains if it can.

I could not find a way to configure this. That's why I posted in the bugs forum; I tend to say this needs a fix from the developers. Unless of course I've missed something.

[loukash]

1 hour ago, kaffeeundsalz said:

I could not find a way to configure this.

There is none.

What I meant by "if it can" is that these color UI elements are the same in all instances where they appear, so the question is if some of them can be separated from the primary document color space at all.

In any case, for now you can work around by choosing the slider-based LAB or CMYK color picker where you can still see and select the actual colors from the spectrum bar.
(Not sure if that's a bug while the actual behavior elsewhere is the "feature by design", hehe…)

[NathanC]

Hi @kaffeeundsalz,

Looks like you've found a Mac specific bug as on Windows this renders the same RGB colour selector preview regardless of the document colour space/profile, I've now logged this with the developers.