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Asset, colour palette and objects all black


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Very very very new to using Affinity so appreciate if this is a dumb question.

As you can see in the picture all assets, colour palettes and objects are black/very very dark.

It affects all assets, colour palettes, everything. I didn't do anything to make it this way that I'm aware of it just kind of did it.

Not sure how this happened or how to correct it, it's only my second time using Affinity and it also happened the first time I used it, I corrected it except I can't remember how.

reddit help.png

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Hi @Affinity4D and welcome to the forums,

Which Colour Format are you using in the Document Setup Colour Tab? If Grey/8 or Grey/16 then you likely need to change this to RGB or CMYK depending on your document requirements...

With regards to the Assets Panel, if your assets are black, which I assume they are, you have the option to change the background for the Assets Panel by selecting 'Background' from the hamburger menu on the Assets Panel and selecting either 'Light' or 'Checkerboard'...

See if those changes help and let us know...

Affinity Designer 2.3.1.2217 | Affinity Photo 2.3.1.2217 | Affinity Publisher 2.3.1.2217
Affinity Designer Beta 2.4.0.2294 | Affinity Photo Beta 2.4.0.2294 | Affinity Publisher Beta 2.4.0.2294

Affinity Designer 1.7.3 | Affinity Photo 1.7.3 | Affinity Publisher 1.10.8
MacBook Pro 16GB, macOS Monterey 12.6.8

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Hi thank you for such a quick reply,

All of my assets are various colours, although mostly browns, beiges and reds. Changing the asset background didn't work.

I open all my documents in CMYK but just tried all of the other options without success.

If you zoom in enough on the swatches panel in the top right of the picture I shared you can see the colours are there just massively darkened.

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Welcome to the Affinity Forums @Affinity4D!

I can confirm that the Swatches Studio, shown on the right hand side of your screenshot is displayed like this due to your Colour Space the document is set to.

When creating a document in the Greyscale Colour Space, with the Black & White colour profile, the colours in the swatches are displayed with the profile applied, meaning all colours appear as black.

If you create a new document and change the Colour Space/Profile in the New Document dialog - or for the active document through File > Document Setup > Colour, you should find these swatches then appear as expected -

 

The Asset Studio however does not use the document Colour Space to change the display of assets, until they are added to the document canvas.

Therefore it would appear from the screenshot provided that the assets themselves have simply been created as dark elements - though it's hard for me to be certain from a screenshot alone.

Are you able to provide a copy of the .afassets file you have imported into Publisher?

What exactly are you expecting from these Assets, in terms of how they are displayed?

Many thanks in advance :)

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18 hours ago, Affinity4D said:

If you zoom in enough on the swatches panel in the top right of the picture I shared you can see the colours are there just massively darkened.

I just spotted that, all the colour swatches showing as 'black' as @Dan C demonstrated in the screen recording happens when using a Black and White colour profile which I confess I don't have installed so hadn't realised that would be the case... had the colour profile been a greyscale profile such as D50 then the colour palette would display shades of grey...

It may be worth doing a quick factory reset of Publisher by holding the Ctrl Key while launching the app then when you see the 'Clear User Data' screen, leave the first three options checked click the 'Clear' button and let Publisher finish launching to see whether that fixes both the Colour and Assets Panel issue...

Out of interest, I assume you see the same issue when switching to the Designer and Photo Persona's in Publisher?

Affinity Designer 2.3.1.2217 | Affinity Photo 2.3.1.2217 | Affinity Publisher 2.3.1.2217
Affinity Designer Beta 2.4.0.2294 | Affinity Photo Beta 2.4.0.2294 | Affinity Publisher Beta 2.4.0.2294

Affinity Designer 1.7.3 | Affinity Photo 1.7.3 | Affinity Publisher 1.10.8
MacBook Pro 16GB, macOS Monterey 12.6.8

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Hi,

Thanks again for the replies.

 

Dan C - I've attached the affinity assets to the post. They were all created different colours and then changed colour simultaneously when this problem happened. I did check these by saving/exporting a document with them on and they appeared perfectly normal colour-wise when opened in other applications. I've also attached a picture  zoomed in a bit more, the top one is how it looks on an RGB/CMYK document, the bottom one is how it looks on a greyscale document.

 

Hangman - I did as you suggested but it didn't change anything. I've also uninstalled and reinstalled the app. Colours in all other programs are displaying normally. I also don't have the other 2 apps, I only needed Publisher for now although I suspect I would have the same problem in them as well.

 

After playing about a bit it appears that Stock photos appear normal in the sidebar until I drag them onto the document when their colour changes. However it's definitely a CMYK document I'm dragging them onto.

 

Thanks again for the help

 

 

Reddithelp2.thumb.png.697813ea15e0bae0aeeee4b28c1b4ab6.png

 

affinity help assets.afassets

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Hi @Affinity4D,

Many thanks for trying... I'm at a bit of a loss as to other possible causes...

Your Assets file opens as expected for me displaying in the original colours so I'm unsure what else to suggest but I'm sure @Dan C will have some insight into what else to try... :)

 

Affinity Designer 2.3.1.2217 | Affinity Photo 2.3.1.2217 | Affinity Publisher 2.3.1.2217
Affinity Designer Beta 2.4.0.2294 | Affinity Photo Beta 2.4.0.2294 | Affinity Publisher Beta 2.4.0.2294

Affinity Designer 1.7.3 | Affinity Photo 1.7.3 | Affinity Publisher 1.10.8
MacBook Pro 16GB, macOS Monterey 12.6.8

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Many thanks for the further files, screenshots & information provided - this is certainly appreciated!

I can confirm that your assets also appear correctly for me;

image.png

21 hours ago, Affinity4D said:

I've also attached a picture  zoomed in a bit more, the top one is how it looks on an RGB/CMYK document, the bottom one is how it looks on a greyscale document.
(...)
After playing about a bit it appears that Stock photos appear normal in the sidebar until I drag them onto the document when their colour changes. However it's definitely a CMYK document I'm dragging them onto.

The behaviour you're describing usually indicates that the Affinity app is having trouble converting colours using your monitors colour profile - as this is used for displaying Assets, Swatches and images once added to the canvas.

I believe you're using Affinity on Windows, therefore can you please open Windows Run (Windows Key + R) then paste the following string and press OK:

colorcpl

In the window that opens, please select your monitor that Affinity is displayed on from the dropdown list to see the colour profile currently applied (you may need to tick 'User my settings for this device' in order to see the profile).

What is the profile listed here please?

If you change this to sRGB, matching my screenshot below, and then restart the Affinity app, do you now find these colours are displayed correctly?

image.png

Many thanks in advance :)

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Wow. That absolutely fixed it! Thank you so much 😀

I have no idea how it switched automatically tbh.  My guess would be that I use a laptop so I feel like when I opened Affinity I had a game or graphics heavy operation in the background so my NVIDIA card was working, and when I left the game and then opened Affinity it had switched back to integrated graphics which I don't think had ever been set up properly. (The Windows Photos app had a similar issue since I got the laptop 3 years ago, that I tried to fix at the time and then forgot about, but as Affinity showed stock photos and margin line colours accurately I didn't link the two - it also makes sense as it was on an ASUS specific profile and not sRGB).

I'm no expert but that may explain why sometimes Affinity work occasionally but mostly have this issue.

I've attached a screenshot of the colour management screen for your curiosity.

Again thank you so much (and thank you to Hangman for also helping).

 

Reddit help 3.png

Edited by Affinity4D
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