BohoYve Posted April 17 Share Posted April 17 Hi, I desperately need help with a problem I'm having with Affinity Designer. I created a set of background papers, printed them and saved the file. When I reopened the file the images were horribly oversaturated. I then discovered that every single file I've created since 2017 have the same problem, in Designer, Photo and Publisher. Even if I drag an image into the app the same thing happens. I have no idea what I did wrong but clearly I must have changed/clicked on something I shouldn't have. I have done a fresh install of all three apps, opened them while holding the cntrl key and cleared everything thinking this might help but still no go. The strange thing is, if I export an oversaturated image as a JPG or PNG the result is quite normal. I am at my wits end because all my files are now useless. I would be most grateful if someone could assist me please. Attached is a screen snip of how it appears in Designer and how it appears when exported. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lepr Posted April 17 Share Posted April 17 If your Affinity documents are 32 bits per channel, ensure ICC Display Transform is enabled in the 32-bit Preview panel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BohoYve Posted April 17 Author Share Posted April 17 Thank you for your reply. I'm not sure why by the preview panel is greyed out but it does show that ICC display transform is checked. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NotMyFault Posted April 17 Share Posted April 17 Other probable causes: color profiles on OS level changed or broken using display calibration like Spider Xrite etc recent OS upgrades recent GPU driver updates Change in OS display settings, e.g. activating HDR/EDR mode Quote Mac mini M1 A2348 | Windows 10 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080 LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5 iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589 Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NotMyFault Posted April 17 Share Posted April 17 https://affinityspotlight.com/article/display-colour-management-in-the-affinity-apps/ Quote Mac mini M1 A2348 | Windows 10 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080 LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5 iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589 Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BohoYve Posted April 17 Author Share Posted April 17 Thank you, I'll have a read through of the article you mention and hopefully it won't go over my head Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lepr Posted April 17 Share Posted April 17 5 minutes ago, BohoYve said: I'm not sure why by the preview panel is greyed out That's correct when a document isn't 32 bits per channel. I thought it unlikely your documents would be 32 bpc, but it was a possibility, hence my advice regarding the panel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BohoYve Posted April 17 Author Share Posted April 17 Am I correct in saying that because the colour difference is only in the Affinity suite that it has noting to do with my monitor, it is a setting within the software itself? I've basically used the app as-is since I bought it so I'm really stumped as to what has happened. All I know is that I can no longer work with it as it is and there goes my Etsy shop, along with it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaulEC Posted April 17 Share Posted April 17 I'm not sure why you say that all your files are now useless and there goes your Etsy shop! The problem seems to be the way the files are displayed in Affinity. The actual files have not changed and, apparently, still export correctly. If they used to display correctly then obviously something has been changed and it's just a question of finding out what! Quote Acer XC-895 : Core i5-10400 Hexa-core 2.90 GHz : 32GB RAM : Intel UHD Graphics 630 : Windows 10 Home Affinity Publisher 2 : Affinity Photo 2 : Affinity Designer 2 : (latest release versions) on desktop and iPad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iconoclast Posted April 17 Share Posted April 17 Could it somehow have to do with CMYK colourspace. I ask because you said that the problem doesn't occur if you export as PNG and JPEG, which don't support CMYK. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NotMyFault Posted April 17 Share Posted April 17 I added a levels adjustment with gamma 2.2 to the lighter image, and this results almost 100% in the darker image. or add gamma 0.45 to the lighter image to get lighter image. So gamma curve seems to cause the issue. This normally happens only if you convert those files to RGB/32 mode. please include the full app window in screenshots. capture: assistant settings default color profiles the actual file color profile (shown in line below menu while hand tool is active) screenshots of OS settings from display and color profiles Quote Mac mini M1 A2348 | Windows 10 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080 LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5 iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589 Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BohoYve Posted April 17 Author Share Posted April 17 6 minutes ago, PaulEC said: I'm not sure why you say that all your files are now useless and there goes your Etsy shop! The problem seems to be the way the files are displayed in Affinity. The actual files have not changed and, apparently, still export correctly. If they used to display correctly then obviously something has been changed and it's just a question of finding out what! The reason I say this is because I am in the process of updating over two hundred listing images to suit Etsy who, in their wisdom, decided to change the size of the listing image place holders. Some of the images within the older files I want to upgraded and if I'm working with these dark images I have no idea what I'm doing, colour wise. Likewise when creating new digitals working with oversaturated images within designer and attempting to get a good end result when exported is going to be a huge problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NotMyFault Posted April 17 Share Posted April 17 A simple levels adjustment with gamma to 0.45 will correct the colors. but you need to deactivate it before exporting . Quote Mac mini M1 A2348 | Windows 10 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080 LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5 iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589 Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BohoYve Posted April 17 Author Share Posted April 17 21 minutes ago, NotMyFault said: I added a levels adjustment with gamma 2.2 to the lighter image, and this results almost 100% in the darker image. or add gamma 0.45 to the lighter image to get lighter image. So gamma curve seems to cause the issue. This normally happens only if you convert those files to RGB/32 mode. please include the full app window in screenshots. capture: assistant settings default color profiles the actual file color profile (shown in line below menu while hand tool is active) screenshots of OS settings from display and color profiles Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BohoYve Posted April 17 Author Share Posted April 17 I cannot see this - the actual file color profile (shown in line below menu while hand tool is active) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BohoYve Posted April 17 Author Share Posted April 17 26 minutes ago, NotMyFault said: A simple levels adjustment with gamma to 0.45 will correct the colors. but you need to deactivate it before exporting . I can do this but I really would like to get to the bottom of the problem as to why this happened. As you've probably gathered I'm not too clued on all the ins and outs of the software as it works for what I'm do without having to get into the professional side of things. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BohoYve Posted April 17 Author Share Posted April 17 1 hour ago, iconoclast said: Could it somehow have to do with CMYK colourspace. I ask because you said that the problem doesn't occur if you export as PNG and JPEG, which don't support CMYK. I'm really a bit clueless so I honestly can not even guess where the problem may lie. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walt.farrell Posted April 17 Share Posted April 17 Do you have a sample .afdesign document that has the problem, and the exported version, that you can share with us so we can see the details, and see if we experience the same problem? Quote -- Walt Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases PC: Desktop: Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Laptop: Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU. iPad: iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard Mac: 2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iconoclast Posted April 17 Share Posted April 17 In opposite to RGB,which is a colour space for colours of light, CMYK is a colour space for body colours (colours for print). CMYK colour spaces contain less different colours than RGB colour spaces. So if you export a CMYK image as a PNG or JPEG, which don't support CMYK, the image will be converted to RGB automatically, and the colours will change at least a little bit. As I tested it on my computer, the effect was very small, but in fact the PNG was a bit more saturated than the CMYK original. The strength of the effect may be defined by the certain colours you chose. But I'm not really sure if this could be the reason for your problem. As an additional information: for professional printing, colours always must be converted to CMYK. But usually you should do that well controlled to prevent unwanted changes of the colours. You can see if your original image is CMYK if you open "File" > "Document Settings" Colour". There must be a drop down menu called "Colour Settings" or so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NotMyFault Posted April 17 Share Posted April 17 To sort things a bit: CMYK has nothing to do with this issue. Quote Mac mini M1 A2348 | Windows 10 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080 LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5 iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589 Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BohoYve Posted April 17 Author Share Posted April 17 19 minutes ago, iconoclast said: In opposite to RGB,which is a colour space for colours of light, CMYK is a colour space for body colours (colours for print). CMYK colour spaces contain less different colours than RGB colour spaces. So if you export a CMYK image as a PNG or JPEG, which don't support CMYK, the image will be converted to RGB automatically, and the colours will change at least a little bit. As I tested it on my computer, the effect was very small, but in fact the PNG was a bit more saturated than the CMYK original. The strength of the effect may be defined by the certain colours you chose. But I'm not really sure if this could be the reason for your problem. As an additional information: for professional printing, colours always must be converted to CMYK. But usually you should do that well controlled to prevent unwanted changes of the colours. You can see if your original image is CMYK if you open "File" > "Document Settings" Colour". There must be a drop down menu called "Colour Settings" or so. The setting shows RGB. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iconoclast Posted April 17 Share Posted April 17 18 minutes ago, NotMyFault said: To sort things a bit: CMYK has nothing to do with this issue. OK, so possibly the colour depth? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BohoYve Posted April 17 Author Share Posted April 17 2 hours ago, walt.farrell said: Do you have a sample .afdesign document that has the problem, and the exported version, that you can share with us so we can see the details, and see if we experience the same problem? Thanks for offering to try this. Attached original jpg. Same image opened in app. Image exported from app2. Img opened in app.afdesign. Hope this will suffice. It doesn't appear that the .afdesign file uploaded. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NotMyFault Posted April 17 Share Posted April 17 It is specifically gamma 1 vs 2.2. not sure what caused this, probably color profiles, wrong use of RGB/32, or GPU issue Quote Mac mini M1 A2348 | Windows 10 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080 LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5 iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589 Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BohoYve Posted April 17 Author Share Posted April 17 4 minutes ago, NotMyFault said: It is specifically gamma 1 vs 2.2. not sure what caused this, probably color profiles, wrong use of RGB/32, or GPU issue I wish I knew. I cannot even think straight anymore. If it were a GPU issue could it affect only one app on my computer? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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