Color profile not appearing in AffinityPublisher2

[SweetsopDesigns]

Greetings.  I have uploaded a color profile to my computer, but it is not showing in the drop down menu when I try to print in Affinity Publisher 2.  What do I need to do to upload (or whatever step I need to take) the color profile in to the program? Thank you.  New user here and appreciate the support.

[MikeTO]

Hi @SweetsopDesigns and welcome to the forums.

Where did you place the colour profile and which one was it? Below are installation instructions for colour profiles. You can also Use the Import ICC Profile feature in the Photo persona but the below instructions are better because the profile will be available to all applications on your computer.

To install a colour profile on macOS:

Quit Publisher before installing a colour profile because it checks for profiles when it is started.

1. Copy the .icc file(s) to /users/<username>/Library/ColorSync/Profiles. The default colour profiles are stored in a similar folder for all users of your computer so this folder will be empty if you haven’t previously installed a colour profile.

2. Restart Publisher.

[walt.farrell]

Also, what color format (RGB, CMYK) is your document, and what color format (RGB, CMYK) is the ICC profile?

[SweetsopDesigns]

Thanks @MikeTO and @walt.farrell! All I needed to do was Restart Publisher!  I should have thought of that.  Appreciate the help.

[lacerto]

9 hours ago, MikeTO said:

1. Copy the .icc file(s) to /users/<username>/Library/ColorSync/Profiles.

Do you really mean user specific location? On my system (macOS Sonoma 14.5) I do not have OS created sub folder for ColorSync for my user account, and if I create the mentioned location, Affinity apps do not recognize it (tested current version 2 apps). But the latest 2.x versions now DO correctly recognize common system location at /Library/ColorSync/Profiles, which they formerly did not, which made it necessary to use user AND application version specific application locations for color profiles, like this: 

/Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/Affinity Publisher 2

which was a real pain. The feature where Photo allows adding a color profile directly from within the app alleviated this only a for Affinity Photo, and had to be done separately for version 1 and 2, but for Publisher and Designer, the "custom" profiles had to added for both apps and app versions separately. I did not check, but I assume that for version 1 apps the user specific Application Support location still has to be used.

On Windows adding profiles has (at least starting from Windows 10) been as easy as right clicking the profile filename in Windows Explorer and choosing Install Profile from the context menu.

[MikeTO]

Yes, I did mean /users/<username>/Library/ColorSync/Profiles. I just confirmed the folder exists in another macOS account so I'm unsure why you haven't been able to find it. I did not create the folder and you'll find the same instructions across the internet. You can install profiles into both the system and user folders.

I just tested installing a colour profile (https://www.color.org/registry/PSOcoated_v3.xalter) into this folder and then restarted Publisher and the new profile appeared.

[lacerto]

25 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

Yes, I did mean /users/<username>/Library/ColorSync/Profiles

Very odd. I'll need to examine this further. I really do not have this (under Sonoma 14.5) created by the system, and when I created it manually, was not able to get it working... But I have not restarted my macOS for ages, so hopefully just doing this fixes the problem. Anyway, I have not previously been able to have Affinity apps use the common system profile location but now that this works, this is basically already enough...

UPDATE: No luck, so the folder really does not exist, and if created and ICC profiles placed there, Affinity apps do not see them. Can you please confirm that this is not an alias to the common library to /Library/ColorSync/Profiles?

[Dan C]

7 hours ago, lacerto said:

the latest 2.x versions now DO correctly recognize common system location at /Library/ColorSync/Profiles, which they formerly did not, which made it necessary to use user AND application version specific application locations for color profiles

I am not certain of this and perhaps an Apple representative may be able to confirm for you, but I understand that starting with macOS Big Sur, Apple changed how ColorSync profiles were handled.

Previous to this macOS release, the Affinity apps were able to read from ~/Library/ColorSync/Profiles/ and this update caused profile to no longer be correctly read from there in Affinity V1 (and other creative apps, as searching online for any variation of 'big sur color profiles' will show), which is outlined in the below FAQ from the time:

I understand we've since changed how profiles are loaded in Affinity to be able to use either the user specific, or system common ColorSync folders though we always recommend the system common folder to ensure the profile is always available.

6 hours ago, lacerto said:

Do you really mean user specific location? On my system (macOS Sonoma 14.5) I do not have OS created sub folder for ColorSync for my user account

Again I cannot say with 100% accuracy, but I believe that if you were using these user specific folders previous to Big Sur, they would be carried forward during the upgrade / would be restored from TimeMachine backups.
If you didn't use these locations previous to Big Sur, or have since formatted your Mac etc, then I believe these folders are no longer created (I assume to try and minimise user confusion between the 3+ (!) locations these profiles could be stored).

I think that Apple want the system common folder to be used, and therefore don't automatically create the user one wherever possible - however I may be mixing related issues here as I'm not privy to Apple's coding changes and therefore the above is simply my best guess!

[lacerto]

11 minutes ago, Dan C said:

I think that Apple want the system common folder to be used, and therefore don't automatically create the user one wherever possible - however I may be mixing related issues here as I'm not privy to Apple's coding changes and therefore the above is simply my best guess!

Thanks for the extra information. I tried to google this and noticed, too, that at the time of MacOSX the mentioned user-specific color profile location was system-created. My MacBook Air came with BigSur and the user-specific location did not exist pre-created, and as said, if created, does not work with Affinity apps. So perhaps, if the user has upgraded from MacOSX to macOS versions, this former user-specific profile location still works... Just guessing, really... 

[SweetsopDesigns]

Thanks all. I was able to solve the challenge by simply restarting Publisher. I appreciate your help.