Help! Color picker misrepresenting color on HSL sliders.

[Detective-Dohnut]

Hello! I ran into this issue when I was sampling a color (via the color picker tool) to create a shadow by lowering the luminance slider. Upon doing this I noticed that the hue was completely off from the original sampled color.

The values represented on the HSL sliders did not represent the color being displayed in the fill as it did with the initial color, and instead represented an entirely different color that wasn't being displayed until I made an adjustment on one of the sliders. After making the adjustment, I would then return the adjusted slider to the original number it showed after using the color picker the first time; resulting in the unwanted color.

I repeated this several times over again until it seemed to only make slight changes in luminosity. This is very strange to me as I always used this method of creating color variations relative to the "lighting" of a design, but never ran into this kind of issue until now. I come from a photography background so using the HSL slider feels more natural to me. I also have a decent understanding of colors pace/color management, but I don't believe this should have an effect on how this tool is functioning in this case.

If anyone has ran into a similar problem, or has a better understanding of what's going on, I would very much appreciate any input or suggestions!

[lacerto]

Hello, @Detective-Dohnut, welcome to the forums!

You seem to have the document in CMYK color mode (most probably the default U.S. Web Coated v2, so when you pick what you think a HSL color value of the first ellipse, you actually pick its CMYK converted value (0:44 timepoint in your video clip): 

As you have the color lock turned on, the picked value is shown retaining the HSL model, but you can see that both the hue and saturation values have already changed from what you had, so when you subsequently change the Lightness value, the secondary ellipses get a color that is based on different hue and saturation.

[Detective-Dohnut]

Thank you! I appreciate the response! @lacerto 

I did notice the color lock playing a roll in it somewhat. However, when I would switch the documents color format to RGB I didn't run into this issue.

Now, when I have the document set to CMYK, having the color lock off and using the color picker tool on the first ellipse, the sliders would switch to the CMYK values.From there, I would switch back to HSL where it would then display the correct color values in HSL 

When the color lock is on however, like it was shown in the video, the HSL wouldn't switch to CMYK and instead output values that are off from the original ellipses HSL value.

Obviously the work around is to just not have the color lock on, but now I'm just curious as to why it does this? I did notice that the one common thing with the color that the HSL slider moves to (after using the color picker tool) is the saturation moves to 100. 

[lacerto]

12 hours ago, Detective-Dohnut said:

Obviously the work around is to just not have the color lock on, but now I'm just curious as to why it does this?

It is basically to avoid inadvertent color conversions when you switch the color model within the Color Panel. E.g., assume that you have R255 G0 B0 defined in RGB color model and then you switch to CMYK color model, and back to RGB. If you have lock off, you will have a different RGB definition when you come back, because you have actually first converted the original RGB color definition to CMYK, and then the CMYK value back to RGB. If the lock is on, the definition would stay the same when you return back to RGB, and having the lock turned on the only way to perform an actual conversion would be entering a color value and pressing Enter.

Note that the conversion will be done according to an underlying secondary document color profile (when you create a new document, it will get the underlying document color profiles according to what is specified under Preferences > Color).

The color lock is a fundamental feature in Affinity apps so it is a good idea to learn thoroughly how it operates.