Asking how to set color profile settings with Affinity Photo

[William Herron]

I am using the Affinity Photo program for Windows 10. Does the Affinity Photo program automatically use the the default ICC profile that is set in Windows Color Management? In Affinity Photo Preferences there are two settings, "RGB Color Profile" and "32 bit RGB Color Profile". These settings have the "sRGB IEC61966-2.1" text entered.
Do I leave these settings with their current settings, or do I enter the name of the profile that is set as the default profile in Windows Color Management? And do I set the program to "Embed ICC Profile" when exporting JPG files?
I do not know how to think through this situation to obtain the correct settings. Perhaps someone can provide enough information so I can confidently use the color management settings of the Affinity Photo program.
 

[Ron P.]

Do you shoot RAW, and use AP to develop your RAW files? If so you might want to set the 32 bit RGB Color Profile to ProPhoto RGB Linear. That way you have the widest color range to work with processing your RAW files.  The sRGB is best for images intended for viewing on screen/web. I develop most of my RAW images in Lightroom, and then will send them over to Affinity Photo for finishing them up, for things that Lightroom can not do. So I use the ProPhoto for that reason.

There should be a drop-down menu beside each one, where you are provided with several options.

[walt.farrell]

4 hours ago, William Herron said:

Do I leave these settings with their current settings, or do I enter the name of the profile that is set as the default profile in Windows Color Management?

You need to understand, William, that there are multiple types of profiles for multiple purposes. 

1. In Windows Color Management you specify a profile that describes how your monitor displays colors.

2. In the Affinity settings you specify profiles that describe or control the colors in your documents.

3. While printing you can specify a profile for your printer, or for the paper you're printing on. 

All there are different, and used differently. Affinity will use all of them, at the appropriate point in the workflow, to make sure that your image displays properly while you are working on it, prints properly, and can be processed properly by other applications.

[v_kyr]

Maybe this helps too, so you might want to give them a read ...

• Tutorial on Color Models, Color Spaces and Color Profiles (two-part)

• What are Color Models?

• What are Color Spaces, Color Profiles and Gamma Correction?

[v_kyr]

5 hours ago, William Herron said:

Does the Affinity Photo program automatically use the the default ICC profile that is set in Windows Color Management?

This depends on an image settings, if an image has and comes along with an embedded color profile that one should be used by Affinity Photo. If there is no associated color profile with an image Affinity Photo will apply a default color profile, usually sRGB here, which also is the usual default/standard Windows 10 one as far as you didn't changed that for Windows 10 or do use some higher grade Monitor which comes with it's own more advanced (higher gamut/color space) or device calibrated ICC color profiles.

5 hours ago, William Herron said:

In Affinity Photo Preferences there are two settings, "RGB Color Profile" and "32 bit RGB Color Profile". These settings have the "sRGB IEC61966-2.1" text entered.
Do I leave these settings with their current settings, or do I enter the name of the profile that is set as the default profile in Windows Color Management?

As far as the Windows color management on your side uses the default/standard sRGB (meaning you dind't changed anything here yourself) you can leave these settings and Affinity Photo should too use sRGB as default color profile.

5 hours ago, William Herron said:

And do I set the program to "Embed ICC Profile" when exporting JPG files?

This depends on your preferences, files with embedded color profiles are bigger in size, but will tell other image programs which show up that image or reuse it, to use the embedded color profile then. - If you don't embed the color profile, file size will be smaller and other apps/programs will default to the Windows default color profile (usually sRGB) for showing up that image then.

When in doubt or unsure, always use sRGB overall for displaying an image, since that's the defacto smallest common denominator for different display devices and operating systems!

[William Herron]

Many thanks go to you Ron P., walt.farrell, and v_kyr for your useful help.
I presented two questions.
 
The first question was about the Affinity Photo Color Preferences settings for the RGB Color Profile and the 32bit RGB Color Profile. I still to not know what the Affinity Photo programs does. Does it use the Windows 10 default setting which might be different from the original windows setting because the computer display was calibrated? Or, if a default computer display profile setting cannot be found, will the Affinity Photo program use the color profile defined with the Color Preferences setting? Or, no matter the system color profile settings, will the Affinity Photo program use the color profile defined with the Color Preferences setting? My guess is the last alternative is what the Affinity Photo program does. This would mean that I should change the "sRGB IEC61966-2.1" to be "SAMSUNG_L_FL156FL05_C01_D65_201801171412.icm" which is my current color profile because the display has been calibrated. In either case, I am still dealing with the RGB color space.

The second question was about telling the program to "Embed ICC Profile" when exporting JPG files.
I have experimently determined how this works. The Embed ICC Profile function has nothing to do with the Affinity Photo Color Preferences settings. In all cases, if the Embed ICC profile entry is not checked, no profile will be included with the exported JPG file. If the Export the ICC Profile: phrase is "Use document profile" and the Embed ICC profile entry is checked, the "sRGB IEC61966-2.1" profile will be included with the JPG file. On the other hand, if the ICC Profile: phrase is a specific profile name provided in the pull down list, that color profile will be embedded with the JPG file when the Embed ICC profile entry is checked. In other words, an ICC profile might or might not be included with the exported file, and, if a specific profile is required to be included with the exported file, that profile can be defined with the pull down list. The "document profile" (the default) for export is the "sRGB IEC61966-2.1" profile. I would either include the default document profile or not include any profile. I cannot see a reason to include my personal monitor color profile with a file. Not knowing how other systems would present my image, the conservative decision would be to include the default color profile with the file. In any case the file size difference is not be very great when the color profile is included with the file.

If you would like to add to or clarify what I have written above, please do so.

[Inkijo]

Hi William,

I have exactly same question you have. Have you figure out how to set monitor color profile on this software?

[walt.farrell]

On 1/13/2021 at 2:28 AM, Inkijo said:

I have exactly same question you have. Have you figure out how to set monitor color profile on this software?

You set the monitor color profile in your OS.

In Affinity you set your document color profile and your printing profile (if you print directly from Affinity).

[Dennis Schmitz]

On 1/15/2021 at 12:20 AM, walt.farrell said:

You set the monitor color profile in your OS.

In Affinity you set your document color profile and your printing profile (if you print directly from Affinity).

Same question here.
In Photoshop I can use the Proof Colors -> Monitor RGB setting and everything will look exactly like it should do.

Without this option in either Photoshop or Affinity Photo my images look slightly too bright, looking like the gamma is too low.


My displays are calibrated to 2.2 gamma, 120nits, 6500K using displaycal. The profile is assigned to the screen via DisplayCal Profile Loader. Using Windows 10.

Every program - but Photoshop (Proof Colors workaround fixes it) or Affinity Photo - is working correctly like Davinci Resolve Studio, Premiere, Fusion, AE, Gimp, Windows Photo Viewer, Edge, Video players (Rec709 to sRGB conversion) etc.

In Affinity Photo I can assign the monitor profile to the document itself, but each new layer on top suffers from the same issue again. As a possible workaround, is it possible to assign the ICC profile to each layer?

Edited January 24, 2021 by Dennis Schmitz

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Dennis Schmitz said:

In Affinity Photo I can assign the monitor profile to the document itself, but each new layer on top suffers from the same issue again. As a possible workaround, is it possible to assign the ICC profile to each layer?

That is the wrong approach. A monitor profile should not be applied to a document.

I don't know the cause of your problem; sorry.

[Dennis Schmitz]

19 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

That is the wrong approach. A monitor profile should not be applied to a document.

I don't know the cause of your problem; sorry.

Sure, and I don't have the issue in any other program. I'm also working as a colorist using Davinci Resolve and my monitor calibrated to sRGB/Gamma 2.2 using Displaycal always delivers correct results, the video/graphics/photo out- and input looks the same in Davinci Resolve, media players and web browsers etc. on my external Rec709 calibrated TV as well as GPU-connected calibrated 4K 27inch LG display.

The issue is super weird, but will try on some other windows machines, too. 

Wondering if there's no other way to make sure that my pictures look the same as in any other program? In Photoshop I also have to make use of the proof color (monitor RGB) tool, but it actually adjusts the whole image with each new layer and not just the very first layer like Assign ICC profile does in Affinity photo.

I'm also not doing any printing, my output is almost entirely sRGB/web-delivery or VFX linear EXR clean plates - which I didn't test yet inside AP. Have been using Gimp for that purpose in the past since Photoshop doesn't deal correctly with these files.

Edited January 25, 2021 by Dennis Schmitz