Colour distortion drives me nuts

[Umbluu]

I have wasted several days on a really simple problem – how to use screenshots of a web app on marketing materials for the web. How is one supposed to use Affinity Photo for that? 

I kept my document’s colour format in 8-bit RGB always, because that is what mac’s screen uses and that is the end result. 

But whatever settings I use for importing screenshots, colors *always* looks dull in Affinity Photo. I tried all colour profiles and I tried both converting and assigning all colour profiles there are in Affinity Photo. 

Is there a checkbox somewhere in Affinity Photo where I can say “Please for the love of god don’t touch the colours”?

[Umbluu]

I just bought Acorn image editor for this task. Colors are just the way they should (working profile on both cases sRGB)! 

I realise that Acorn is much simpler program, but still…

[carl123]

6 hours ago, Umbluu said:

Is there a checkbox somewhere in Affinity Photo where I can say “Please for the love of god don’t touch the colours”?

Edit > Preferences > Colour

Unless it's different on a Mac (I don't have one of those)

Oh, and you may want to upload some sample images and a APhoto file so we can see what you are seeing 

 

 

[Umbluu]

OK, here's the screenshot of how Affinity Photo renders colours. Also attached is the .afphoto file. 

screenshots.afphoto

[carl123]

If I go to that website and do a screenshot then paste that into your APhoto file I can clearly see the difference. 

Your colours are duller than mine and mine very closly match the ones shown in my browser screen

As I am on Windows and you are on a Mac I don't really know what to advise or where to check stuff.

Maybe someone with a Mac can do the same or similar test to see what results they get.

 

 

[Umbluu]

44 minutes ago, carl123 said:

If I go to that website and do a screenshot then paste that into your APhoto file I can clearly see the difference. 

Your colours are duller than mine and mine very closly match the ones shown in my browser screen

As I am on Windows and you are on a Mac I don't really know what to advise or where to check stuff.

Maybe someone with a Mac can do the same or similar test to see what results they get.

 

 

What's your "rendering intent" setting (preferences>colour)?

[v_kyr]

When I do a screenshot from a webbroser window and load that into APh, things looks nearly the same to me in the browser and APh. - Screenshot from inside of APh ...

Further that website triangles background is a SVG drawing file, so it's SVG shown up in the browser. If I download that one and load it into APh it looks also the same to me ...

 

[carl123]

13 minutes ago, Umbluu said:

What's your "rendering intent" setting (preferences>colour)?

Hi, you can see that in my first post to this thread, thanks

[R C-R]

Just a couple of things to consider that may or may not be relevant here, so take them for what little they may be worth:

• Mac Screen captures (CMD+3, CMD+4, etc.) use the current display's color profile as set in System Preferences > Displays > Color tab. The Mac Affinity apps simply list that profile as "Display," regardless of how it is identified in Get Info windows as iMac, Adobe RGB (1998), NTSC/PAL, or whatever.
• How web browsers manage color is more complicated than it might seem, particularly regarding how a mix of tagged & untagged page elements are handled.

So taken together, I think what this means is you can't assume that a screenshot of a web page will always have the same colors when opened in different apps, not just the Affinity ones ... but I am far from certain about that or more to the point what to do about it.

[firstdefence]

If you change your documents Colour format to RGB (16bit) the colours snap to almost identical to the website. they are literally off by 1 in R,G and B if you then change it back to RGB (8bit) the colours stay as bright as RGB (16bit)

I have my Mac screen set to sRGB IEC1966 2.1 in the color display settings of system prefs and the screen grab is exactly the same RGB values when I open it in Affinity Photo.

[Umbluu]

3 hours ago, >|< said:

I have found that the current Affinity apps can assign an incorrect colour profile to Mac screenshot files which have embedded iMac profile (screenshots captured with shift-cmd-3 or -4, for example) if the OS has multiple display profiles installed, and that will cause Affinity to display incorrect colours. Does your Mac have multiple display profiles installed?

 See this bug report regarding Mac screenshots sometimes being mismanaged by current Affinity apps (retail and beta): 

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

 

[R C-R]

5 hours ago, firstdefence said:

I have my Mac screen set to sRGB IEC1966 2.1 IEC61966-2.1 in the color display settings of system prefs

Is that a good idea? I have always understood that in System Preference it should be set to one of the display color profiles, those shown when "Show profiles for this display only" is ticked, never to one that is not.

[firstdefence]

7 hours ago, R C-R said:

Is that a good idea? I have always understood that in System Preference it should be set to one of the display color profiles, those shown when "Show profiles for this display only" is ticked, never to one that is not.

I can set it to iMac Calibrated but there is no discernible difference between iMac calibrated and sRGB IEC1966 2.1

[firstdefence]

5 hours ago, >|< said:

Does your 2015 iMac not have a wide gamut display?

I'm talking about my 2011, the 2011 is in the house the 2015 is in the office, the 2015 is a 5k retina screen.

[affinity noob]

I have found a work around.  

Open the image in Preview. 

Go to Tools.

Go to Assign profile. 

Change colour sync profile to match your document settings i.e. SRGB.