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After using the HDR function on a single image, I'm unable to export the image as it looks on my screen. What gets exported is a washed-out version of the image. I've tried this with several different images, and I even went back to the previous version of AP. I watched the tutorial videos on HDR and didn't see anything relating to this. In my screenshot, the image on the left is what I had after exporting, vs the image on the right, as I see it in AP. To get this, I just used File>New HDR Merge, chose a TIFF image, and accepted all the defaults. Then I used File>Export to a 16-bit TIFF. I also tried exporting to a JPG and got the same results. I assume I'm doing something wrong, but after a couple hours of trying to figure it out, it's time to ask for help.

Clipboard01.jpg

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Hi ncJohn :)

I'm sorry to see this, could you please provide a copy of your .afphoto file to the following link so I can look into this for you?

https://www.dropbox.com/request/XghWuGAZTwLXbE793878

Do you have any custom colour profiles set against your monitor/OS?

Please Note: I am now out of the office until Tuesday 2nd April on annual leave.

If you require urgent assistance, please create a new thread and a member of our team will be sure to assist asap.

Many thanks :)

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Thanks for your file ncJohn :) If you open the file, then open the 32bit Preview Studio, could you please confirm which option you have selected under Display Transform? I believe you're using 'unmanaged' which means when you export the image, you're seeing the 'managed' version of the image. You'll find if you switch from 'Unmanaged' to ICC Display Transform, the document now matches the exported file. I hope this helps!
be4b3ad9a7680a00fd39bfd83423698f.gif

Please Note: I am now out of the office until Tuesday 2nd April on annual leave.

If you require urgent assistance, please create a new thread and a member of our team will be sure to assist asap.

Many thanks :)

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No, the 32bit Preview is set to the defaults: exposure 0, gamma 1, and ICC Display Transform.

However, after reading your post, I set gamma to 2, and now the image looks like my export. (I hadn't even looked at the 32bit preview before seeing your post; I'm just beginning to explore HDR on AP.) But changing from ICC Display Transform to Unmanaged or vice versa doesn't change anything.

Of course, I didn't really want the original image to look like the export, I wanted the export to look like the original image. :) Looks like it's time for more exploration.

Thanks for your help.

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Actually, looking at the official video on HDR from one exposure, he has the 32 bit preview panel set just like mine was originally (exposure 0, gamma 1, ICC Display Transform), and says that after getting the image the way he wants it, he just exports it. So I'm still wondering why I don't get an export that looks like my in-app image.

Edit: Or am I supposed to set the gamma to 2 since I'm on a Windows machine? I just left all the default settings.

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14 hours ago, ncJohn said:

But changing from ICC Display Transform to Unmanaged or vice versa doesn't change anything.

Hi, this is a little suspect since you should be seeing a difference. ICC Display Transform will be performing a non-linear gamma transform using the display profile (and thus is closest to how you will see your image when exported to an 8-bit or 16-bit image format with a non-linear profile). Unmanaged will be viewing in linear light since there is no management from the document profile to display profile.

It sounds like you might have HDR enabled in Windows and possibly Affinity Photo—a couple of things to check if you'd be happy to?

On your 32-bit Preview Panel within Affinity Photo, is "Enable HDR" checked?

Within Windows Display Settings, is "Play HDR games and apps" enabled? (https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/4040263/windows-10-hdr-advanced-color-settings)

If possible, could you attach screen grabs of your 32-bit preview panel and the Windows display settings? Specifically, if you have HDR enabled, there's a text option called "Windows HD colour settings" which will open a dialog that gives you a slider to balance HDR/SDR content. If you could get a screen grab of that, it would be much appreciated.

 

If the above doesn't apply to you at all (e.g. you don't have an HDR capable display), would it be possible to just get a screen grab of your 32-bit Preview Panel? I did also notice in Dan's screenshot that you appear to be using a custom sRGB document profile? It has "black scaled" appended to its name. Can I check if this was a conscious choice to use it? I'm not sure about XnView's colour management capabilities, so if this profile has some kind of deviation from a typical sRGB profile it may also be a factor in why your image looks different when opened in that software.

Apologies for the wall of text, hope to hear back from you so we can try and narrow down this issue!

Product Expert (Affinity Photo) & Product Expert Team Leader

@JamesR_Affinity for tutorial sneak peeks and more
Official Affinity Photo tutorials

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12 hours ago, James Ritson said:

If the above doesn't apply to you at all (e.g. you don't have an HDR capable display), would it be possible to just get a screen grab of your 32-bit Preview Panel? I did also notice in Dan's screenshot that you appear to be using a custom sRGB document profile? It has "black scaled" appended to its name. Can I check if this was a conscious choice to use it? I'm not sure about XnView's colour management capabilities, so if this profile has some kind of deviation from a typical sRGB profile it may also be a factor in why your image looks different when opened in that software.

Apologies for the wall of text, hope to hear back from you so we can try and narrow down this issue!

Hi James. Thanks for your in-depth reply, but no, I don't have an HDR-capable display.

I'm attaching the 32-bit Preview Panel. As far as the doc profile, the "black scaled" is not a conscious choice; but after a little research it looks like images processed with Topaz DeNoise 6 have that profile indication. When I create a New HDR Merge with a file that was not processed in DeNoise 6, the image in AP does not have that "black scaled" designation, and the exported TIFF from that has the same faded appearance as before.

The TIFFs I export after doing an HDR merge have the same faded appearance when viewed in Irfanview, FastStoneViewer, PS Elements 9, and also when loaded back into AP.

Thanks again.Clipboard01.jpg.bb962aab3aba5e9381aec36e8ce718b9.jpg

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Hi John, thank you for replying and looking at your settings. One more thing to investigate then—if you go to the top menu and choose Document>Convert Format / ICC Profile, then from the Colour Format dropdown change from RGB/32 to RGB/16 and click Convert, I suspect your image will become brighter and look the same as when you export it. Please would you be able to try this and confirm for me?

Just going on a hunch, have you tried loading and editing any RAW files directly in Affinity Photo? If so, could you try opening one, then clicking Develop and seeing if you get the same noticeable tonal shift (i.e. the image looks dark when you're editing the RAW but when you click Develop it then becomes much brighter).

To explain the above: the Develop Persona also operates in 32-bit linear when developing RAW files—the same format your HDR merged document uses—so I'm trying to ascertain whether the issue is with the non-linear view transform being applied. The non-linear transform is required to make your image consistent with how it will look when exported. If it's somehow not being applied to the document view (or canvas as we also call it), that would explain the huge discrepancy you're seeing.

Thanks again and hope to hear back from you.

Product Expert (Affinity Photo) & Product Expert Team Leader

@JamesR_Affinity for tutorial sneak peeks and more
Official Affinity Photo tutorials

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Hi James. Yes, you are correct about both the change from RGB/32 to RGB/16 and the RAW development. The thing is, I've developed many RAW files in the past without that happening. (It's been a while since I did, so it was definitely in some prior version of AP.) 

So what's my next step? And thank you again.

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Hi John, thanks for trying all that, it's helping to narrow it down. Looks like it may be something the developers need to know about as the same issue is occurring for another customer, albeit when developing RAW files. There are a couple of things to try, and then a final solution if those don't work. My apologies for all this, I believe there was a change in 1.7.2 to fix the 32-bit document view for people who had HDR enabled within Windows, and it may/may not be behind the issue we're seeing here.

For the customer I mentioned, minimising and then bringing the app back up seems to apply the non-linear view transform as intended, maybe that would be something to try? Just open up your HDR merge or a RAW file, minimise to desktop, then click on the taskbar icon to bring the window back up and see if that corrects it.

Because there are only two reports of this so far (that we know about), it's worth seeing if there's any correlation with PC specifications—I can't find yours listed anywhere, but the other customer's are:

  • Windows 10
  • Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-8400 CPU @2.80GHz  2.81 GHz
  • RAM: 16GB
  • Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti

Do you have anything similar to the above setup?

Another thing to try would be a factory reset of the app. If you double-click the app icon (or launch it through the start menu) then immediately hold down Ctrl after doing so, a dialog box should pop up. It will have three options checked by default—leave these checked and click Clear. This will wipe user defaults and window settings—see if this helps your issue.

Finally, failing that, I believe a patch will be on its way soon to fix some smaller issues. To get things working for now, it may be worth downgrading—did you purchase through the Affinity store and activate with a serial number? If so, you can download older versions from this page: https://store.serif.com/en-gb/update/windows/photo/1/ — I would normally recommend 1.7.1 but in your first post you mentioned downgrading already. Does that mean you also get the issue with 1.7.1? If so, I would recommend trying 1.7.0 since that definitely doesn't have the HDR document view fix.

Again, apologies for the issue. I've been unable to reproduce it on my work and home PCs, so at the moment am unsure of what factors into causing it. Looking forward to your reply!

 

Product Expert (Affinity Photo) & Product Expert Team Leader

@JamesR_Affinity for tutorial sneak peeks and more
Official Affinity Photo tutorials

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Hi James. The factory reset of the app seems to have fixed the problem. In case the info helps you, I will tell you that minimizing the app did not help, and my specs are: Windows 8.1, Core i7-3770, 24GB RAM, and Intel HD Graphics 4000 (integrated). Both RAW developing and creating new HDR images seem to be okay now. (If that changes, of course, I'll let you know.:))

Thanks again for figuring this out. (Also thanks for all your videos; they've really been indispensable for using AP.)

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James, here's another piece of the puzzle that I just noticed.

To get this screengrab, I've minimized the app, then put my cursor on the app's icon on the taskbar, which brings up the small version of the AP "window," right above the taskbar. Then I put my cursor on the small version, and that makes the large AP window come up and fill up the screen. At this point I haven't clicked on the "small version", I just have my cursor hovering on it. At this point, notice that the large image of the plant in the center of the screen is dark, unlike the smaller images in the presets on the left. This dark version of the image is what I was getting before I did the factory reset of the app. Then, when I click on that "small version" above the taskbar, the large image in AP turns light just like the preset images, as AP "un-minimizes".

I don't know if this is something helpful or not but I wanted to let you know about it, in case it is. (By the way, the same thing happens if I minimize just an HDR image instead of the whole app.)

Clipboard01.jpg.be4d148d20d02b17e92e122c6764a159.jpg

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Hi John, thanks for your reply, we can hopefully do some more investigation tomorrow (it's bank holiday here at the moment). That behaviour you describe is expected for 1.7.2, it appears the non-linear view transform is only applied once the document window is restored (un-minimised), we've seen that happen on all the Windows machines here. The concern is that for yourself and others, the view transform wasn't being applied at all until you did a Ctrl-runup and cleared the user defaults. Thank you again for getting back to us about this issue—can I just confirm that everything is working for you now after clearing the defaults?

Thank you for the comment about the videos too :)

Product Expert (Affinity Photo) & Product Expert Team Leader

@JamesR_Affinity for tutorial sneak peeks and more
Official Affinity Photo tutorials

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