Affinity Photo Changes EXIF Metadata From ‘sRGB’ to ‘Uncalibrated’ When Saving

[- S -]

When saving an image in Affinity Photo that has an ‘sRGB v1.31 (Canon)’ colour profile, Affinity Photo changes the EXIF metadata from ‘sRGB’ to ‘Uncalibrated’.

The Affinity Photo default export presets are set to use the document profile by default, this means that when saving an image that already has an ‘sRGB v1.31 (Canon)’ colour profile embedded in it, the document colour profile remains ‘sRGB v1.31 (Canon)’ when exported.  However, Affinity Photo changes the EXIF metadata field from ‘sRGB’ to ‘Uncalibrated’, even though it’s still an sRGB image with an sRGB colour profile.

 

 

 

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Windows 10 – 1903 (18362.418)
Affinity Photo – 1.7.3.481
 

[Greyfox]

On 10/11/2019 at 11:53 PM, - S - said:

When saving an image in Affinity Photo that has an ‘sRGB v1.31 (Canon)’ colour profile, Affinity Photo changes the EXIF metadata from ‘sRGB’ to ‘Uncalibrated’.

This might be relevant, from back when ...

Now from today ...

I've taken a couple of photos shot with a Sony SLT-A57 camera, one with the color space set to sRGB and one with it set to AdobeSRGB.

When these JPG's were opened in Affinity Photo, the Adobe RGB one showed at the top left of the screen as Adobe RGB(1998) and in the Exif tab with exifColorSpace = 65535.

The sRGB one showed at the top left of the screen as sRGB IEC61966-2.1) and in the Exif tab with exifColorSpace = 1

When I exported them as TIFF's the "Adobe RGB" one showed in Windows 10 properties with Color representation = Uncalibrated, and the "sRGB"  one showed with Color representation = sRGB.

ExitTool also showed the "Adobe RGB" TIFF as ColorSpace = Uncalibrated and the "sRGB" one as ColorSpace = sRGB

Also, if I take the Adobe RGB JPG and in Affinity Photo convert its profile to sRGB IEC61966-2.1 (Documents->Convert Format/ICC profile), then at the top left of the screen it changes from RGB/8 - Adobe RGB to RGB/8 -sRGB IEC1966-2.1, and the Exif Tab (after refreshing) shows the exifColorSpace now as 1.

If I export that as a TIFF, then the color representation is then reported in Windows 10 properties as sRGB.

Not to sure what to make of all that except that if the exifColorSpace is shown as 65535 in Affinity Photo's EXIF tab, then exports are going to show Exif ColorSpace as uncalibrated.

 

Edit:

@- S -

Could you open your sRGB v1.31 (Canon) photo in Affinity Photo, and see what number appears for the exifColorSpace in the EXIF tab (select ALL not summary)

If the EXIF tab is not present, select View->Studio and tick EXIF.

 

 

[- S -]

10 hours ago, Greyfox said:

…ExitTool also showed the "Adobe RGB" TIFF as ColorSpace = Uncalibrated and the "sRGB" one as ColorSpace = sRGB

That's what I would expect to see.  The below is from the ExifTool documentation:

Tag Name: 
ColorSpace

Notes: 
(The value of 0x2 is not standard EXIF. Instead, an Adobe RGB image is indicated by "Uncalibrated" with an InteropIndex of "R03". The values 0xfffd and 0xfffe are also non-standard, and are used by some Sony cameras) 
0x1 = sRGB 
0x2 = Adobe RGB 
0xfffd = Wide Gamut RGB 
0xfffe = ICC Profile 
0xffff = Uncalibrated

In my original post however, the image doesn't have a wide-gamut colour space.  The image is an sRGB image, with an sRGB colour space (it has an ‘sRGB v1.31 (Canon)’ embedded profile); therefore the exif metadata should remain as sRGB, and not changed to 'Uncalibrated'.

 

Quote

…Could you open your sRGB v1.31 (Canon) photo in Affinity Photo, and see what number appears for the exifColorSpace in the EXIF tab

Yes, it's 65535 (0xffff), which is Uncalibrated.

[Greyfox]

14 hours ago, - S - said:

Yes, it's 65535 (0xffff), which is Uncalibrated.

Just to clarify, I was referring to the source file, the one the properties shows as sRGB, but realize I didn't make that clear.

I assume it was originally a RAW file, developed in DPP and exported as a TIFF

Thing is, I can't get any sRGB image that shows in Affinity Photo's Exif tab as having an ExifColorSpace value of 1, to export as a TIFF with the color representation changed to Uncalibrated. For reference I've attached a screen shot of my export settings.

 

[- S -]

8 hours ago, Greyfox said:

Just to clarify, I was referring to the source file, the one the properties shows as sRGB, but realize I didn't make that clear.

I assume it was originally a RAW file, developed in DPP and exported as a TIFF

Thing is, I can't get any sRGB image that shows in Affinity Photo's Exif tab as having an ExifColorSpace value of 1, to export as a TIFF with the color representation changed to Uncalibrated. For reference I've attached a screen shot of my export settings.

Affinity Photo changes the Exif colorspace metadata from 'sRGB' to 'Uncalibrated' when opening the file.  Then when saving the file, the changes are saved to the file.  See the below screenshots:

TIF exported from Canon DPP 4:

 

TIF opened in Affinity Photo:

 

TIF saved in Affinity Photo:

 

[Greyfox]

19 hours ago, - S - said:

Affinity Photo changes the Exif colorspace metadata from 'sRGB' to 'Uncalibrated' when opening the file

Yes, I am able to confirm that on opening a TIFF file, Affinity Photo will set/reset the ExifColorSpace value to either 1 (sRGB), or 65535 (uncalibrated) depending on the embedded Color Profile in the file, and that is then carried on to any TIFF exports of that file.

If I deliberately alter the ExifColorSpace value of a file that has an embedded ICC Color profile,. then Affinity Photo changes that value to the correct one when it opens the file.

That unfortunately still leaves the question as to why Affinity Photo is changing the ExifColorSpace value in your Canon image with its embedded sRGB profile to 65535 (uncalibrated).

Maybe something in the specific embedded Color profile itself ?.

 

[AiDon]

I Don't have any issues with a TIF or JPG exported from AP either from a TIF or JPG converted ans saved from DPP in sRGB v1.31 embedded ICC profile. Just make sure that when you export from AP that you choose Use document profile & Embed ICC Profile from the More panel before exporting: 

Windows will show as uncalibrated because it just doesn't know about it.

[- S -]

20 hours ago, AiDon said:

Just make sure that when you export from AP that you choose Use document profile & Embed ICC Profile from the More panel before exporting:

I just export them as 'sRGB IEC61966-2.1' instead.  I did consider adding another step when processing DPP raw images and using Affinity Photo to batch process them all to 'sRGB IEC61966-2.1'—meaning everything is consistent and I can forget about Canon sRGB profiles altogether—but then Affinity changes the file extension to .tiff, which is even worse.

 

Quote

Windows will show as uncalibrated because it just doesn't know about it.

Windows reads the metadata from the file and displays whatever the ColorSpace metadata field says it is.

[AiDon]

For me Windows doesn't display it but this is what the EXIF has written, as displayed in EXIFTool after saving from AP ..

 

Or for the TIFF created from AP (previous was JPEG) ... .I chose TIFF RGB 8-BIT and didn't change the extension to TIF.

[Gabe]

Hi all,

Sorry for the delayed reply. 

I've logged this with our developers.

Gabe. 

[Mark Ingram]

The issue here is that internally we don't recognise "sRGB v1.31 (Canon)" as an actual sRGB colour profile (because technically it's not). The official sRGB standard is "sRGB IEC 61966-2-1:1999", so if the assigned profile doesn't match that, we don't recognise it as sRGB. My current thoughts are that this is working as intended - the only situation where this wouldn't be the case is if the profiles were completely identical, but for that I would need a copy of the ICC profile in order to test it. I'm trying to locate the file on the internet, but if you'd like to upload the profile here, that would help.

[- S -]

3 hours ago, Mark Ingram said:

The issue here is that internally we don't recognise "sRGB v1.31 (Canon)" as an actual sRGB colour profile (because technically it's not). The official sRGB standard is "sRGB IEC 61966-2-1:1999", so if the assigned profile doesn't match that, we don't recognise it as sRGB. My current thoughts are that this is working as intended - the only situation where this wouldn't be the case is if the profiles were completely identical, but for that I would need a copy of the ICC profile in order to test it. I'm trying to locate the file on the internet, but if you'd like to upload the profile here, that would help.

I don't know why Canon use their own sRGB profile; probably stems from a legal department decision 20 years ago.

I've attached a zip file containing the display profiles located in the Canon ICC directory (C:\Program Files\Canon\Digital Photo Professional 4\DPP4Lib\icc).  There are two Canon ‘sRGB v1.31 (Canon)’ sRGB profiles located in that directory, one is an ICC profile; the other an ICM profile:

sRGB Color Space Profile.icm
sRGB Profile.icc

Zip File:
Canon DPP 4.11.0 Display Profiles.zip

 

[Mark Ingram]

32 minutes ago, - S - said:

I don't know why Canon use their own sRGB profile

Thanks for uploading the profile. I've compared it against the standardised sRGB profile, and whilst the RGB primaries are the same, the white point is not. Because the white point is defined in the sRGB standard, it means the Canon profile is not an official sRGB profile (regardless as to what they name it). Our understanding of the metadata field in question, is that you should only set it's value to "sRGB" if it's the official sRGB profile.

[- S -]

4 hours ago, Mark Ingram said:

Thanks for uploading the profile. I've compared it against the standardised sRGB profile, and whilst the RGB primaries are the same, the white point is not. Because the white point is defined in the sRGB standard, it means the Canon profile is not an official sRGB profile (regardless as to what they name it). Our understanding of the metadata field in question, is that you should only set it's value to "sRGB" if it's the official sRGB profile.

OK.  Thanks for checking.