P: Incorrect default color rendering on HEIC files (iOS and Android Captures)

On our Samsung phones (S10 and Note 10+ 5G) we switched to the heic file format, as soon as lightroom supported these pictures (spring 2020).

Since then, we have almost 10.000 heic pictures in our collection, including invaluable memories of our family, safari/travel and so on. We manage over 150.000 private pictures with lightroom and we are very dependend on it.

As I said, everything was fine until April this year. With one of the (automatic) updates there must have been a change in how lightroom handles the colors of heic files. During the import process the colours are completely messed up (see example attached, original heic file: https://we.tl/t-kwaKMKeGxq).

This happens with Lightroom mobile under Android, with Lightroom classic under Windows 11 and with Lightroom CC.

If I open the same file on our phones or on the PC with Windows photo viewer, irfanview or any other app, the colours are fine.

Interestingly, it doesn't only affect new imported files, but also ALL our previous heic files, and these had normal colours until recently.

Please have a look what happened, fix that terrible bug and save our memories!

Thank you very much, indeed!

I just returned from a month travelling, using LR Mobile on iPad and a combination of Nikon DSLR and iPhone 12 Pro camera.   Both sources were integrated into LR Mobile environment and looked good.

When I opened LR Classic at home on my iMac, the photos all showed up, but when reviewing them, there were a few pictures that were quite different than the way they look on the iPad.    Digging into it a bit further, this seems to be specific to scenarios where the source was an HEIC Panorama taken on the iPhone.   No processing had been done in Photos before they were added to Lightroom Mobile using the Add from Camera roll option.

The profile used was the default Color profile applied.   Because it wasn't one of my Raw files, I didn't try using any other profiles.   I did start by hitting the Auto option in the Edit module and then tinkering with a few sliders.

The source photo looks fine in Photos on both iPad and iMac.   So I don't think its a monitor calibration issue.   All other HEIC source photos look the same on iPad and iMac.

I have included 4 screen shots of the same photo (sorry they are not all the same size - but it was really the colour cast I was trying to highlight):

- Pano in Photos on iPad

- Pano in Photos on iMac

- LR Mobile version after import and edits on iPad Pro

- LR Classic version after sync from LR Mobile

Any thoughts?  

I import a picture to lightroom from my iPhone.  Then I press the "auto" button to set optimal values.  The colors in the image change to a lighter magenta/light-blue scheme.  Unclicking auto changes the picture to be a washed-out version of the original.  Nothing I do resets the picture or allows me to use the original colors in the picture.  However, the preview thumbnail has the correct colors.  And, if I select a different picture and then the affected one, for a moment it shows up correctly and then changes back to the washed-out, magenta based colors.  This is driving me crazy.  It doesn't happen on every photo but on quite a few.  The color adjustment tools cannot completely compensate for this problem.

If I export the image with the "original + settings" option, I get my original HEIC file, which appears correct in the preview viewer on my mac. Exporting as a JPEG produces the incorrect colors in the exported file.  I'd include that here but this system won't let me attach it. If I open it in Photoshop, the colors are incorrect (magenta-ized.)

I have included a short screen capture video showing the problem.

After importing images from phone I found out that the colors are totally off in the imported images. This has never happened before. The phone or any import settings have not changed since the previous import. There are no custom import presets in use. Raw image import from an SLR camera works normally. The images are from Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra.

I'm suspecting this is related to the latest release v11.3.1 (Windows). or to one from the last a couple of months. Images from previous imports are not affected (previous import containing HEIC files was around end of February)

HEIC image is not allowed as an attachment here, but I can deliver one on request.