longstreth

I'm a cartoonist looking for an alternative to Photoshop and was bummed to find out (after purchase) that Affinity Photo does not have a bitmap mode, which is essential to my practice. As stated above, the printing process for comics uses black and white bitmap 1200dpi TIF files for the lineart, which is overprinted above the CMY plates. Until this feature is incorporated I'll have to search elsewhere for a workaround (Clip Studio Paint, etc.)

I find having to use the wand and then flood fill pretty time consuming if you've got a complicated file. Having the flood fill tool sample all layers would be MUCH better.
Also, with pixel persona in designer, or a flood fill type tool in 'draw' persona. Basically, I want to add colour between vector lines. The file is VERY big and complex so turning all the individual lines into closed shapes for filling using the standard colour tools is impractical.

I work in letterpress printing and screenprinting and use 1 bit mode every day. Please include this feature.
 
Reiterating what others have said:
Letterpress require a solid, no line screen image to make clean film for plates. We, too, scan calligraphy for invitations at 1200dpi for high resolution platemaking.
In PS I  scan>convert to greyscale>play with levels, then Threshold>convert to bitmap. Then I colorize with spot (Pantone) colors in layout software.
 
I've been doing this for close to 20 years (yikes) and am happy to consult to bring this feature to Affinity.
thanks!

Threads merged.

I too have a need for a 1-bit mode, in order to prepare images for letterpress, silkscreen etc. Also, the addition of duotone, tritone and quadtone would be fantastic.

Ok here it is as request :-)
 
1-bit bitmaps are used as line art (printed cartoons, illustrations), in silk screen printing and copydot printing systems. They also can (should) be used in coloured comics, where colour plates are overprinted with 1-bit black key colour. Possibly there are other technical purposes also (please list them in this thread!) There is not many apps that support 1-bit but for these uses 1-bit is crucial. 1-bit ensures that black image is NOT rasterized, resulting fuzzy outlines.
 
Technically 1-bit colour space should be easy feat. You can convert greyscale image to 2 tones (b & w) by thresholding image where light areas convert to white and darker to black.
 
Threshold should be adjustable so you can select how black or how white image is. (Scanners can scan directly to 1-bit but I think it is much better scan to greyscale and set the threshold manually.)
 
Alternative to thresholding is dithered image – that is, using something like grain mask or stochastic raster or Atkinson dithering to build the greytones. I am not sure that is so much needed as it is just a special effect (imho). Besides, there is excellent HyperDither app available.
 
There are some angles that are worth considering. Colour images are best at about 300 dpi when printed. 1-bit images display jaggies in that low resolution, optimum res is 1200-2400 dpi. Ideally 1-bit pixels would map 1-1 to device pixels but above 1200 dpi that is academic.
 
Details are not needed in that high resolution range, meaning that true 1 pixel resolution is not needed. Resolution is needed for avoiding jaggies, making lines and shapes smooth and clean. That also means that you can upsample image to smooth jaggies out. It is perfectly ok (even when not really hi-fi) to take 300 dpi greyscale image upsample it to 1200 and convert to 1-bit. In photoshop you can upsample in convert dialog (doing 300>1200 AND 8-bit to 1-bit) but I think Photoshop did it wrong and resulted jaggies. I do not know if they have corrected that bug (I use PS CS5). I hope AP would upsample and convert at one go and do it right.
 
There are some massage you can do to makes 1-bit appearance better. You can play with local contrast to make darker parts lighter so there will be more meaningful black and white areas in image. You can do it manually, or you can use filter (I think high-pass filter is used here?) I am hoping Affinity team would find some quick and easy slider here to apply in convert dialog to reveal more detail in final 1-bit image.
 
Tools: there is not much need for any special tools. (Or is there?) You can paint pixels black or white and that is it.
 
One simple effect/usage mentioned also in Affinity forum is that 1-bit image is placed in page layout app and coloured with front and back colour tools.
 
Last, you might want to consider comix artists' work flow. Old school draw black&white, scan b&w original (1200 dpi) and hand a copy to colour artist for colouring. Colouring is done to separate layer (well, sometimes physical "layer" with brush and paint). Coloured version is set in place in page layout and higher res lineart version is set in register with it and overprinted. Should colour image be CMYK? Or would it better be CMY, resulting brighter colours and less ink coverage, considering there is still black key 1200 dpi image being overprinted? How do you do CMY separation? Also, there are artists that draw with colours so that final artwork is coloured physical art board, and the either take the easy way out and do normal 300 dpi art production, OR filter out the 1200 dpi black key from full colour scanned original (not easy process..). Possibly Affinity can troubleshoot this process to simple and easy colour sep system for comix artists.

Hello,
I can not find a Bitmap mode in 1-bit Photo Affinity off I need to process files that keeps strictly their mode and their resolution.
This is copydot files and it is important that it be treated as such.

It is provided a 1-bit Mode?

If that were the case , it might be interesting to have a true improvement over Photoshop that generates moiré patterns when you want the resample .
 
 
 
(This messages was à Google Translate).
 
 
 
 
Clyde