iconoclast

So the Windows version offers an advantage that doesn't make any sense. 😁 But I meant the spacebar, not only leaving the field empty.

Yes that's true, the brushlist should show up anyway. The only way to reproduce this empty look is to create a new category and rename it with only an empty space. But I don't believe that the OP did that. Because, if he would dropdown the menu, there should be shown other categories. So it must be a technical issue, I think.

Hi! It's not really clear to me what you mean with "doing art for a job". If you would be interested in becoming a graphic designer or media designer, you will normally make an apprenticeship in which you will learn to work with the software you will need for your job. Here in Germany it would be the stuff from the Adobe Creative Cloud in the most cases: Photoshop for image editing, Illustrator for graphics and InDesign for layouts. This is unfortunately expensive stuff, but as far as I know Adobe offers versions for students for lower costs. But not for private users. The main advantage of the Adobe Stuff is that Adobe is brand leader. In business you will have to deal with that the Adobe standards dominate, while other softwares, like the Affinity Apps, don't support some of these standards, because of copyrights. For only one job or occasional jobs, even less expensive programs might possibly be good enough. For example open-source-software like GIMP (image editing), Inkscape (vector graphics) and Scribus (layouts, but Scribus is not verry handy). You should be aware of that neither GIMP nor Inkscape support CMYK, the colourspace of print colours. But they are excellent softwares anyway. I decided to work with the Affinity-Suite, because it's great - in some things even better than Adobe for me, but in some other things a little limited - and Adobe is too expensive for me. And I don't like monopolists. Edit: An additional hint: there are some free (open source) softwares out that are specialised on creating celtic knots. One is called "Knotter". You will find it and others via Google search or on Source Forge.

Hi! If I'm not wrong, you have the Selection Brush selected. Select the Paint Brush Tool and see if you have brushes then.

I'm not sure about that, because as it seems, only CMYK-JEPGs that were exported from Affinity Photo and Designer cause such problems. Edit: No, Sorry, I'm wrong. It also happens with CMYK-JPEGs f.e. that are exported from Krita, as I tested some minutes ago. So Walt seems to be right.

So possibly with Antialiasing on and a Feathering of around 1,5 px?

Hi DesignCat! The Burn Tool darkens pixels. What you need is the Sponge Brush Tool with "Desaturate" enabled, I think.

What about Antialiasing plus a Feathering of 0,5 px?

@Jameel HakimiI really don't know if other programs use better antialiasing-algorithms or so, but in fact antialiasing works, at least with my Photo-version on my computer. And pixels are pixels - they will cause pixelation on the edges if the resolution is not high enough to hide them. That depends on the image resolution on one side and the screen resolution on the other side. Antialiasing can smooth the effect a bit, but it can't fully negate it in all cases. And the last point: Photo, as the name says, is made for image editing, not for graphic art. To get the best quality for graphic art, you should use a vector graphics software. If the advantage in quality you would get with it isn't worth the money for you, you shouldn't complain about the lack of quality you get with a software that is not made for things like this. It' a bit like complaining about the laws of nature. And by the way: if you think that this is a bug, why don't you write a bug report?

If you watch a pixel image with a zoom factor of 200% and more, it will of course look pixelated. The only meaningfull zoom factor to judge it is 100%. I'm on Windows 10 too and I use the same Photo version as you do. I can see a difference between activated and deactivated Antialias. You could also try it with a feathering of 1 or 2 pixels, to get smoother edges. Have you thought about creating your graphic with a vector graphics software like Affinity Designer? In that case you wont get pixelated edges.

So I'm not verry optimistic that it will be worth investing much work into it. Normally, if you have a photo that c0ntains artefacts, you would blur it to get rid of them. But your photo already is blurred and lacking in details.

Is this the original photo? I'm afraid you will not get good results from it, because it is not only blurred, it also is full of artefacts. Looks like a strongly compressed JPEG.

I don't know the video you are talking about. You can also use other filters. For example "High Pass" is also verry good, but a little more complicated and abstract. In G'MIC there are some verry good sharpening filters. I don't know the NIK Collection, but I'm sure that there are some excellent filters for it too. Just test them out a little. But the most basic filter for things like this is "Unsharp masking". There are also verry simple filters that sharpen every single pixel. But that is not what you need in the most cases, because it causes noise.

Hi augustya! You can get G'MIC here for free. Take the *.8bf-version for Photoshop and Affinity Photo... - not the ones for GIMP or Krita. There is also a standalone version and a web-service of G'MIC. Sharpening filters are in the "Details" category. NIK Plugin is generally not free. But there is somewhere on the net a download of an older free version. Unfortunately I don't remember where. Plugins appear in Photo at the bottom of the "Filters" menu. Be aware that many plugins don't work with 32-bit-images. Generally I have to say that to sharpen blurred photos doesn't lead to satisying results verry often. It often causes noisy images. And a loss of details. You need at least a filter that sharpens edges more than the inner areas of image objects. The basic one is "Unsharp masking". A verry good one.

Open the menu "Document" and click on "Ressource Manager". A window appears that contains a list of the images that are embedded in your document. Click on the entry of the Background image. It will be displayed on the right side of the window. Below this preview the colour profile will be shown. If it would be a CMYK-profile, this could be the reason for your problem. But if your document is meant to be printed, you should create it with a CMYK-profile anyway. And it should be the same as the one of the image. Which profile you should actually choose, you should talk about with the printers.

What does the Softproof say? Possibly different color profiles (document and background image)?

What colourspace has the document and what colourspace has the background image? The difference between the blue tones looks like the difference between RGB (more saturated) and CMYK. The preview looks the same in both cases. Edit: No, Sorry, that doesn't seem to be the problem.

On the bottom layer, there is an effect. Could this be the reason for your problem?

Hi willmac! As far as I understand, you import images per drag & drop to a document, and your problem is that they don't appear aligned to the document. This is, as far as I experienced, normal behaviour in Affinity Photo. To align the inserted image to the document, use the Alignment Buttons in the context menu of the Move Tool. You can even take care that you drag & drop the images to the top left corner of your document.

Hm, you could of course create your shape in a verry small size and upscale it without Interpolation ("Resampling: Nearest Neighbour") in Photo. But that is not verry conveniant and may not look good enough. I tested it, but it only seems to work if you export the image first, load the exported image (JPEG, PNG...) and upscale it then.

Hi Flowerratt! I'm afraid, I don't know any simple way to do that in Designer or even Photo. But in GIMP, there is a filter called "Pixelise" in the "Filter" menu under "Blur". As GIMP is free and open source, I use it as additional program for things Affinity doesn't offer. And it is verry good. If you want to try it, load the original installer from gimp.org. Some other sources spread malware. Possibly you could also find a plugin that does pixelising, but I don't know a certain one. The free G'MIC plugin (570 additional filters, also available as 8bf-plugin for Affinity Photo and Photoshop, as standalone-software and as web-service) has a sort of pixelisation filter, but it creates an outline around the shape you pixelise.

My alternative solution: create an empty new pixel layer above the image layer, choose the Blend Mode "Colour", pick up the blue/grey colour from the neighbour-pixels and paint with the Paintbrush over the areas with the wrong colours. It is a more subtle retouch, I think.

Yes, really interesting. Haven't noticed something like that before. But it only seems to happen with CMYK-JPEGs. TIFFs and PNGs are displayed correctly, as far as I see. And even the JPEGs are displayed for about a second correctly, before they appear inverted. Probably a bug?

On my PC, CMYK-images appear in this inversed look in the Windows-Photo-App. Haven't checked it yet with other image viewers (*). RGB-images appear in the normal way, but, depending on the colour profile and the colour depth, in varying tones. *Edit: Checked it with FastStone Image Viewer. It displays even CMYK-Images in the normal way. So it seems to depend on the software.

The DPI- (Dots per Inch; in this case we should rather say PPI = Pixels per Inch) resolution is responsible for the quality of an image. It is the definition how many pixels will be on a stretch of a certain anaolgue measure unit - normally Inch. So if you have 72 pixels on 1 Inch, the Pixels will be much bigger than if you have 300 PPI. And this will result in a more pixelated image. For screen, the DPI/PPI-resolution is not verry important. Digital images are measured in Pixels horizontal x Pixels vertical. But I would use 72 DPI anyway to prevent problems. For print, it is verry important, because it is the only way to tell a printer how big pixels shall be printed. Pixels generally don't have a specific size on their own.