Medical Officer Bones

Unfortunately, at this point in time Designer does not support vector patterns. They have been requested many times before, and this feature is on the roadmap, but no fixed date when these will have been implemented is given to us.

In Affinity Photo a similar function is available, but only to remove white (or black when the image is inverted first). You'll find it in Filters-->Colors-->Erase White Paper. It is, however, quite limited compared to PhotoLine's Color to Transparency function in regards to options and control, and in Affinity this is a destructive filter (PhotoLine's version of this filter is non-destructive and can be stacked, if required).

If it's meant for app development, your development environment/language/API which you use may support Webp as an image format. Webp compresses both lossless and lossy, and compared to JPG results in much lower file sizes versus identical (or better) quality. And supports alpha transparency even when lossy compression is used. I use Webp instead of jpg for that kind of work nowadays.

True, although the RIOT version included is an older version and does not include the masking and meta data controls (at least, I believe it does - unsure). Irfanview: 0.4.6 versus the newer 0.6.0 (beta)

Oops, just realized this is a thread about JPG compression... Still, good information. A good tool for JPG optimization is RIOT (Windows only again I'm afraid), but the installation comes with adware and only the portable version should be downloaded and used. The advantage of RIOT is the option to control Chroma subsampling, which is generally not a parameter which can be controlled in image editors. Affinity Photo lacks such a setting, which is a bit of a shame. RIOT also offers good control over metadata (what to keep, and what to throw away). https://luci.criosweb.ro/riot/download/ WARNING: ONLY download the portable version! The installer includes adware!

THE ABSOLUTE best (not kidding here) PNG optimization and processing tool that I know of is Color Quantizer. Best kept secret of PNG optimization tools. One of the unique aspects of this small but wonderful utility is an easy to use quality mask brush, which allows for precise colour optimization control. It can create palettized colour ranges from 2 to anything, really. No 2-256 limitations. Also perfect for downsampling and dithering: 8 different dithering methods, as well as 16(!) different resampling methods. Full control over alpha optimization parameters, color space and visual perception, dither amount, and so on, and so forth. And full indexed colour palette control. And all with a very good preview: any change made is updated in the preview, with a nice zoom view to see the results in detail while you work. Instead of a side-by-side view the user clicks the view to compare the original with the optimized version. Get it here: http://x128.ho.ua/color-quantizer.html NOTHING else comes close to this level of PNG generation control and ease of use. The only drawback is that Mac users will have to use WINE to use it, because a Mac version is not available. But it is THAT good, that no-one even remotely interested in working with PNG files for web, mobile dev and game assets should be without.

@Al Grasso Please back up your words with actual examples. Upload sample images for us to compare.

Sorry, my mistake: what I meant was palettized PNG-24 beyond the 2-256 range. For example, restrict the palette to 512 colours. But without the ability to preview the effect of settings while these are changed really makes it a moot point.

This has been requested many times before I realize, but I am going to reiterate it one more time. As it stands, the export persona is pretty much useless, because it doesn't allow for a real-time preview of the rendered asset(s) to check the quality before export. Therefore, I don't use Photo's export option, and instead export a full quality PNG and optimize in external software. There are a number of other issues with the export (jpeg quality<->file size, inability to set >256 colour PNG output, lack of dithering options and resample options), but this is really the major one. I don't understand why this wasn't implemented in the first place, but hopefully it will be at some point.

It's pretty pronounced in the demo file. I tried to rasterize it, add a layer effect to force it to resample, etc. The only method I found that improves the quality is to apply the perpective filter at a higher resolution (initially avoiding downscaling to a small version), then scale down the screenshot (and rasterize if necessary). But even then there are still some remaining anti-aliasing issues. All of this seems to point at less-than-ideal re-sampling algorithms when down-scaling layers for lower resolution screen work.

@owenr I re-uploaded the file. Can you try again?

Here is the screenshot Photo file for others to compare. Live Perspective filter is used, so free free to try to improve the result. screenshot.afphoto

@R C-R I understand quite well that screen tech and browsers change how a web page is rendered, of course. But that is beside the point: hopefully anyone understands that these images should be examined on a desktop machine and a zoom function to compare the intrinsic quality of Affinity Photo's perspective filter resampling compared to competing software. It makes little sense to try to examine these PNG images on a small device such as an iPhone to compare the anti-aliasing and resampling quality. The case made here is quite simple: so far our experiments have shown that Affinity Photo's perspective filter does a poor job in this case when compared to other software. And I did a quick test in Krita just now, which confirms yet again for me that there is an issue with Photo's perpective filter resampling. Krita also has no such issues, just like the others. So we could discuss how a browser affects image rendering and scaling on various screens all day long, but that is a separate line of discussion, and doesn't change the fact that only Photo's version in this test is lacking in quality (and usability, but that is yet another discussion). This issue should be reported as an issue and addressed by the Photo devs. (Unless we are all missing something obvious, and it would be nice if one of the devs could chime in here in that case.)

You are right: Gimp's Color to Alpha function 'unmultiplies' (for a lack of better wording) the selected colour, just like Affinity Photo's "Erase White Paper" function. Other applications have similar functions: Krita's "Color to Alpha", PhotoLine's "Color to Transparency", and the old PS "Unmultiply" plugin from Ayato come to mind. Photoshop never had a native option built-in, oddly enough. Another classic PS plugin was "Peel Off White", but just like Ayato's Unmultiply plugin both developers decided it was too much of a bother to keep up with Adobe's ever changing plugin architecture, and decided to call it a day. Ayato re-created his filter in FilterForge, while the POW plugin creator decided to create a separate paid-for utility called "Peeler". Reference and interesting discussion regarding this technique and alternatives: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2067336 Anyway, it's nice that Affinity Photo offers a similar option, although a bit of a shame that it will only work with white (and black when the image is inverted first) backgrounds. I either use Krita or PhotoLine for this job. Krita is pretty good and free, while PhotoLine's Color to Transparency filter has the most options and is entirely non-destructive (can be stacked if necessary). Gimp's version doesn't always yield good results" more control is needed. Krita is a good free option, and does a very good job and includes a threshold slider. I hope the Photo devs will introduce more control options at some point. It's handy to have "Erase White Paper", but sort-of limited. Although I understand that most users probably just need to erase the white from existing clip art, it would be nice if a colour picker and threshold slider is added. While we wait and hope for this, if you do need to unmultiply any coloured background from an image, just open it in Krita and use its Color to Alpha option.

Correct, that is indeed the Amiga image I used. The distorted image is a screenshot done with Greenshot @1164x1237px (minus or plus a couple of pixels) from a 1920x1200 screen in portrait mode, https://www.blender.org/ In Photoshop and PhotoLine I used the <ctrl> drag option to distort the screenshot and adjusted the size. DPI is of course irrelevant, and only pixels count in this case. I have a feeling Affinity's resampling method doesn't cope very well with down-sampled cases such as this one. Also, might there be a difference between the Mac and Windows version? I use the Windows version. That is why I saved and uploaded each version as a lossless PNG file, and each can be downloaded locally to compare. But even with browser scaling I can tell that there's an obvious difference between Affinity Photo's result and the other two.

Hmm, my test. First one Affinity Photo with perspective filter, second one PhotoLine, third one Photoshop. Identical resolutions used (second one cropped on the right a bit compared to the other two). It seems there is indeed an issue with the perspective filter's anti-aliasing and/or down-sampling quality in Affinity Photo, unless I missed a setting. It's quite noticeable in Photo, and would require further processing - if at all possible. One other thing I sorely missed when working with Affinity Photo's perspective filter is an option to drag out the sides vertically and horizontally: in this case the sides must be masked and a bit of bleed is required. In both Photoshop and PhotoLine this is straightforward: just drag the horizontal and vertical sides. But in Affinity Photo this doesn't seem to be possible (unless I am missing something again), and it resulted in a lot of additional corner point dragging. It took twice as long to get it right.

I was bored...

That gradient needs far more dithering and/or noise applied to it, because the range of greys is quite narrow. In this case the problem is caused by Imgur conversion to jpg when you uploaded it to Imgur. JPG's lossy compression is the culprit in this case. However, can you provide us with the original PNG as well for inspection?

I'd go one step further, and add these as a fill option. Then add multiple noise functions, allow for layering of various noise variants and embossing. Look at PhotoLine for inspiration. Another option is FilterForge, but the plugin doesn't work in Photo, which is a crying shame. No issues in Photoshop or PhotoLine. In Photo I receive this error: a <class XFW::ArgumentError> The handle 000000C5C3BED9C0 is not a valid window handle. FilterForge has a multitude of interesting noise and texture generators. The stand-alone version does work, but it would be great if it worked as a plugin in Affnity Photo.

On my side I can't reproduce those lags at the start of a line (so far), and Iv'e tried low-res and high-res canvasses to draw on in Photo. Lasso-based stabilizers I find dreadful to work with. I just need a basic one to reduce wobbles and kinks produced by Wacom and Windows interpolation issues, and that's it. The ones in Photo prove to be rather a hindrance while drawing than anything else (sorry). And when I do use a very short length setting the drawing "feel" is quite heavy and more indirect (which is another reason I dislike most stabilizers). In Krita and CSP this is not the case, and both avoid the lasso-type of stabilizer. In Krita I just use the first basic stabilizer option, and it works fine. In CSP I often turn off the stabilizer altogether, and it still works fine for me - even on zoomed out canvasses and thin strokes. Anyway, something I noticed in Photo (compared to Photoshop, Krita and CSP) is that a lower-res canvas, when zoomed in at an odd 147% settting (for example) results in terrible aliasing while drawing. There's always going to be some reduction in quality, of course, but compared to the other three Photo's anti-aliasing is eye-strainingly painful to look at. That alone is a primary reason to avoid Photo for drawing. Not sure if this is a Windows thing, but I do recall Krita's developers mentioning that they had a heck of a time getting the screen anti-aliasing right. It's not as simple as it sounds, it seems. So that would be number (7) on the list of drawing improvements.

4) Haven't noticed the initial lag when first laying down strokes, to be honest. I didn't experience this myself, and I did try to replicate the behaviour. The wobbles and kinks caught my eyes immediately, though, since it's a shared issue with other software. Windows and Wacom don't interpolate smoothly on zoomed out canvasses in most software unless the software takes care of this itself. 6) laggy painting: it's a weak point of a lot of digital painting/image editing software, as can be expected. Krita solved it with its "instant preview" mode, which turns out to be quite useful when I do want to use more complex brushes or very large ones on a large canvas. Doesn't occur often, but when it does Krita allows me to draw large strokes smoothly with no lagging. Drawback: after drawing it's best to wait a bit until Krita is done calculating the final result. Having said this, working on high bit depth 10.000 px large canvases compared to 160x200 16 colour ones, I don't mind the occasional lag here and there

I drew my first C64 sprites on graph paper templates I printed with that old Commodore matrix printer. Still have them archived (a wonder really: must have been around 13 years old at the time, and I lost a lot of digital art throughout the years due to hardware accidents). Presenting the very first sprite I ever drew (and it's animated!): the terrifying Demon Skull (original C64 mid-grey) Btw, your conjecture about myself working as a freelancer since the very beginning is entirely correct: my sole attempt to work a 9 to 5 job for about a year in my late twenties taught me it wasn't for me. Almost killed me (literally). Once a freelancer, always a freelancer, I suppose. Have worked with quite large teams, though - but mostly from the comfort of my own workplace setup.

Thanks for the (long) response! It's an interesting discussion: like you, I've worked as a graphics artist since C64 times (C64 Koala Paint + pad!), Amstrad CPC 664 (love the bright colours compared to the C64), then Amiga for a very long time until work reality forced me into getting my first Windows machine. Also used Macs a lot, but no longer do. Macs slow me down too much (personal workflow thing). You do have a couple of misconceptions about me and my 'relationship' with Photoshop: I started using Photoshop at version 3.5, and (together with Illustrator) it was my main app for not only painting and drawing art, but also general graphics and illustration work, game related art/texturing, and more. I loved it. Taught it to thousands of students, and wrote courses for it (as well as most other Adobe apps). I lived and breathed Photoshop and Adobe apps. Then, around the time when Adobe first introduced their rental business model, aside from my dislike of renting software (at the time Adobe still offered traditional licenses, but I saw the signs on the wall from miles away), some of the intrinsic limitations of Photohop's workflow, which had bothered me for a longer time, began to really frustrate me and work against the way I wanted to work. It's too much to get into here, but suffice to say that Photoshop's core workflow hasn't really been updated since version 4/5 (aside from the addition of smart objects). One of my pet peeves with Photoshop is the way it handles layer masks, for example. Another being the silly separation of colour picking GUIs for bitmap and vector (shape) editing. Or the gradient editor/way gradients are used in Photoshop. Or the 15+1 "16bpc" mode in PS. There were many other things. I and other long-term PS users actually got into a couple of discussions with Chris Cox (now retired lead PS developer) and instead of tackling these long-standing issues, more often than not concerns were brushed off with reactions along the lines of "it's a feature, not an issue". Many of these things still haven't been resolved at this point. It was around that time when Adobe introduced rental options that I decided to look around for alternatives. And discovered that other tools would provide me with a (much) more pleasant workflow, even at the cost of having to create a pipeline which incorporated multiple separate applications. And even though you'd think that that might slow someone down, it's done the opposite for me. However, I completely understand the reasons for many professionals to stick to one consolidated environment such as Photoshop. It's more of a hassle to do otherwise, and I agree with you that for most it would only slow them down. But speaking for myself, whenever I am working in Photoshop I hit these proverbial brick walls: it won't let me work the way I want to work. I outgrew Photoshop at some point, silly as it may sound. Again, it is my personal experience. I realize most users won't even get so close as to see or feel that wall. But I did. Might have something to do with all the VFX work I did at the time and my exposure to nodal compositing. Mind, I rent the CC suite to be 'compatible" with job and client requirements. But aside from InDesign for layout work (yes, that includes brochures, books, not only comics!) I use Photoshop and Illustrator as conversion applications, and once in fortnight a particular plugin. Anyway, we seem to share similar veteran backgrounds (I noticed your Spectrum button the first time I read a message of yours last year). Just two sides of the same coin, really. And as far as the drawing tools/experience in Affinity Photo goes: 1) hiding the brush outline: agreed. 2) zoom thing when alt-clicking for colour picking: hadn't noticed this yet, but it gets in the way. Agreed. 3) essential: drawing on a zoomed out (high-rez) canvas is REALLY problematic. With thin brushes/lines and the stabilizer turned off or set to a 1~3 pixel length the lines produce wobbles and kinks. 4) essential: the current stabilizer is (sorry) unusable for me. When I set a short pixel length the drawing feels laggy and slow (aside from issue 3). When I use a longer length, Photo used that horrible lasso-type stabilizer technique. Ideally we would have a basic stabilizer which resolves the kinks and wobbles, and just draws smooth strokes. Similar to CSP, Photoshop, and Krita. And more control options. 5) allow the user to select brushes and control basic brush settings with a contextual right-click menu. Yes, I use shortcut keys as much as anyone, but many users love to stay put and just quickly change some settings visually. Even Photoshop allows for this. Better: why not allow for a custom pie menu which the user may adjust themselves? 6) laggy painting with somewhat larger brushes (~300px) when zoomed out. The longer the stroke, the less controllable it becomes. The performance of larger brushes I will not mention here.

This might be caused by various things. 1) your browser adapted the zoom level to something other than 100%. Modern browsers are screen resolution "aware" and may zoom in a bit, resulting in somewhat blurry looking images. Check the browser zoom level. 2) when uploading an image to most (all?) social media sites, instagram, and many forums the image is processed and optimized once again. This will lead to image quality loss. To mitigate this somewhat, always upload a PNG file (you don't want to make things worse by reprocessing a jpg with compression artefacts), and the size you upload it at also impacts the overall compression quality. Upload an image that is identical or as close as possible to the final actual resolution used by twitter/facebook, etc., and scale down you images to the required size with a good downscale algorithm, such as Catmull-rom or Mitchell. Sharpen the result a bit before uploading. But that's really all you have control over. 3) the image is uploaded at a lower resolution and upscaled with CSS: obviously this will result in a softer image. https://photography.tutsplus.com/tutorials/twitter-jpeg-compression-how-to-create-the-best-quality-image-for-your-feed--cms-23151 In a nutshell: don't expect the same quality as the original. You have relatively little control over how your images are mauled through, for example, Twitter's and Facebook's (and other sites) image processing servers. It is in their interest to keep the bandwidth as low as possible, and costs down. Which means a lot of lossy compression is used to force small-sized images, which in turn destroys the overall quality of your images. The one way to prevent this from happening is to serve your images on your own server (or a dedicated image hosting service that does not reprocess your images), and use a forum img code that links to your externally served version. I found that hosting images on your own server works best: you retain full control. Unfortunately, most social media sites will not allow for this, and want to take full control over your images: externally linking to an image is mostly not allowed or possible.

Be careful when scaling down images in Photoshop and comparing the results with other applications: Photoshop always applies a bit of sharpening after downscaling with the default settings. That is the main reason why the results in PS looks sharper.