rschaub

all of this would be possible with procedural textures, if there was a way to access color values at a certain coordinate. I'm not sure if this is already possible, but I found no way to do that. Something like R[x+1,y] - R[x-1,y] // access color channel R with relative offsets of (-1, 0) and (1, 0) would open up a whole world of possibilities for procedural textures. This would require access to the current coordinate (x, y) if R[x,y] samples the channel at absolute coordinates.

To answer my own question: The problem with visible dithering in theoretically smooth gradients lie with the application's performance settings. Edit -> Performance -> Dither gradients Unchecking this option will make gradients perfectly smooth :D . Having the option checked will result in the above mentioned behavior.

Sorry to open an old topic, but I ran into the exact same problem as OP in Affinity Photo. I'm creating a new pixel layer (256x256) and place a rectangle across the whole layer, which I fill with a gradient (linear, black to white, 256 greyscales, which should theoretically result in one step up in lightness per row). I too noticed considerable noise instead of a smooth gradient. Then I found the slider 'noise' in the gradient color picker. It is set all the way to the left, which should disable any noise. Moving it to the far right will increase the amount of noise in the gradient which is to be expected. However, moving the slider only slightly to the right from its leftmost position will decrease the noise to a barely visible level (it will not disappear completely!). I'm pretty sure that's not the intended behavior... One could argue that if it's barely visible, it's no big deal, but I need a perfectly smooth gradient because I'm using it as a lookup table of sorts for a program I'm writing. Having discontinuities appear in the image will render it useless. left: default settings (magnified gradient) right: noise slider moved slightly. Noise is reduced but still visible. Is there a known workaround to this? Thanks!