noise live filter not applied during printing

[Klas]

Hi,

Thanks for excellent apps (using Photo and Designer)!

Today I added text to a poster (source was a jpg) and to make the text blend in a bit better I used Live Filters to add noise to the text. When I printed the poster I noticed that the noise hadn't been applied to the printed copy (the text was too smooth). I instead exported to jpg and printed in Affinity Designer (I wanted to make sure my printer driver didn't smooth things out due to scaling -- the poster was bigger than the A4 I printed on).  That worked fine, the noise was applied in the export.

• OS version: macOS High Sierra, 10.13.6
• Affinity Photo version:  1.7.3 (from App Store)
• Printer: Canon iP4800

I recreated the issue like this:

• Start a new blank doc (A4), white background
• Make a rectangle in some color (mine was reddish)
  • We'll keep this in solid color
  • Let's call this A
• Duplicate the rectangle, and apply the Live Filter noise to this one,  I used intensity 63%, Gaussian, Monochromatic
  • Let's call this B
• Duplicate the rectangle with the Live Filter, and Rasterize that
  • Let's call this C

In my printed copy, A and B are both solid and C has the noise applied.

Please let me know if I should provide more info.

Thanks,
Klas

[Richard Liu]

Yeah, this is a problem that has plagued all versions of Affinity Photo since 1.7.1.  I reported on July 5, 2019 that the effect of the Lighting live filter was absent in the printout, although very evident on the display.  @Chris B replied on July 

Quote

There is a known issue where Live Filter layers will not print or export to PDF. We're working on a fix but for now, you will have to rasterise the layer that the Live Filter is nested with or merge down.

Sorry for the trouble.

and further,

Quote

To clarify—any live filter that hasn't been rasterised will not show up when printed or exported to a PDF. So if the filters are nested or sat at the top level they will need to be merged or rasterised.

Since then, with every release candidate that I test and every new release I have enquired about the status of this problem.  Here are the responses that I have received:

August 1:

Quote

It looks like this is still broken in the RC  I will be chasing this up today in person as we keep getting reports and it's a pretty serious issue. I'll let you know if I hear anything useful.

Sorry about this 

The QA lead has had a chat with development and it looks like it may be getting assigned to one of the developers. We just need to determine if this is an issue with the export/print side of things or an issue that is happening before that as that will change which dev the bug is assigned to.

August 28:

Quote

The bug report has had activity from the developers and the comments seem to suggest that it is being worked on but there is another issue that needs to be fixed before this one can be addressed as they are closely related.

I'm hoping a 1.7.3 update will be available at some point as we've just found and fixed a serious issue with PSD/TIFF import that really needs pushing once testing has been carried out.

A follow-up question on November 9 after the release of 1.7.3 elicited no reply.

[Klas]

Thanks Richard.

Is this conversation from a thread on this forum, or someplace else?  If it's somewhere public I'll start following that thread.

[Richard Liu]

@Klas

No, it was mostly, if not exclusively, messages.  I had posted a bug report on the lighting live filter not printing, received no answer, and sent a message to @Chris B when I noticed he was online.

[Move Along People]

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[Richard Liu]

@haakoo,

Anticipating the day hopefully soon to come when printing actually does work -- presently, for all intents and purposes it is broken --, I export to JPEG or TIFF and print the exported file with Preview.  Yes, in general, something will be lost in the conversion, but it is not clear to me that rasterizing then printing with the broken print is the equivalent of printing with print as it is supposed to work.  If it were, wouldn't it be better to fix this problem by modifying print to first rasterize what needs to be rasterized, instead of placing the dual burdens of rasterizing and somehow also retaining the unrasterized layers on the user?

 

 

[Klas]

Thanks for the info @Richard Liu.

@haakoo, thanks, yes that's effectively what I did as a workaround, although I exported and then imported into designer since I wanted to scale and layout the image on paper manually, instead of through the print menu.