Dithering on Gradients in Exports

[mrowwy]

I've seen something similar posted before without solution or mention that this will remain this way or if this is something that will get a solution:

I have the option to disable dithering enabled, though this appears to only impact the viewport, which looks as I'd expect, and not the file exports. Is there any way to disable this when writing to a file?

 

My current workaround here is to script out the transitions in Illustrator as rects per color value, then copy/paste them back into Designer, but the more I have to do this in a drawing the more it pushes me back to an application I'd like to be off of. 

 

I think dithering as the default makes a lot of sense, I just wish there was a way to disable this. Is there something I'm missing? This currently puts a major kink in our overall workflow as the dithering negatively affects the final result.

I understand from an aesthetic perspective the dithered edges may be more ideal, but the ideal in our case is the banding.

Thanks!

 

 

[stokerg]

Hi mrowwy and Welcome to the Forums,

This is by design.  I'm just trying to find out the reasoning behind this and i know we've had a number of requests to disable dithering on export but not sure what the plans are regarding this.

As soon as i know more, i'll update here  

[stokerg]

Hi @mrowwy

If you call up the Export Window, select PDF,  (click on More and make sure JPG compression is also disabled) the exported result won't be dithered.  It appears we dither when Rasterisation is required, i'm still trying to find out if we plan on changing or its something can't avoid.

[mrowwy]

Understood, unfortunately I need these to be rasterized, which means I loose a ton of Affinity's selling points if I have to export these elsewhere.

Even if it was setting buried in an XML somewhere, I could deal. Even a disable for the entire document would be workable. I think ideally this would be done per gradient, but I'd be happy with any of these, or similar.

 

Thanks for looking into this!

[stokerg]

Hi @mrowwy,

We got an improvement logged with the Dev team to add an option to disable dithering on export  

So fingers crossed, this will be addressed in a future update, i just don't know when that will be.

[mrowwy]

Thank you. Any hope is better than none

[Guillermo Espertino]

Hi, this is also affecting exports to 32 bit EXRs which is completely unexpected and undesired, as the format has room for storing the actual information without needing dithering at all.
The problem doesn't affect exporting only: rasterizing vector layers also applies that unwanted dithering. The option should be extended to general rasterization (probably the prefs dialog is the right place for that).

[emfx]

Hi,

I am affected by this issue as well.

Dithering is not something that is needed in every case and when dealing with displacement maps, it's a real bummer to not be able to avoid the effect.

I hope the option for disabling this will be added in the next version because I can't work with affinity right now because of this.

Thanks

[lepr]

3 hours ago, emfx said:

Dithering is not something that is needed in every case and when dealing with displacement maps, it's a real bummer to not be able to avoid the effect.

I hope the option for disabling this will be added in the next version because I can't work with affinity right now because of this.

There are a couple of workarounds to prevent dithering when rasterising:

• give the object (or Group or Layer containing multiple objects) a Layer Effect Colour Overlay with zero opacity, and choose to not preserve Layer Effects if prompted when rasterising
• use Layer Effect Gradient Overlay instead of a regular gradient

These work because the current Affinity apps never dither Layer Effects, so hope that the developers do not close that loophole before providing options for dither.