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Why no Bitmap mode?


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I presume that you are referring to a 1-bit mode. All pixel images are bitmaps. 

This request has been raised many times and, as yet, the devs have not really given any convincing explanation why not. I would presume that it is just too low on their list of priorities.

John

Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC

CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

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7 minutes ago, John Rostron said:

and, as yet, the devs have not really given any convincing explanation why not. I would presume that it is just too low on their list of priorities.

Is it truly relevant for an application whose primary task is editing photographs, and might that exlain a low priority?

(I can see it as being more relevant for Designer, of course. And if Designer had the support Photo would inherit it. But I don't understand the direct relevance for photo editing.)

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
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There is an extended thread here with many users asking for a 1-bit mode, giving their reasons too.

John

Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC

CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

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Even though many user asked for it and explained in detail the many uses of 1-bit images, the developers made it very clear that there are no plans whatsoever to implement it (search the forums, there's many topics on this).

They might or might not change their minds in the future, but currently the answer has to be: No, there isn't -- If your work or workflow requires 1-bit images, Affinity is not for you!

Take a peek at "PhotoLine" -- great software, super fair price!!!

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7 minutes ago, John Rostron said:

There is an extended thread here with many users asking for a 1-bit mode, giving their reasons too.

Thanks. 

I am not arguing that 1-bit is unnecessary, but every time I read one of those discussions, my conclusion is that it's definitely appropriate for Designer and Publisher, but I don't see the relevance for Photo.

 

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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5 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Thanks. 

I am not arguing that 1-bit is unnecessary, but every time I read one of those discussions, my conclusion is that it's definitely appropriate for Designer and Publisher, but I don't see the relevance for Photo.

The support would be needed in APhoto so AD and/or APub could make use of them. A photo editing application is what is adept at controlling the various conversion methods to 1-bit, not AD/APub. The latter two just needs to be able to use them properly, but APhoto would be needed to make ém.

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20 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Thanks. 

I am not arguing that 1-bit is unnecessary, but every time I read one of those discussions, my conclusion is that it's definitely appropriate for Designer and Publisher, but I don't see the relevance for Photo.

 

People don't use Affinity Photo or Photoshop just to deal with photographs. Are you kidding or what?
Bitmap mode is used frequently for black and white line art because it reproduces sharper  as explained in that previous thread and for other uses.

People have asked for it from day one and nothing has happened in how many years, four or five?

The fact that it is not there, along with proper percentage scaling tools or even basic duo tone stuff,
suggest that this is destined to be a hobbyist program and not a true Photoshop replacement, unfortunately.

 

None of these things are difficult to implement and should have been there from the start.

 

 

 

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4 minutes ago, nik78 said:

People don't use Affinity Photo or Photoshop just to deal with photographs. Are you kidding or what?
Bitmap mode is used frequently for black and white line art because it reproduces sharper  as explained in that previous thread and for other uses.

No, I'm not kidding. There are 3 Affinity applications and they are targeted at different uses and different users. Black and white line art is, in my opinion, more appropriately dealt with in Designer, not Photo.

The Affinity Suite certainly needs bitmap capabilities, but what I am saying is that the people who need it seem to almost universally talking about drawing comics, etc. which (again, in my opinion) is a Designer activity, not a Photo activity. They should be asking for it as a Designer enhancement (and it would by the nature of the Suite carry over into some aspects of Photo, too).

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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You should be kidding because no one works that way.

They are all used together and not for one specific purpose.

That should be Affinity's goal (and  it sort of appears to be going that way).

I've been in this business for 35 years. That's the way it's done.

That is the way professionals work.
No one relies on one app as being good for just photos or illustration or anything else.

You go from one to the other all the time.

Solution is :

Affinity Designer should have a "no antialiasing" export option as Illustrator does.

Add bitmap mode to Photo and the problem is gone and you will get a lot more illustrators as customers.

Like I said: should have been there from day one.

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But why is it Photo that needs bitmap support? Why isn't it the Suite that needs it? Theres a separate forum for suggestions that need to apply to the Suite.

And why should people coming from lllustrator be using Photo? Designer is targeted at that audience more than Photo is.

But yes, I agree that no one should be relying on just one of the Affinity applications. At their price point, users should have all 3, and use the one(s) that fit their needs of the moment.

Still, Serif will decide the partitioning of function between the applications, and those who want a smoother workflow between Photo and Designer can get that by using Publisher.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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  • 4 months later...
On 4/7/2020 at 4:37 PM, nik78 said:

You should be kidding because no one works that way.

They are all used together and not for one specific purpose.

That should be Affinity's goal (and  it sort of appears to be going that way).

I've been in this business for 35 years. That's the way it's done.

That is the way professionals work.
No one relies on one app as being good for just photos or illustration or anything else.

You go from one to the other all the time.

Solution is :

Affinity Designer should have a "no antialiasing" export option as Illustrator does.

Add bitmap mode to Photo and the problem is gone and you will get a lot more illustrators as customers.

Like I said: should have been there from day one.

Totally agree with this comment by nik78.

Bitmaps are incredibly useful in illustration techniques - and used by illustrators and designers all over the world if you recognise what you're looking at.

My personal method to make textures to build into illustrations is to find a useful lump of image texture - say a contrasty bit of rock or wood. Convert to greyscale. Convert to bitmap with threshold adjusted as necessary. Assign colour to bitmap. Dump back into master rgb illustration and carry on. Colour not quite working? Go back to bitmap and adjust colour. Didn't get the bitmap resolution right? Go back to greyscale and adjust from there.

The same with duotones. Make a greyscale image. Go to duotone mode. Assign colours. Convert file back to rgb and dump back in the master rgb illustration. Totally controllable.

In Photoshop this is very fast and simple to do.

You can also dump the bitmaps into Illustrator as flat areas and assign colours on the fly.

I have to say that I was really surprised when I bought the Affinity suite to find that none of this is built in.

Vector trace is really no use for this technique at all.

Edited by andrewjones
missed out designers!
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You seem to be ignoring the Pixel persona in Designer - it is not limited to Vector work, it covers both.

I agree with @walt.farrell that much of what you are asking for is really more suitable to Designer than to Photo.

That does not mean that Photo would not benefit from a true mono mode (or a well-designed simulation of one), but to my thinking Photo is optimized for working with... photos.  Illustration is creation of original artwork, which is really where Designer should be focused.

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I hear what you say, but really I'm not interested in which part of Affinity the function should appear in, just so long as it appears somewhere. That would make me happy, as it is something I assumed would be in there when I purchased the software. Working in mono is a very useful tool and one I would have thought would be useful to photo people as well. I'm not savvy enough to know if a simulation would be good enough to do the job.

Arguing about whether "Photo" is restricted to photo work is not really important - after all, if my memory serves me correctly, early advertising aimed Photo at digital painting as well. Because I'm old school I tend to regard the photo end as being anything that deals with pixels, but if it were to end up in Designer, that wouldn't phase me at all. Let me know when it arrives.

Comments aren't aimed at starting some kind of discussion about which slot the function fits into, but are aimed at trying to persuade the devs that it is an important function used by all sorts of creatives and designers, and that if they were to implement it, I am absolutely convinced their software would have a far wider appeal. Particularly to those like me who are stuck with PS at the moment - because it's hard to find any alternative.

I read that Photoline supports bitmaps on layers. I can't imagine why, but I need to get it to find out.

That's all!

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The Affinity forums are scarred and diffused by unqualified opinions and lack of business and real world usage knowledge. It is sad to see how request threads are distorted and disturbed by amateurs with opinions for years with no end in sight. Serif may or may not change Affinity to support it. But they may change their minds. Look at WebP. The real world usage may lead Serif to a new decision despite earlier rejections of WebP. People share their needs and requests here for Serif to notice it and take notes. What follows in the request threads is often proof that Serif has ever so few professional users in reality. Should professionals visit this forum they will notice this immediately. 

The lock-down and vacation is over for me and I am again working with creative and skilled professionals on weekdays in my office. I had forgotten how big the contrast is coming here.

 

  • "The user interface is supposed to work for me - I am not supposed to work for the user interface."
  • Computer-, operating system- and software agnostic; I am a result oriented professional. Look for a fanboy somewhere else.
  • “When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.” ― Confucius
  • Not an Affinity user og forum user anymore. The software continued to disappoint and not deliver.
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5 hours ago, andrewjones said:

...I read that Photoline supports bitmaps on layers. I can't imagine why, but I need to get it to find out.

PL is my everyday driver. It's great for what it does.

As I mentioned in one of the 1-bit threads, just being able to create 1-bit images in *whichever* Affinity application gets a user part way there. Becuase Affinity Publisher/Designer has a single document dpi/resolution, there would be need to alter how one includes images if also using continuous tone images.

The document dpi would have to be set for 1200 dpi (which is what the 1-bit images should have at minimum). Which means one should place rgb/cmyk images at/near a target effective resolution of 300 for general print. Else a print pdf is going to be severely bloated.

Which is all too much work for this little brain. At least because I have applications wherein there is no document dpi, where image types (as well as drop shadows) can all have different dpi settings. Tis less for this dunce to think about (aside from just being a quicker work-flow).

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I too think AP should handle pixels, were they 1 or 16 bits deep, and AD should handle vectors. Most 1-bit illustrations start as greyscale or RGB images.

Single document dpi may be limiting feature in layout app and Publisher really should be more flexible and support different resolutions in export. Should not be too hard as it already allows exported image objects to retain native resolution (you do not have to downsample images). Thus normal behaviour should be 300 dpi colour/greyscale and 1200 dpi bitmap (sure you should be able to alter values). Document dpi should only govern elements created within layout (e.g. said shadows). 

Also, I think, plain support for 1-bit is more difficult than supporting multiple dpis. At the moment Publisher converts placed bitmaps to RGB, which produces all kinds of complications.

For the original question: I think devs just don't now how. Coders think the more the merrier and who needs old tired 1-bit when you can have 32 bits? Did anyone ask for 64 bits? Can do! 

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Personally the only reason I can think of is that Serif just don't see 1-bit as part of their current vision of the future of print, because, perhaps, they don't come from a print background. Unfortunately, print ain't dead yet, so ignoring a set of widely used print and manipulation techniques can only be costing them sales.

Oh well.

Thanks Jens and MikeW. I'll take your recommendation!

 

 

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I have a feeling that Affinity Photo's architecture perhaps complicates the implementation of a true 1bit (and 8bit indexed) mode to such an extent that the devs would have to re-code large swaths of their core code. I don't think they ever anticipated the need for a 1bit mode architecture, and patching the current code base is probably a really bad idea.

And to be fair, it does present a new set of novel problems: how do you deal with transparency? Layers? How will those layers with different bit depths interact?

For example, in Photoshop most of the functionality is simply turned off. No layers, no blending, most filters are greyed out and unavailable. Same in indexed mode.

PhotoLine is completely unique in that it allows the user to actually keep using layers, vector layers,  blend modes, layer masks and effects, but many effects and blend modes have no effect in 1bit mode, and layer masks still allow for grey values, which potentially can lead to issues. So in PhotoLine's case the responsibility lies entirely with the user to avoid making mistakes.

Photoshop and PhotoLine represent in my mind two extremes in how to tackle the implementation of a 1bit mode: either limit the user's freedom when working in 1bit mode, or allow full freedom, but with that freedom comes the user's responsibility to avoid using features that might break the 1bit workflow.

For an experienced user or expert PhotoLine is a revelation when working with 1bit graphics. For a novice a potential minefield, and Photoshop's hand-holding probably a better approach.

And if an 8bit indexed bitmap mode is required in your workflow: even PhotoLine avoids opening that tin can of worms. I would argue it is preferable to switch to a dedicated 8bit (pixel art) image editor, such as Pro Motion NG, because of an entire new set of requirements.

All of which returns us to the need of 1bit support in Affinity products. For many print/textile professionals it is an absolute requirement. If the Affinity devs could integrate 1bit in the export persona, fix the custom 8bit palette option (which has never worked), for heaven's sake implement a proper real-time preview in the export persona, as well as make sure Publisher (and Photo and Designer) deal with 1bit images properly in the PDF export and keep the original higher resolution, then Serif may perhaps at the very least provide a feasible 1bit workflow.

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You can somewhat simulate a 1-bit mode in a grayscale document and keeping a Posterize adjustment layer at the top of the layer stack and setting the levels to 2.

Support for exporting in a true 1-bit format would still be needed though.

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You can also use threshold adjustment layer, but these are very inconsistent tools, often soft edges stay even when threshold or posterize should sharpen them out. Weird.

There is support for 1-bit b&w PNG and GIF but there is no threshold function, instead they dither always. Should not matter if source is cleanly thresholded, but often there are some stray pixels and artifacts. No

1-bit TIFF though.

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  • 7 months later...
On 4/7/2020 at 11:20 AM, walt.farrell said:

No, I'm not kidding. There are 3 Affinity applications and they are targeted at different uses and different users. Black and white line art is, in my opinion, more appropriately dealt with in Designer, not Photo.

The Affinity Suite certainly needs bitmap capabilities, but what I am saying is that the people who need it seem to almost universally talking about drawing comics, etc. which (again, in my opinion) is a Designer activity, not a Photo activity. They should be asking for it as a Designer enhancement (and it would by the nature of the Suite carry over into some aspects of Photo, too).

"Black and white line art is, in my opinion, more appropriately dealt with in Designer, not Photo." When the original artwork is pen or pencil on paper and the linear has to come directly from the original art and file size is a very important issue, 1-bit color in a photo app is critically important. Think of calligraphy, cartoons, and other applications. It may shock you to learn that there are still people who insist on working on paper, only to have their work digitized, but that is the reality.

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On 4/7/2020 at 2:22 AM, Fixx said:

Engineer thinking says more is more and 1-bit graphics is so '80s anyway. We will get 64-bit graphics before 1-bit, I am afraid.

You may be right... but 1-bit graphics are still very important for certain vital sectors of graphic arts. And since a good part of the original artwork for that sector is created on paper, it has to be scanned and treated like a photo, which requires... a photo app.

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