How does Anti-Aliasing Work on Affinity Designer.

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[Jowday]

1 hour ago, Lagarto said:

It may be that in this post different people have different needs as regards antialiasing (which means smoothened edges). On Teespring they specifically do not want antialiasing, but crisp aliased edges that look jaggy when zoomed in.

Ah, yes there is a mix of questions in this thread. I responded to the questions about possible low quality in PNG. 

Turning the anti-alias off is not possible as an option anywhere, it seems. 

In Photoshop (but not Photo/AD) I can import the PDF version with this setting disabled:

Then I export the file as PNG with "nearest neighbor" selected. A more satisfying dialog than this one:

Yes, but anti-alias is a screen-smoothening technology not required when printing; high-res images does the trick. It puzzles me why Serif doesn't support it after all those years in the business. Professional programs (programs that earned the title) do support disabling anti-alias, here is the export dialog in CorelDRAW:

 

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[Kochab]

12 hours ago, firstdefence said:

Just for comparison of the same graphic from different apps.

This is the text and ellipse from Illustrator CC

This is the Artwork from Affinity Designer 

They both look roughly the same because you were in design mode. I can tell because of the red outline. You have to actually click the preview button to get an accurate representation. The preview is how it will look when the listing is created. When a user zooms in on the shirt in the listing, the jaggies will be especially apparent. Like I said, other shirts I've looked at don't have this problem and even small fonts will look nice and crisp because they can turn off anti-aliasing in whatever app they use to export the image.

[Kochab]

@Jowday I uploaded your bicubic_flat file to Teespring, and it did not look great. The text and circle is jagged.

[Kochab]

Well, now I'm really confused because I just dusted off Illustrator CS4, made some text, exported a PNG with anti-aliasing disabled, and it still looks bad in the preview.

[Jowday]

7 hours ago, Kochab said:

@Jowday I uploaded your bicubic_flat file to Teespring, and it did not look great. The text and circle is jagged.

The problem is not the PNG files. They are fine. The issue must be the website or/and browser. The file had the right size and DPI with smoothly rendered edges as bitmap. Some of us even saw it correctly in the same setting in Treespring. Some don't. I believe the site or your browser fails to render a correct preview of the file.

I consistently get perfect previews in Teespring using Google Chrome on Windows 10 Professional with files from Affinty with anti-alias or files from CorelDRAW with anti-alias turned off.

[Jowday]

17 hours ago, Alfred said:

In the desktop versions of the Affinity apps — but not currently in the iPad versions — you can use the Coverage Map to address the problem:

 

The coverage workaround works - but is a terrible workaround to apply to all objects in complex drawings. In practice impossible unless you have several hours to spare. Further you have to know about it - only for forum users that are so blessed that they cross posts mentioning it. How many percent of the Affinity customers does that amount to... 2% ?

Reminds me of something... oh yes 🙂

[Kochab]

3 hours ago, Jowday said:

The issue must be the website or/and browser.

It actually is. I ran all my tests with aa off. If I upload with Firefox, it looks bad in both Firefox and Chrome. If I upload with Chrome, it looks good in both Firefox and Chrome. That is too weird. Well, I'm glad to know it's not AD then, and at least we can do the coverage map thing. Thank you to everyone who replied and took the time to test this out.

[pyxelles]

On 8/7/2020 at 6:38 AM, Kochab said:

I'm having the same problem. My designs look horrible next to others. Honestly, I'm shocked this is an issue. I love AD and have been using it for years, but just started getting into print-on-demand work where it hasn't been going well at all. They all want PNG files, not vectors. I tried exporting with every type of PNG resampling AD offers and all result in jagged designs. Here is the page on Teespring that talks about anti-aliasing. We desperately need this in AD:
https://community.teespring.com/training-center/design-file-tips-best-practices/

Same here!

[pyxelles]

On 8/9/2020 at 4:54 AM, Jowday said:

The coverage workaround works - but is a terrible workaround to apply to all objects in complex drawings. In practice impossible unless you have several hours to spare. Further you have to know about it - only for forum users that are so blessed that they cross posts mentioning it. How many percent of the Affinity customers does that amount to... 2% ?

Reminds me of something... oh yes 🙂

Thanks for mentioning that because I had never heard of coverage maps until today! Why do we have to do workarounds for things that should be basic features anyway? I love AD but It's now getting tedious with having to use workarounds in AD. 

[Jowday]

6 hours ago, pyxelles said:

Thanks for mentioning that because I had never heard of coverage maps until today! Why do we have to do workarounds for things that should be basic features anyway? I love AD but It's now getting tedious with having to use workarounds in AD. 

Sometimes - and often - tedious workarounds are not even an option. They is just not viable at all. The price of software vs the hourly cost of labor ... just no comparison. Workarounds are expensive and a risk.

[Caroline L]

Hi, I am having this issue too. Has anyone found a solution yet? 

[MxHeppa]

Matybe old thread i dont care but this coverage map thing works also in Affinity Photo and solves few things what i miss makes possible do them.

[MxHeppa]

On 8/8/2020 at 3:05 PM, Lagarto said:

It does, but it needs to be turned off object-wise. I forgot the coverage map setting even if I fluently use it with Photo -- because aliasing cannot be seen on screen in a vector app as it can when using Photo. Here is the same object in Designer and Photo, coverage map used to turn off antialiasing:

I did not realize that antialiasing is turned off when exporting to bitmap formats, so when vector art with this kind of coverage map settings is exported in bitmap formats, it will have aliased edges. It would be nice, though if export settings allowed turning off antialiasing for the whole job just with a single click.

agree and maybe more thna single level antialising. one program in whole different platform (is pure bitmap tool and is not for mac os,windows or ipad) i think has two levels of antialias and off.

[Caroline L]

2 hours ago, MxHeppa said:

agree and maybe more thna single level antialising. one program in whole different platform (is pure bitmap tool and is not for mac os,windows or ipad) i think has two levels of antialias and off.

Thanks so much but that’s going a bit over my head. I’ve only just started transitioning from Drawplus and I have so much to learn in Affinity. All I know is I need good quality PNG’s for POD work. Is there an easy way to explain it or maybe a video you can recommend? 

[MxHeppa]

14 hours ago, Caroline L said:

Thanks so much but that’s going a bit over my head. I’ve only just started transitioning from Drawplus and I have so much to learn in Affinity. All I know is I need good quality PNG’s for POD work. Is there an easy way to explain it or maybe a video you can recommend? 

no. and is not related Affinity programs. and this tool is not for Mac OS or Windows or Ipad or not even Linux/Unix.

[JazzTwitJohn]

I've been following this thread. I have a computer science background, I know what anti-aliasing is from a university course back in 1986. I've been using AD for about a year. I am using symbols to make my vector design symmetrical at the point of reflection. It works beautifully, except that at the join there is a fine line appears between the two reflected clipping rectangles. The rectangles are perfectly placed, using snapping, so it looks like anti-aliasing. I go to the layer options Cog and force anti-aliasing OFF and the line on the screen disappears. But then I can no longer export as PNG without horrible pixelated curves. If I leave it ON or set to Inherit, the fine line appears in the exported PNG.

Is there a fix?

[NotMyFault]

6 hours ago, JazzTwitJohn said:

I've been following this thread. I have a computer science background, I know what anti-aliasing is from a university course back in 1986. I've been using AD for about a year. I am using symbols to make my vector design symmetrical at the point of reflection. It works beautifully, except that at the join there is a fine line appears between the two reflected clipping rectangles. The rectangles are perfectly placed, using snapping, so it looks like anti-aliasing. I go to the layer options Cog and force anti-aliasing OFF and the line on the screen disappears. But then I can no longer export as PNG without horrible pixelated curves. If I leave it ON or set to Inherit, the fine line appears in the exported PNG.

Is there a fix?

If you export to PNG, a raster format, assuming no transparency required, the fix is easy:

1. add a Chanel mixer adjustment (as topmost layer)
2. select alpha channel
3. set offset to 100%

If you have transparency in the final result, a similar trick can be used:

Set alpha to 200%. If required, duplicate adjustment layer to increase effect. This keeps fully transparent areas, but weakens partial transparency, achieving full opacity where unwanted lines occurred.