Transform Without Blurring Object

[Pntrguy]

Hello.

I’m struggling with transforming selected areas of designs in Affinity Photo.

When changing the size of a selected object, even a little bit, the edges of the selected object become considerably blurred with an “anti alias” look to them. Same thing occurs when rotating a selected object to a new angle, even without changing its size. This ruins the original integrity of the selected object, changing crisp-looking edges to blurred. Trying to fix the blurring by hand afterwords is a huge interruption to workflow.

In Snapping Manager, I already have “Force pixel alignment” checked and “Move by whole pixels” unchecked. This seems to prevent the blurring problem when simply moving a selected object. But otherwise transforming selected objects still creates the blur.

Hopefully there’s a setting I’m just not aware of to prevent this from happening. Could someone please let me know?

[Jowday]

8 minutes ago, Pntrguy said:

Hello.

I’m struggling with transforming selected areas of designs in Affinity Photo.

When changing the size of a selected object, even a little bit, the edges of the selected object become considerably blurred with an “anti alias” look to them. Same thing occurs when rotating a selected object to a new angle, even without changing its size. This ruins the original integrity of the selected object, changing crisp-looking edges to blurred. Trying to fix the blurring by hand afterwords is a huge interruption to workflow.

In Snapping Manager, I already have “Force pixel alignment” checked and “Move by whole pixels” unchecked. This seems to prevent the blurring problem when simply moving a selected object. But otherwise transforming selected objects still creates the blur.

Hopefully there’s a setting I’m just not aware of to prevent this from happening. Could someone please let me know?

Same behavior if you select “bilinear” instead of “high quality” in preferences -> Performance?

[Pntrguy]

Thanks for the suggestion. I just checked and there are two options for "View Quality" under "Performance." They are "Bilinear (Best Quality)" and "Nearest Neighbor (Fastest)." Bilinear had apparently already been selected by default, and yes it's showing the blurring behavior with Bilinear selected. I sure hope there's a solution. It's troubling that a function as essential and commonly used as Transform is so destructive to the object being transformed. Any more insights on this would be welcome.

[stokerg]

Hi Pntrguy,

Could you attach a sample file and let me know the steps you are taking and tools you are using.

[Pntrguy]

Hi Stokerg,

Sure, thank you. Attached is a file showing my tests (all created at 300 dpi), including a line to show scale (approximately 1"). Image A is the original created with the Brush tool. The copies were made using the Move tool, and then transforming using anchor points. Image B is a direct copy that was simply moved around, showing not much, if any, blurring. Image C is a copy of the original which was rotated a few times, resulting in noticeable blurring. The blurring begins with even one rotation of a few degrees. Image D is a copy of the original which was simply reduced to about 2/3 original size, showing some blurring (I realize some detail does get lost when reducing - this reduction actually looked blurrier in Affinity Photo itself than it does in this jpeg file).

I could have done some other transformations, showing the effects of skewing for example. But I think this file probably shows sufficiently what's going on. Comparing image C to image A probably best shows the concern. It may be subtle, but there's a noticeable change in sharpness. I think A & C should appear identical in sharpness, even after any number of rotations.

This is a serious problem. It's very difficult trying to build and edit detailed artwork, knowing that simply needing to transform an area will result in noticeable loss of image quality and consistency across the artwork. Imagine if A & C were eyes on the same person. That wouldn't look good.

Thanks again! Further help on this is welcome.