Low Quality JPEG Exports [Affinity Designer]

[panlyd]

Hi! I'm having a lot of issues with exporting high quality images (JPEG/PDF/PNG) from Affinity Designer. I have my DPI set to 400 and I'm not sure what else I need to do. Here is a screenshot of my settings and also the image I've exporeted. Any help would be great. Thanks!

 

 

[telemax]

Hi,

What exactly do you mean by low quality? Low resolution or compression artifacts?

[Fixx]

You have at least lotsa resolution... so I assume you are not satisfied how images are rendered scaled down in display.

What is the final purpose, how these will be presented? If they are to be printed use vector format like PDF.

[John Rostron]

What is the resolution and dimensions of the image you have uploaded? Is it the actual file or a screenshot? Has it been scaled to fit on the forum? You should aim to upload a file that will not be scaled. Crop it down to 800px to ensure that it will not get scaled.

John

[thomaso]

On 9/12/2020 at 11:57 PM, panlyd said:

Here is a screenshot of my settings and also the image I've exporeted.

Your exported image is a lot smaller than your AD document. – What are your export settings?

[panlyd]

On 9/12/2020 at 5:14 PM, telemax said:

Hi,

What exactly do you mean by low quality? Low resolution or compression artifacts?

Hi thanks for trying to help me out. It's really pixelated, so low resolution? Sorry, I'm pretty new to this and don't know the lingo that well. But yea, when I open the image after exporting, it's blurry and when I zoom in it's very pixelated unlike how when I zoom in on the artboard itself in AD it never gets pixelated. 

I need these exported as JPEGs, but even when I tried exporting as a PDF it is still blurry/pixelated 

Edited September 20, 2020 by panlyd

[panlyd]

On 9/13/2020 at 3:24 PM, thomaso said:

Your exported image is a lot smaller than your AD document. – What are your export settings?

Hi thanks for trying to help. Here are my document settings and my export settings . I'm basically using one AD file/save for an entire project that requires a lot of assets. So my workspace looks something like what I've also attached

[panlyd]

On 9/12/2020 at 11:53 PM, Fixx said:

You have at least lotsa resolution... so I assume you are not satisfied how images are rendered scaled down in display.

What is the final purpose, how these will be presented? If they are to be printed use vector format like PDF.

Hi thanks for trying to help me out. 

Yea so when I export it, the images are blurry/pixelated. And it gets really bad whenever I zoom in on the image. I need these to be exported as a JPEG/PNG , but even when I export it as a PDF its still blurry as well. 

[panlyd]

On 9/13/2020 at 12:29 AM, John Rostron said:

What is the resolution and dimensions of the image you have uploaded? Is it the actual file or a screenshot? Has it been scaled to fit on the forum? You should aim to upload a file that will not be scaled. Crop it down to 800px to ensure that it will not get scaled.

John

The 1st image of the logos is the actual file. It's currently set as 800px x 600px. It looks exactly the same when I open it directly from the file on my laptop and when I view it on the forum.

[John Rostron]

@panlyd, your first image looks OK to me. Yes, you can see pixillation and possible jpeg artefacts when you zoom in, but you will get that when you zoom in to any image with anti-aliasing.

I would be interested to see your image exported as png or pdf.

John

[Pšenda]

5 hours ago, panlyd said:

It's currently set as 800px x 600px

But your export settings is 801 x 601 px. This looks as whole pixel position and size problem. If the images are not positioned exactly on the whole pixel, they will be blurred.

[panlyd]

11 hours ago, Pšenda said:

But your export settings is 801 x 601 px. This looks as whole pixel position and size problem. If the images are not positioned exactly on the whole pixel, they will be blurred.

Hi thank you for the suggestion. I tried exporting it again at exactly 800 x 600 px but the image quality is still the same 😞

[panlyd]

11 hours ago, Pšenda said:

But your export settings is 801 x 601 px. This looks as whole pixel position and size problem. If the images are not positioned exactly on the whole pixel, they will be blurred.

 

11 hours ago, John Rostron said:

@panlyd, your first image looks OK to me. Yes, you can see pixillation and possible jpeg artefacts when you zoom in, but you will get that when you zoom in to any image with anti-aliasing.

I would be interested to see your image exported as png or pdf.

John

Hi John,

Unfortunately I'm making these for clients and there is a slight blurriness to the image even without the zoom which isn't acceptable 😞
 I tried exporting them again as PNG and PDF. The PDF looks great, it's crisp and clear, but the PNG is still pixelated even when fulled zoomed out. 

test.pdf

[Pšenda]

4 hours ago, panlyd said:

I tried exporting it again at exactly 800 x 600 px but the image quality is still the same

It is not just the exact size of the export, the position and size for the whole pixels of the source image is important.

If you need quality output for graphics, not for photos, I recommend using a lossless format, such as PNG. The JPEG format (even if it is 100%) is still lossy, and it blurs and forms compression artifacts.

[John Rostron]

13 hours ago, panlyd said:

I tried exporting them again as PNG and PDF. The PDF looks great, it's crisp and clear, but the PNG is still pixelated even when fulled zoomed out. 

I looked closely at your png after downloading it and again, it looks fine at 100%. Obviously it is pixilated when you zoom to larger magnifications, but this is to be expected for any raster (pixel-based) image..

I downloaded your pdf version and, as you say, it looks fine in any zoom scale. This is because it is stored as vectors, so it will look good at any scale. The odd background dots in your image are not vectors so these look pixilated at high zooms.

I do not see that you have a problem.

John

[thomaso]

I suppose with additional sharpening of the rasterised output you will achieve obvious improvement for the text.

[panlyd]

16 hours ago, Pšenda said:

It is not just the exact size of the export, the position and size for the whole pixels of the source image is important.

If you need quality output for graphics, not for photos, I recommend using a lossless format, such as PNG. The JPEG format (even if it is 100%) is still lossy, and it blurs and forms compression artifacts.

Do you mean I need to make a new document that is the exact same size of the export? Thanks for your help, I'm completely new to this! 
 

[Palatino]

36 minutes ago, panlyd said:

Do you mean I need to make a new document that is the exact same size of the export?

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, panlyd said:

18 hours ago, Pšenda said:

It is not just the exact size of the export, the position and size for the whole pixels of the source image is important.

Do you mean I need to make a new document that is the exact same size of the export? Thanks for your help, I'm completely new to this! 

No, not at all. This hint rather means to move the objects slightly to force them into the pixel grid (instead of placing objects at "half" pixels). See the button in the toolbar ...   https://affinity.help/designer/English.lproj/index.html?page=pages/DesignAids/pixelAlign.html?title=Force Pixel Alignment

You can check it also by activating decimals in the app prefs for the unit "Pixel" and then look in the transform panel if objects are at whole or fractions of pixels.

 

@Palatino, your posted screenshot would confuse me as an answer to OP's question.

 

[MEB]

Force Pixel Alignment will not do much in this case. Very few elements are perfectly vertical or horizontal aligned and the elements are already composed which means they will hardly fit the pixel grid with their current proportions - only tweaking them manually would help. Force Pixel Alignment also doesn't fix previously created elements only snaps the ones created after its been enabled. The text antialiasing can't also be controlled, other than tweaked a bit through the coverage map control but even so it's not easy to get a great result (Affinity doesn't offer text anti-aliasing options). Since the original image is quite large already downsampling with a proper algorithm is probably the best option. @panlyd, try to export the image at 800x600 using the Bicubic and Lanczos 3 algorithms (Resample dropdown in the export dialog) and check if the result suits your needs.

[John Rostron]

On 9/21/2020 at 10:13 AM, thomaso said:

I suppose with additional sharpening of the rasterised output you will achieve obvious improvement for the text.

I tried this and an unsharp mask does show some visible improvement. I also tried a Threshold Adjustment and again there was a visible improvement. Note that the Threshold Adjustment effectively converts your image to black and white.

However, I feel that these are just fudges.

John

[panlyd]

On 9/21/2020 at 11:39 AM, MEB said:

Force Pixel Alignment will not do much in this case. Very few elements are perfectly vertical or horizontal aligned and the elements are already composed which means they will hardly fit the pixel grid with their current proportions - only tweaking them manually would help. Force Pixel Alignment also doesn't fix previously created elements only snaps the ones created after its been enabled. The text antialiasing can't also be controlled, other than tweaked a bit through the coverage map control but even so it's not easy to get a great result (Affinity doesn't offer text anti-aliasing options). Since the original image is quite large already downsampling with a proper algorithm is probably the best option. @panlyd, try to export the image at 800x600 using the Bicubic and Lanczos 3 algorithms (Resample dropdown in the export dialog) and check if the result suits your needs.

Hi, thank you for your feedback. My current artboard is 800x600px. I tried setting the export png image to 800x600 Bicubic, and 800x600 Lanczos 3 separable and separable and here are my results.
They're all very similar (still blurry/pixelated) but the Bicubic and Lanczos 3 separable are a little less pixelated than the Lanczos 3 Non Separable. 

Is this the best image I can export from Affinity Designer, i.e are these the limitations of the software or is there something else I need to fix on my end?

[Pšenda]

24 minutes ago, panlyd said:

800x600px

It is whole image (four pictures/logos)?

Why? - it is the white area itself and the image/logo has only a few pixels. It is therefore understandable that it will be pixeled.

 

24 minutes ago, panlyd said:

i.e are these the limitations of the software

How good (not pixelated) is it working for you in other software?

[Andrea Passarella]

I’ve exactly the same problem, and there’s no way to solve it 😔