Snap to objects, but still FORCE whole pixel

[Mylo_Xyloto]

This is driving me mad. Why is there no option to absolutely force everything to be on whole pixels, even when snapping to other objects?

I want to be able to keep stuff aligned, but it overrides "Force Whole Pixels" and there's no way to change that.

I don't care if it'll be off by 0.5 of a pixel, why can't it snap to stuff but ROUND UP to the nearest whole pixel?

If that's not going to happen, can we at least get a tool that will automatically move selected layers to the nearest whole pixel? I have to manually go through every single layer and manually round out the transform numbers if I don't want my stuff to be blurry.

[Alfred]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity Forums, @Mylo_Xyloto.

If you’re snapping to other objects, how is the app going to force pixel alignment when those other objects don’t lie on pixel boundaries? I’m unhappy that ‘Move By Whole Pixels’ overrides ‘Force Pixel Alignment’ but I think the behaviour you describe is correct for your particular snapping setting. I think you need to snap to objects first, and then then turn snapping off so that you can force pixel alignment by moving the objects slightly: obviously tedious for large numbers of objects, but I’m afraid I can’t think of an alternative.

[Old Bruce]

These settings work fine for me

Any additional snapping candidates will mess things up. Also if you have a stroke width aligned to the centre and its width it is not an even number of pixels you will get a 'fuzzy' outline.

[Mylo_Xyloto]

5 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Welcome to the Serif Affinity Forums, @Mylo_Xyloto.

If you’re snapping to other objects, how is the app going to force pixel alignment when those other objects don’t lie on pixel boundaries? I’m unhappy that ‘Move By Whole Pixels’ overrides ‘Force Pixel Alignment’ but I think the behaviour you describe is correct for your particular snapping setting. I think you need to snap to objects first, and then then turn snapping off so that you can force pixel alignment by moving the objects slightly: obviously tedious for large numbers of objects, but I’m afraid I can’t think of an alternative.

Thanks! Wish it wouldn't have been because of me losing my mind, but... gotta start somewhere, right? 

I proposed a solution. Snap to objects, but round to nearest whole pixel. Is it just me? It feels like it makes sense. I'm snapping to objects so I can have stuff aligned nicely, it doesn't have to be absolutely spot-on at the expense of whole pixels; a difference of 0.5 pixels in any direction is basically un-noticeable in 98% of cases, but a blurry screenshot or image is very noticeable.

And like I also suggested, even if this only makes sense to me and it'll never be added, why not at least provide a tool that will move selected objects to the nearest whole pixel? It feels like such an afterthought that such a tool doesn't already exist. Does Affinity Photo support scripting or plugins? Heck, it feels like something I might even be willing to try to make myself if that's the case.

[Mylo_Xyloto]

5 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

These settings work fine for me

Any additional snapping candidates will mess things up. Also if you have a stroke width aligned to the centre and its width it is not an even number of pixels you will get a 'fuzzy' outline.

Well, that defeats the purpose of the issue I'm bringing up. I want things to be nicely aligned, but not at the expense of blurry images. It doesn't have to be 100% spot on, I just want to be able to snap so stuff looks nice and aligned, even if it's 0.5 pixels off from dead-centre.

[Old Bruce]

4 minutes ago, Mylo_Xyloto said:

Well, that defeats the purpose of the issue I'm bringing up. I want things to be nicely aligned, but not at the expense of blurry images. It doesn't have to be 100% spot on, I just want to be able to snap so stuff looks nice and aligned, even if it's 0.5 pixels off from dead-centre.

But that off from dead centre will result in blurry images.

[MEB]

Hi @Mylo_Xyloto,
Welcome to affinity Forums
Thanks for your feedback. Currently we leave up to the user to decide what side they want the object align to (that is, no 0.5 pixels off/no side picked automatically). There has been a few reports/users requesting/suggesting this. I will pass your feedback to the dev team. Meanwhile you can set the Nudge Distance (Affinity Preferences, Tools section, on bottom) to 0.5px to quickly nudge the object after aligning it to the center of another one when required (using the cursor keys) so it becomes correctly pixel aligned.

[Mylo_Xyloto]

1 hour ago, Old Bruce said:

But that off from dead centre will result in blurry images.

No, I meant off dead-centre when it's rounded to the nearest whole pixel. Dead-centre is 9/10 times a decimal. Rounding to the nearest whole pixel will at most be 0.5 pixels in any direction, which will be virtually impossible to tell, so things still look properly aligned.

1 hour ago, MEB said:

Hi @Mylo_Xyloto,
Welcome to affinity Forums
Thanks for your feedback. Currently we leave up to the user to decide what side they want the object align to (that is, no 0.5 pixels off/no side picked automatically). There has been a few reports/users requesting/suggesting this. I will pass your feedback to the dev team. Meanwhile you can set the Nudge Distance (Affinity Preferences, Tools section, on bottom) to 0.5px to quickly nudge the object after aligning it to the center of another one when required (using the cursor keys) so it becomes correctly pixel aligned.

The problem is that sometimes it's x.2 or x.7, so setting nudge to a constant 0.5 won't be much help. Choice is always great, but this feels like a big gap missing from the choices available. You can either have things aligned (I mainly use Affinity Photo for thumbnails or infographic PDFs, so aligning text to the centre of an image is the task worst affected by this) and then deal with it being a sub-pixel, meaning it's blurry unless manually rounded in the trasform numbers, or you can have whole pixels, but no way to align stuff, only eye-balling, which is not an option.

What I'm proposing is simply an option to force whole pixels, even when snapping to objects or a mid point of an object. For example, if I were to align an image to the centre of another image, I could get a position of something like X=283.6 Y=1662.1. The only way to prevent this is turning off snapping, so I can't align anything to anything now. So my suggestion is an option to have Affinity snap to that hypothetical mid-point, and then automatically round out the transform to X=284 Y=1662, resulting in a whole pixel position, while still remaining as true as possible to the midpoint snap.

Personally, this is what I expected "Force Whole Pixel" to already do, but the way it works right now, nothing is really forced; if you snap to a mid-point, that's what you get and there's no way to change that other than manually round the numbers yourself.

I really really hope this can be added, I feel like it's far from a challenge to implement from a coding perspective, all it requires is a number rounding function at the end of a snap event. I've mentioned before that if Affinity Photo has any scripting tools, I might try to make a plugin for this myself for the time being. Is something like that possible?

[Pšenda]

7 hours ago, Alfred said:

I’m unhappy that ‘Move By Whole Pixels’ overrides ‘Force Pixel Alignment’

Hi @Alfred,

so that both choices make sense at the same time, so different behavior is not even possible. If you prefer Force Pixel Alignment, then the Move By Whole Pixels condition would be completely meaningless, because it would usually not be met.

[Alfred]

9 hours ago, Pšenda said:

Hi @Alfred,

so that both choices make sense at the same time, so different behavior is not even possible. If you prefer Force Pixel Alignment, then the Move By Whole Pixels condition would be completely meaningless, because it would usually not be met.

That’s precisely why I’m unhappy with it, @Pšenda! Since we can’t usually have both, it doesn’t make sense to me that ‘Move By Whole Pixels’ is a child of ‘Force Pixel Alignment’ in the Preferences dialog.

[Pšenda]

1 hour ago, Alfred said:

Since we can’t usually have both

Both options also make sense, because Force Pixel Alignment applies to "placement" of element, but Move by Whole Pixels applies to "moving" of element. The truth is that the hierarchy of conditions is not entirely clear to the user, but in my opinion it is completely logical and only meaningful in this way.