frmdbl Posted November 25, 2020 Share Posted November 25, 2020 (edited) To sum up this issue in a sentence: When I'm applying a mask to a texture layer or I'm modyfing it's alpha channel, the parts of the RGB image where the alpha or mask is black are also overwritten with black color instead of preserving the proper channel values. Even loading the 'spare channels' into RGB channels doesn't help. The correct behaviour would be to preserve each RGB channel's value, I might be wrong, but hasn't this worked a few revisions back. Please repair it, it ruins my UE4 workflow. Affinity_Bug.afphoto Edited November 25, 2020 by frmdbl Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lepr Posted November 28, 2020 Share Posted November 28, 2020 Welcome to the Affinity forums The problem is the Affinity document flattening process sets R, G and B to zero where alpha is zero. This makes the app useless to thousands of potential customers, it has been brought up numerous times over the years and it would be trivial to change, but Serif seems to be uninterested for some reason. frmdbl 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frmdbl Posted November 29, 2020 Author Share Posted November 29, 2020 (edited) It really pisses me off. I don't know, maybe it has something to do with copyright, but every photo app that even indirectly tries to be a Photoshop replacement reinvents the wheel when it comes to alpha channel and channels in general. Is there any sign any of the developers are aware of this problem? There doesn't seem to be a lot of interest on this topic on the forums, but maybe if enough people spammed the devs something would change. Edited November 29, 2020 by frmdbl Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lepr Posted November 29, 2020 Share Posted November 29, 2020 12 minutes ago, frmdbl said: It really pisses me off. I don't know, maybe it has something to do with copyright, but every photo app that even indirectly tries to be a Photoshop replacement reinvents the wheel when it comes to alpha channel and channels in general. No copyright can forbid Serif from not setting R, G and B to zero when alpha is zero. 15 minutes ago, frmdbl said: Is there any sign any of the developers are aware of this problem? I don't know about a sign, but I'd be surprised if there is no awareness in the Affinity development team. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frmdbl Posted November 29, 2020 Author Share Posted November 29, 2020 @anon2 I guess it's to do with stripping the unnecessary data cause Krita does the same exact thing. The way channels work in Krita is probably even more effed up, but results in same issues. I hoped though that as Affinity Photo is actually a paid app things would improve over time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lepr Posted November 29, 2020 Share Posted November 29, 2020 53 minutes ago, frmdbl said: @anon2 I guess it's to do with stripping the unnecessary data Yes, I've been suspecting it is done to make the data more compressible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted November 29, 2020 Staff Share Posted November 29, 2020 Hi @frmdbl, Welcome to Affinity Forums Thanks for your report/feedback. I haven't found any bug report for this on our system. It's possible it may have been logged but i can't find it. In any case I've filled a (new) bug report now. lepr and frmdbl 2 Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lepr Posted November 29, 2020 Share Posted November 29, 2020 6 minutes ago, MEB said: I haven't found any bug report for this on our system. It's possible it may have been logged but i can't find it. In any case I've filled a (new) bug report now. There have been numerous complaints (maybe not actual bug reports) about this matter. I have commented about it in several threads, but you probably are the first Serif person to respond. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frmdbl Posted November 29, 2020 Author Share Posted November 29, 2020 Well, I hope this is fixed in whatever way possible. I guess if the reason for this behaviour is performance or some other optimization, maybe there at least is a possibility to add some override option either per layer/group of in the global settings. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frmdbl Posted March 29, 2022 Author Share Posted March 29, 2022 Is there any news about this bug? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted March 29, 2022 Staff Share Posted March 29, 2022 Hi @frmdbl, No, sorry. I've bumped and updated the report to bring it up to developers attention again. Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NotMyFault Posted March 30, 2022 Share Posted March 30, 2022 21 hours ago, frmdbl said: Is there any news about this bug? Just a question While trying to find potential workarounds: could you live with alpha 1/255 instead of 0? the layer becomes practically invisible, but all RGB values stay intact. If working with mask layers, this “non-zero” effect can be achieved by using a nested channel mixer (or levels or curves) adding a small offset (practically compressing the 0-255 range into 1-255). I fully support the feature request to let the user choose to not zero RGB values when alpha becomes zero. frmdbl 1 Quote Mac mini M1 A2348 | Windows 10 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080 LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5 iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589 Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps. My posts focus on technical aspects and leave out most of social grease like „maybe“, „in my opinion“, „I might be wrong“ etc. just add copy/paste all these softeners from this signature to make reading more comfortable for you. Otherwise I’m a fine person which respects you and everyone and wants to be respected. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frmdbl Posted March 30, 2022 Author Share Posted March 30, 2022 @NotMyFault So you're saying the RGB channels would be intact, but the alpha would be in the 1/255 range? I guess I could live with that, but I'm not sure how practical it would be. I really hope the devs at just make an option to change this behaviour (if the zeroing/clipping is just for performance reasons). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lloyds Posted February 27, 2023 Share Posted February 27, 2023 On 3/30/2022 at 2:47 AM, NotMyFault said: Just a question While trying to find potential workarounds: could you live with alpha 1/255 instead of 0? the layer becomes practically invisible, but all RGB values stay intact. If working with mask layers, this “non-zero” effect can be achieved by using a nested channel mixer (or levels or curves) adding a small offset (practically compressing the 0-255 range into 1-255). I fully support the feature request to let the user choose to not zero RGB values when alpha becomes zero. This would be incorrect behavior. When writing the RGBA channels, they should be treated as separate entities. How Affinity works today is wrong. If I read a PNG file then write it out, Affinity will change the data in the RGB channels (it will apply the alpha like a white mask). This is incorrect behavior. There should be no masking. RGB and Alpha are separate and distinct channels. When writing you do not mask RGB with the alpha. Ever. Doing so means that Affinity can read a PNG file but will alter it upon write — even if the user does nothing. BTW, the .afphoto file retains the RGB information. You just can’t export it without it getting masked by the alpha. This is incorrect behavior. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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