Resizing / 2x quality questions

[onamac]

Hi, I've been a Photoshop user for a couple decades, but am interested in Affinity Photo. 

 

When resizing upward in PS, making an image into a smart object can help with the quality. I read a post here about resizing where it was said to make the original 144 (it also said to use points not pixels) before enlarging in Affinity.

 

I've been trying the demo, and just for fun took an image that was about 1000px and ran it through the 2x. It did a really great job, even though my original image was 72dpi not 144 as mentioned as a requirement in the post.

 

Has the "ability" of smart object more or less been built into Affinity where the enlargements are just that good, did I just get lucky, or is its regular resizing expected to be comparable to non-smart object enlarging in PS? I ask because the result was surprisingly impressive, since in PS smart objects is the way to go if increasing size more than just a small amount.

 

Do the 2x or 3x presets have extra enhancements built in versus entering your own sizes rather than double-size? In other words, the 2x did a good job, so is that quality expected when using custom sizes?

 

Thanks!

[Leigh]

AFAIK, there's no difference between the 2x/3x export presets and manually exporting at 2x. I'm sure a dev will correct me if i'm wrong :)

[onamac]

Thanks. So Affinity just has top-notch resizing capabilities by default (resizing like PS smart objects)?

[anon1]

Are the files resampled? If yes which method is used by default?