Affity Photo: Improve the constraint of a scanned image

[Pyanepsion]

Hello everyone,

I have just been provided with a scan of a pencil drawing. The original was not very legible, and the scan did not improve it. Can we improve the legibility of this image with Affinity Photo? How do I do this?

Thank you for your explanations.

[John Rostron]

How did you scan the drawing? Was it into black-and-white (1-bit) or greyscale (8- or 16-bit), or what?

Photo will not behave properly with one-bit images, it seems to convert them to 8-bit greyscale.

If you really need a black-and-white image, use the Threshold Adjustment to get rid of any unwanted greys. I am  not aware of any way to resave as a 1-bit image, just as a greyscale.

John

[Alfred]

You can darken the image by duplicating the layer and setting the blend mode of the duplicate (i.e. top) layer to ‘Multiply’.

[Pyanepsion]

Thanks John Rostron and Alfred.

How do I get the duplicate layer’s blend mode to ‘Multiply’ with Affinity Photo?

[walt.farrell]

9 minutes ago, Pyanepsion said:

How do I get the duplicate layer’s blend mode to ‘Multiply’ with Affinity Photo?

Just like you'd set the blend mode for any layer in any of the Affinity applications? Select it in the layers panel and use the Blend Mode pulldown.

[Joachim_L]

[Pyanepsion]

Okay. So it’s the ‘Produit’ menu in French (which could be translated as ‘product’ in English, another catastrophic translation in French).

The result is indeed spectacular. Thanks.

[Dan C]

3 hours ago, Pyanepsion said:

Okay. So it’s the ‘Produit’ menu in French (which could be translated as ‘product’ in English, another catastrophic translation in French).

Thanks for raising this, I've double checked with our translation team and they've confirmed we follow other creative apps such as Photoshop here - I hope this clears things up!

[Alfred]

25 minutes ago, Dan C said:

we follow other creative apps such as Photoshop here

Really?? ‘Product/Produit’ is the result you get when you multiply: it isn’t the name of the operation itself. It’s like saying ‘Quotient’ when you mean ‘Divide’.

[Dan C]

My apologies, I'm simply passing on the information provided to me - unfortunately I'm not part of the translation team so I don't deem myself qualified to comment on the translations in your post.

I have been informed by our translation team that this was the decision made in regards to the blend mode, however I will be sure to raise the concerns in this thread appropriately

[Pyanepsion]

Many of the ‘decisions’ made by the French translation team are unfortunately catastrophic and generate misunderstandings that could be largely avoided and that drive away many French-speaking users, even though its graphics industry is one of the most important in the world.

Perhaps these translation teams should reconsider and ask an opinion to some real professionals of these tools.

[Joachim_L]

12 hours ago, Pyanepsion said:

even though its graphics industry is one of the most important in the world

Sure.

Make a list of all errors and send a mail to Serif. From time to time I send some German translation suggestions from the most important town in the world. 

If they are accepted ... fine ... if not ... ok. But this drove me not away from the Affinity applications.

[Pyanepsion]

On 5/22/2021 at 9:26 AM, Joachim_L said:

I send some German translation suggestions

Yes, this is normally the right thing to do. Unfortunately, the team responsible for the French translation does not use this model.

Do they only translate with Google translate? I don’t know. Anyway, they don’t use the same translation for Windows and Mac versions, they confirm their translations not with product professionals but from a competitor’s software, they don’t check for text overflows in certain places, they don’t check for keyboard shortcuts that are incompatible with French keyboards, etc. The list is long. We see on the French forums talking about Affinity that various professionals sometimes send them bug reports about the French translation. The French translation team always replies that they thank that person … and they never change their translation.

Here, we were talking about Multiply which was translated by Product. In fact, just on the first 3 menus of Publisher, there are sometimes much worse inconsistencies, such as Text Wrap which has been translated as Line Break, and about forty other errors, often major and often even worse, which make the suite incomprehensible and therefore a rejection of many French-speaking professionals and therefore less market share and therefore less investment in translation.

It reminds me a bit of the world described in Idiocracy (Stupid Planet).