Pixel and Marquee tools are all antialiasing, how do I shut it off?

[JamieSabriel]

Hello, folks! New to Affinity, trying to switch over to GIMP and I'm running into issues.

The first one I want to tackle is why all of my tools seem to be antialiasing. I read through numerous forum posts that talk about how the Pixel tool doesn't antialias the way the Brush tool does, but when I try to use it it DOES have antialiasing:

The area in the selection is me trying to draw with the Pixel tool at a couple different sizes. I even made a brand new square brush after reading through a forum post where somebody accidentally associated a round brush with the Pixel tool, but that didn't help. You can see in this example image along the left side of the selection that trying to delete material [from the white-and-blue stuff on the left] also leads to an antialiased edge.

Here are the brush settings I'm using:

I also tried associating this brush with the Pixel tool but nothing changed.

How do I fix this? Is there some sort of global feathering/antialias setting I accidentally turned on? Please save my fraying sanity 😂

[JamieSabriel]

Ah, I forgot to mention those have both been enabled this whole time. Even unchecked, rechecked, and restarted Photo and no luck.

[JamieSabriel]

Testing some more stuff: when I start a brand new pixel layer everything works as expected [no antialiasing on either tool] but I can't get it to work on any images, icons, or things I copy over from other Affinity files I have open.

[JamieSabriel]

In a sense - the example image I showed was made in GIMP and has a gaussian blur effect. Could that be it, you think? I'm surprised it would blur even crops, deletes, and new pixels though!

[JamieSabriel]

Before I started working on anything I set all the preferences to show me 0 decimal spaces for anything, so I'm not sure why it would do that. I did check it out and it looks like the image was not perfectly aligned on a pixel line:

Very strange! In my experimenting I found a workaround, though - since everything works as normal on new pixel layers, I just made a new blank pixel layer under the image I was trying to work on and merged it down. No more issues! Didn't even have to move the image to align it with the pixel line. Odd!

Thank you for troubleshooting with me!

[PixelPest]

You want something like this?

[JamieSabriel]

Yup! That's what I wanted and wasn't getting until I merged the layer into a new pixel layer.

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, JamieSabriel said:

Before I started working on anything I set all the preferences to show me 0 decimal spaces for anything, so I'm not sure why it would do that.

Showing zero decimal places means fields in the display will be rounded to the nearest whole pixel values, but the actual values will not be. So it is entirely possible you have for example an X or Y value that shows a whole number in the Transform panel but actually includes a fractional part.

Also, Force Pixel Alignment does not override Move By Whole Pixels, so if say something is at 8.1 px & you move it with the Move Tool it will move by whole pixel increments, like to 9.1, 19.1, & so on. So in general, to keep everything pixel-aligned, enable Force Pixel Alignment but not Move By Whole Pixels.

[JamieSabriel]

Oh wow, that's very helpful info, thank you! If that's the case, the reason my workaround must've worked is that the new pixel layers spawned on and moved by exact pixel lines, since I have both options enabled.

[JamieSabriel]

Is there a way to force the actual values to stay as whole integers to avoid this in the future?

[R C-R]

2 minutes ago, JamieSabriel said:

Is there a way to force the actual values to stay as whole integers to avoid this in the future?

The only way I know to get close to that is to enable Force Pixel Alignment but it still will be possible to enter factional values in the Transform panel. It may also help to set the two nudge distances in Preferences > Tools to (say) 1 & 10 px, & to set the decimal places in User Interface to at least 3 places so you can check values there.

[PixelPest]

Ummh - if that is all true I´d never get the Pixel tool to work as I expect it should simply work.

I have no alignment enabled - just pixel tool with the settings for the brush shown above and all other settings are at default. Even odd numbers for the brush size works. No AA issues.

[R C-R]

3 minutes ago, PixelPest said:

Ummh - if that is all true I´d never get the Pixel tool to work as I expect it should simply work.

The Force Pixel Alignment advice was intended to prevent anti-aliasing when using the Move Tool to move a pixel layer with content created by the Pixel (or other) drawing tools.

So try this: Draw something with the Pixel Tool, then set the layer to rasterize & trim. In the Transform panel or with the Move tool, move the layer to non- pixel integer X & Y values.

[PixelPest]

Then by moving selections you´ll need of course: "force Pixel Alignment". 😁