Blend Range / anti-aliasing / Coverage Map non-functional in Designer

[NotMyFault]

This might be by design, then it is at least an UI issue:

In Photo, you can use blend range / blend options, anti-aliasing and coverage maps to influence anti-aliasing.

When you open the same file in designer, it shows the same well known cog wheel symbol and UI elements to change these settings.

But the rendering ignores these settings completely.

• Why is the cog wheel / blend ranges editable in Designer if Designer ignores these settings completely?
• Would it be possible for Designer to render the image based correctly, including blend ranges (specifically: anti-aliasing and coverage map)?

Instead, you find the pixel / retina / outline view mode who seem to have baked-in special settings for the parameters else-wise set by the blend options.

Special issue:

• If you changed the Coverage Map in Photo, some text layers become invisible in Designer Outline View.

Photo:

Designer "normal" view:

Designer Pixel View:

Designer Retina View:

Designer Outline View:

sharp text.afphoto

[Sean P]

Hi NotMyFault,

As Designer is predominately intended for use with Vector creations it will always render by default in vectors. As the Coverage Map and Anti Aliasing options are intended for pixel output, they will generally show no change unless you're using a Pixel View. However you do still want to have that control if you want to output to raster, so you can preview using the pixel view modes and modify the anti-aliasing for vector objects.

As Photo is predominately intended for photo/raster use it renders by default to pixels so will always show the results of the Coverage Map and Anti-Aliasing options.

What you're seeing is By Design.

With regards to the those options affecting the view in Outline mode I believe that is a bug, and I'll get that passed on to development.

[User_783649]

On 8/17/2021 at 7:27 PM, NotMyFault said:

But the rendering ignores these settings completely.

• Why is the cog wheel / blend ranges editable in Designer if Designer ignores these settings completely?
• Would it be possible for Designer to render the image based correctly, including blend ranges (specifically: anti-aliasing and coverage map)?

Btw, all these settings actually work as expected in Mac version of Designer. Even in its default Vector mode.

On 8/18/2021 at 12:23 PM, Sean P said:

As the Coverage Map and Anti Aliasing options are intended for pixel output, they will generally show no change unless you're using a Pixel View.

On 8/18/2021 at 12:23 PM, Sean P said:

What you're seeing is By Design.

For me it seems to be just another issue with Windows builds of Affinity apps. Because on Mac things are working just like they should.

So, both of these settings should have effect on how things are getting rendered on screen, be it vector or raster mode.

As they are not only intended for pixel output but for canvas rendering as well.