Pixelate Effect with Affinity Designer

[HAL90000]

Hello community,

Is it possible to achieve the pixelate affect in Affinity Designer? It does not need to be vector - I have a normal image as source.  There is something similar in Photo: https://affinity.help/photo/en-US.lproj/index.html?page=pages/Filters/filter_pixelate.html?title=Pixelate

 

[GarryP]

Welcome to the forums @HAL90000

The Pixelate Filter of Photo – along with the other Photo non-Live filters – is not available in Designer.
This is probably by design to split the functionality between applications.
You can make a feature request but I would guess that this situation is unlikely to change any time soon.

Basically, if you want to pixelate stuff with an Affinity application then you need to be using Photo.

[Alfred]

3 hours ago, GarryP said:

Basically, if you want to pixelate stuff with an Affinity application then you need to be using Photo.

‘Nearest Neighbour’ resampling can be quite effective. Here’s a ‘before/after’ example of a 1024 × 768 pixel image resized down to 64 × 48 pixels in Affinity Designer:

[Alfred]

10 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Here’s a ‘before/after’ example of a 1024 × 768 pixel image resized down to 64 × 48 pixels in Affinity Designer

And here’s a photographic one:

  

Apologies for the slight sizing mismatch!

[isusedbyanotheruser]

How do you do this nearest sampling please?

[Dan C]

Hi @isusedbyanotheruser,

Welcome to the Affinity Forums

Under File > Document Setup in Affinity Designer, change the Units to Pixel (if not already set) and then set Objects will: to Rescale.

You should now see the Resample option, which you can set to Nearest Neighbour.

I hope this helps!

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, Dan C said:

Under File > Document Setup in Affinity Designer, change the Units to Pixel (if not already set) and then set Objects will: to Rescale.

You should now see the Resample option, which you can set to Nearest Neighbour.

Is it really necessary to change tyhe document units to pixels for this to work?

[Dan C]

21 hours ago, R C-R said:

Is it really necessary to change tyhe document units to pixels for this to work?

In Affinity Designer you aren't offered the Resample option, unless the unit type is Pixels / Points, which as I understand is by design - 

I hope this clears things up

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, Dan C said:

In Affinity Designer you aren't offered the Resample option, unless the unit type is Pixels / Points, which as I understand is by design - 

Is this a Windows only thing? This is an example of what I get on my Mac:

I always have the Resample options, regardless of the unit type....

[Ron P.]

It must be a Windows only thing...

 

[Alfred]

On 7/29/2022 at 4:32 PM, R C-R said:

This is an example of what I get on my Mac:

The iPad version likewise has a ‘Sampler’ option available, regardless of the units chosen.

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, Ron P. said:

It must be a Windows only thing..

Apparently so. Also note that in the Mac version the Document Setup window has no title, cannot be moved, & has no close button.

[Alfred]

47 minutes ago, R C-R said:

the Document Setup window has no title, cannot be moved, & has no close button

Aren’t those all things that depend on the presence of a title bar?

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, Alfred said:

Aren’t those all things that depend on the presence of a title bar?

Yes.

[thomaso]

8 hours ago, Alfred said:

8 hours ago, R C-R said:

the Document Setup window has no title, cannot be moved, & has no close button

Aren’t those all things that depend on the presence of a title bar?

In Affinity not necessarily.

A window title does not require a title bar. 😉
Also the ability to get moved is independent of a title bar.
And a close button in Affinity often gets solved as "Cancel" button at the window's bottom.

And there is also a solution which has a title bar but no title and its close button grayed-out:

By the way, such aspects where recently discussed for adjustment windows:

[thomaso]

On 7/28/2022 at 1:37 PM, Dan C said:

Under File > Document Setup in Affinity Designer, change the Units to Pixel (if not already set) and then set Objects will: to Rescale.

You should now see the Resample option, which you can set to Nearest Neighbour.

Is there also a way to avoid resampling for images which get placed + scaled in APub?

In APub it appears useful that the option does exist in the Export options and does not exist for Document Setup and Spread Setup – but how about for single objects on a page?

[Dan C]

On 7/29/2022 at 4:32 PM, R C-R said:

Is this a Windows only thing? This is an example of what I get on my Mac:

I always have the Resample options, regardless of the unit type....

My apologies, I had only checked this on Windows and was under the impression this was the correct behaviour - however I can confirm that this differs between Mac and Windows and therefore I'm logging this with the devs now, as I don't understand why this is not consistent.

22 hours ago, R C-R said:

Also note that in the Mac version the Document Setup window has no title, cannot be moved, & has no close button.

Thanks for confirming this also, I've checked and the same behaviour is not true of Publishers 'Document Setup' on Mac, however the 'Resize Document' dialog in Photo (although slightly different from the Document Setup dialog) interacts in the same manner as Designer. Therefore I'll also be logging these inconsistencies with the devs now

12 hours ago, thomaso said:

In APub it appears useful that the option does exist in the Export options and does not exist for Document Setup and Spread Setup

This option is available for me in Publisher, under Spread Setup -

12 hours ago, thomaso said:

but how about for single objects on a page?

Unfortunately however I don't believe such control exists for a singular layer, though I will be sure log this as an improvement with the developers as I can certainly understand the use case of such a function 

[thomaso]

16 minutes ago, Dan C said:

This option is available for me in Publisher, under Spread Setup -

Indeed! Sorry + Thank you!
I had checked under "Dimensions" only, where it appears in APhoto. Of course, in APub it makes more sense in the "Scaling" tab.