True accurate preview for Photo

[NotMyFault]

Currently, Affinity Photo does not provide a absolute trustworthy preview of the current document.

• For any zoom levels not equal to 100%, you get misleading rendering of noise and unsharp mask filters
• With View Mode "Bilinear", you will always get false rendering on pixel level at hard edges
• Even with zoom level 100%, you could get get false rendering when dealing with pixel art
• For zoom level below 100%, you could get completely wrong colors caused by resampling (same bug report above)
• Many live filters can introduce rendering artifacts at any zoom level, including 100%, leading to severe deviations from final result, especially when combined with blend mode "difference"
• The false color by resample issue could bite you at almost any zoom level except 400% and integer multiples of 400%

 

The only way to get a reliable preview of your document is to either

• Export - leaving the application
• The Export Preview is cumbersome to use (modal windows, not able to use navigator panel)
• Merge visible - introducing superfluous temporary layers, must be created on top of layer stack and deleted after use.

To overcome all these issues, it would be helpful if Photo would offer an "absolute trustworthy preview" move, similar to Designers View Modes.

Requirements:

• No color artifacts (false colors) by resample in case of zoom <100% (use color-correct average, not false sub-sample)
• utilize full display color depth (10-bit, 12-bit, …) to avoid banding in case of 16-bit documents
• 100% accurate rendition of result
• ability to zoom to any level (at least -8x to + 8x)
• Ultimate priority on accuracy, no priority on performance.
• Options to deal with non-opaque pixels (color of matting background), switching options while in preview
• Regular keyboard shortcuts and mouse actions to zoom / pan

Edited January 7, 2022 by NotMyFault
Added 10/12 bit display color depth requirement

[BeauRX]

Wow! Not clear how much of this I have experienced, clearly there are times when my results does not look great, but since still on the learning curve would have attributed that to lack of skill/knowledge or initial image quality. I have my setting generally to best rendering over speed.

Based on above I should be able to create a merge visible and use diff blend mode to spot issues. Thx

[NotMyFault]

Additional examples where users were irritated by different export / rendering in Photo:

 

[NotMyFault]

Another important aspect to add:

Photo renders all documents in 8 bit color depth, except RGB/32.

This is ok for RGB/8, CMYK/8, GRAY/8.

This is a problem for RGB/16, LAB/16, GRAY/16: the rendering in photo creates banding of smooth gradients.

• you cannot see if there is banding in the document
• documents without banding are rendered wrong
• For documents with banding, you are unable to smooth it (e.g. by a Gaussian blur filter), as the 8 bit rendering introduces new banding, see  and 
• and 

[cgidesign]

Oh my good,

just found this thread.

I am running into those issues - one after the other - since working more with Affinity - but in V2 not V1. Some of those I found in V1 in the past as well and posted as reports.

I of course thought its my fault, and invested time to cross check read posts, post myself etc.

I am writing one bug report and feature request after the other.

And now I see all this has been reported already and it seems nothing has been fixed.

@NotMyFault Have you ever heard back from them?

I sometimes get answers from moderators confirming there is something wrong and it will be "logged with the developers". But it sounds like the issues are new to them. But now I read all these issues are known. So, what is the purpose of users, testing, testing again, making screenshots, taking the time to explain all this in posts, if it then lands in Affinity's trash can. Is this some kind of eternally greets the groundhog?  At least they could be so kind to make a list of "the most glaring issues in the base architecture which we know are there but have not fixed". It would have saved me hours and hours of testing and bug reporting.

What is going on with Affinity? I consider these being severe limitations of the base architecture. Is their decision to let it be as it is because most users don't care or don't notice? How can a company write "Version 2 sets new standards in creative software" if the base has those issues? After reading this thread I now agree - V2 sets new standards in keeping the issues from the previous version.

Sorry about the negativity Affinity - I like your software but it seems you are going the feature hell route - adding more and more but not fixing the base.

[NotMyFault]

Welcome to the club of users who deeply share this pain- a great product with some innovative aspects, but far too many bugs and quirks ignored for too long.

My theory is that the company decisions are driven by some owners / developers/ product experts who have totally different priorities about what matters vs. what some (existing) users like you think.

Bug fixing pleases existing users. New features attract new paying customers.

If you were developing software for customers whose live literally depends on fixing bugs (aerospace, medical devices, …) the priorities could differ.

 

[javierr]

Agree!! If they wanna compete with Photoshop (and yes, that should be their main goal) they have to fix all the problems the professionals have with Affinity. When they fix that, they would have more clients than creating new features. At this time, I think features in Affinity are fine. The basic problems are what they have to be resolved.