Exported image different than Affinity Photo edited version

[zBernie]

I have a project in Affinity Photo 1.10.4.1198 and when I export it, the export looks different than the image on the canvas.  Exporting only shows the problem because the image is flattened before exporting.  The difference is actually caused when the image is flattened.  When the image is flattened as in using Document -> Flatten, adjustment layer information is lost.  You can see in the before/after images below and the after is much less noisy with much less gaussian blur.

I've tried merging visible layers, exporting to various formats in including .tiff with "Save Affinity Layers" checked, but nothing has worked.

Is there any way to export a photo without losing layer adjustment information, so it looks exactly like what is seen on the canvas?

 

In Affinity Photo:

 

After flattening:

[RichardMH]

Are you on a mac or pc?

[NotMyFault]

Hi,

the screenshots are to small to see anything.

Could you upload the afphoto file?
if it contains a sensitive image: could you replace the image by a stock image?

Without the file having the issue it is almost impossible to help.

One thing to try your own: Deactivate OpenCL 

[zBernie]

1 hour ago, RichardMH said:

Are you on a mac or pc?

On a PC.  See the larger before/after screenshots I've uploaded below.

[zBernie]

1 hour ago, NotMyFault said:

Hi,

the screenshots are to small to see anything.

Could you upload the afphoto file?
if it contains a sensitive image: could you replace the image by a stock image?

Without the file having the issue it is almost impossible to help.

One thing to try your own: Deactivate OpenCL 

The afphoto file is 1.8 GB.  I've included additional before and after screenshots.  You can clearly see in the two new sample photos that a lot of noise is being lost after exporting.  I actually enabled OpenCL to see if that helps, but it did not. (OpenCL causes slow loading times on my PC and laptop so I leave it disabled).  Frankly from all that I've tried to resolve this issue, I don't believe there is a solution.  I wish I were wrong!

Before in Affinity Photo:

 

After export/flattening:

[NotMyFault]

Now you are mentioning noise filter, and 1.8 GB file size:

Noise is not rendered realistically unless inspected at 100% zoom level. It will look far exaggerated when zoomed out.

I would suggest that you export the image before adding noise, and then create a second document from the exported file, only adding the noise filter. Inspect at 100% zoom level. Now the noise will stay.

Instead of using a live noise filter, you can use the classical (destructive) noise filter direct on an pixel layer (merge visible on top). Then, the will be definitely no difference between rendering in Photo and exported file.

[Ron P.]

Have you tried exporting without flattening first? What I'll do is a Merge Visible, hide all layers except the merged one. Then export.

• What Resample are you using in the export? Bilateral, Bicubic, Lanczos, Nearest Neighbor?
• Are you resizing the image during export?

Since the afphoto file is basically too large to upload, it's nothing but speculation as to what's happening. I guess we could throw a thousand questions at you to see if something is discovered, but that's not very practical.

• What was the original image format? JPEG, RAW, TIFF, something else?
• Did you apply any effects, such as a snow overlay?
• You mentioned the lack of blur and noise, were these added by you during editing? Of course knowing how, the stack order, any adjustments also may provide a clue as to why the image was sharpened, and the noise and blur reduced.

I did try to replicate something similar, using some of my snow images, and using some Snow Overlays from the Assets, applying noise, and Gaussian Blur. Flattened the image and exported, merged visible and exported. The exported image looked the same as what was inside AP.

[zBernie]

2 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

Now you are mentioning noise filter, and 1.8 GB file size:

Noise is not rendered realistically unless inspected at 100% zoom level. It will look far exaggerated when zoomed out.

I would suggest that you export the image before adding noise, and then create a second document from the exported file, only adding the noise filter. Inspect at 100% zoom level. Now the noise will stay.

Instead of using a live noise filter, you can use the classical (destructive) noise filter direct on an pixel layer (merge visible on top). Then, the will be definitely no difference between rendering in Photo and exported file.

Thanks, I will give that a try.

[zBernie]

1 minute ago, Ron P. said:

Have you tried exporting without flattening first? What I'll do is a Merge Visible, hide all layers except the merged one. Then export.

• What Resample are you using in the export? Bilateral, Bicubic, Lanczos, Nearest Neighbor?
• Are you resizing the image during export?

Since the afphoto file is basically too large to upload, it's nothing but speculation as to what's happening. I guess we could throw a thousand questions at you to see if something is discovered, but that's not very practical.

• What was the original image format? JPEG, RAW, TIFF, something else?
• Did you apply any effects, such as a snow overlay?
• You mentioned the lack of blur and noise, were these added by you during editing? Of course knowing how, the stack order, any adjustments also may provide a clue as to why the image was sharpened, and the noise and blur reduced.

I did try to replicate something similar, using some of my snow images, and using some Snow Overlays from the Assets, applying noise, and Gaussian Blur. Flattened the image and exported, merged visible and exported. The exported image looked the same as what was inside AP.

I mentioned in my original post that I've tried merging visible layers, exporting to various formats in including .tiff with "Save Affinity Layers" checked, but nothing has worked.  Someone else suggested NOT using a live noise filter, but rather add a pixel layer to add the noise using a destruction noise filter.  I'm going to give that a try.  I'll let you know how it works out!

-Thanks

[zBernie]

1 hour ago, NotMyFault said:

Now you are mentioning noise filter, and 1.8 GB file size:

Noise is not rendered realistically unless inspected at 100% zoom level. It will look far exaggerated when zoomed out.

I would suggest that you export the image before adding noise, and then create a second document from the exported file, only adding the noise filter. Inspect at 100% zoom level. Now the noise will stay.

Instead of using a live noise filter, you can use the classical (destructive) noise filter direct on an pixel layer (merge visible on top). Then, the will be definitely no difference between rendering in Photo and exported file.

This did not work for me.  I exported the image to a .jpg before adding noise.  Then added a noise filter and moved the slider all the way to 100.  There was then a great deal of noise in the photo in the canvas.  Then when I clicked the "Apply" button, most of the noise disappeared.   I've attached the example afphoto file I'm working with.

Noise Test.afphoto

[RichardMH]

OK. With your image I can duplicate the problem.

[zBernie]

12 minutes ago, RichardMH said:

OK. With your image I can duplicate the problem.

Bummer.  I'd at least like to find a workaround.

-Thanks

[RichardMH]

It seems OK at 100% though? And export seems OK as well. Seems its just the "normal" size view in AP.

 

Are you sure the test image is the problem one? Its not as snowy as what you posted.

[zBernie]

11 minutes ago, RichardMH said:

It seems OK at 100% though?

Yes, it does look very similar at 100%.

[NotMyFault]

Works perfectly on my iPad, if you follow these steps:

• select top layer in layer stack
• merge visible
• add noise 
• Use split view to see before/after
• apply
• the noise slightly differ from preview, but is fully applied

Before apply

after apply

[zBernie]

7 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

Works perfectly on my iPad, if you follow these steps:

• select top layer in layer stack
• merge visible
• add noise 
• Use split view to see before/after
• apply
• the noise slightly differ from preview, but is fully applied

Before apply

after apply

That doesn't work for me using Affinity Photo desktop.  I merged all visible layers, added noise, then the exported file has less noise than the edited one.  Also, when I print the exported photo there is much less noise.  That was printing with Photo Studio or Affinity Photo.  I am dead in the water here with no workaround.   Thanks for your help.

[NotMyFault]

Can you please upload a screenshot of Edit>Preferences >Performance ?

Can you do a screen recording of the steps you made?
 

Please activate the following panels, and arrange them that their content is visible in the recording.

• navigator
• transform
• studio
• channels
• info

Please include the Performance and About Dialogue in the capture.

[zBernie]

I normally leave OpenCL unchecked because it causes very slow loading of afphoto files.  Checking it did not resolve the issue.

-Thanks

 

[NotMyFault]

Does you Mac PC have a Retina display (>250 DPI)?
can you try with Retina Rendering „high quality (slow) ?

You PC / GPU seems quite dated (no valuation).

Affinity Apps use a trick: Everything is rendered in 1/4 of the resolution in the first pass, and then in full resolution as second path (depending on "Retina Rendering").

On slow PCs, the second pass may never happen. This could lead to the illusion of more noise, caused by rendering in 1/4 resolution.

When flattening or exporting, the layer could be displayed with far less effort, and displayed in full resolution - looking less noisy.

 

This might explain you observation - one possibility.

[zBernie]

5 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

Does you Mac have a Retina display (>250 DPI)?
can you try with Retina Rendering „high quality (slow) ?

This issue occurs on my Windows desktop and laptop computers.  I tried changing the rendering quality to high/slow, but the problem persists.  Maybe that's the problem, I should get a Mac! 

 

[NotMyFault]

I can reproduce your observation if i choose "Low Quality (Fast)" for Retina Quality.

I raised a related bug reports, but Affinity seems to rate this is "by design" and ignores the issue.

More discussion:

 

[zBernie]

58 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

I can reproduce your observation if i choose "Low Quality (Fast)" for Retina Quality.

I raised a related bug reports, but Affinity seems to rate this is "by design" and ignores the issue.

More discussion:

 

 

That is unfortunate.  I did come up with one workaround; I just take a screenshot of the canvas in Affinity Photo and save it as a .jpg.  Then when printed it looks like what is in AP without the loss of noise when exporting.  No rendering required.  This is not optimal, but since sharpness is not critical, it works for me.

I used to use Gimp years ago, maybe I'll try it and see if it has this problem.

Thanks for your help with this.

[NotMyFault]

To be clear: the issue is the wrong (too strong) rendering of the noise while using Photo. The exported files are correct!
 

And the issue depends on the Retina Rendering settings, and zoom level.

With suitable settings, you get the correct result.

But it is indeed extremely confusing for users, especially on Windows where no such thing like “Retina Rendering” exists. It’s a pure MacOnly thing.

On Windows, The dirty performance trick of 1/4 resolution should be completely removed. 

 

[zBernie]

1 minute ago, NotMyFault said:

To be clear: the issue is the wrong (too strong) rendering of the noise while using Photo. The exported files are correct!
 

And the issue depends on the Retina Rendering settings, and zoom level.

With suitable settings, you get the correct result.

But it is indeed extremely confusing for users, especially on Windows where no such thing like “Retina Rendering” exists. It’s a pure MacOnly thing.

On Windows, The dirty performance trick of 1/4 resolution should be completely removed. 

 

That is even more unfortunate because when I add noise in Affinity Photo, that is what I want to see in my export.  It used to be called WYSIWYG.  But what you see in Affinity Photo when adding a great deal of noise is definitely not what you get.  So even if as you say the output file is correct, it still makes it impossible to obtain the desired results.

[NotMyFault]

19 minutes ago, zBernie said:

export.  It used to be called WYSIWYG.  But what you see in Affinity Photo when adding a great deal of noise is definitely not what you get

Totally agree, that is the exact reason why I raised the bug reports.

Affinity seems to prioritize MacOS “specialities” like non-Retina rendering and related performance “optimization” (1/4 resolution) above wysiwyg and accuracy of rendering.

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