No smooth contour.

[walt.farrell]

15 minutes ago, Designer1 said:

However, then export a PNG in the size 2000 px x 4000 px. Do you think that resolution of 1200 dpi. will help?

You need enough pixels for the ultimate display size. That may mean you need to increase the pixel dimensions of the PNG file, as well as increasing the DPI.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

I started with a .afdesign file at 72 for the picture on the left, and exported to PNG. I started with a .afdesign file at 1200 DPI, and exported to PNG, for the picture on the right.

Then viewed both with equal zoom so the 1" circles were approximately 3" in the viewer.

Obviously, if you create two different documents with different DPI's & in both create a 1" circle then on export the higher DPI one will have a higher pixel resolution (more pixels) but that is not the same as just changing the DPI of a single .afdesign file & expecting the pixel resolution to increase.

That is what I was asking about (just changing the DPI).

[NotMyFault]

3 hours ago, Designer1 said:

I bought Affinity Designer, Photo and Publisher.

I bought Designer, Photo, Publisher.

First for Windows. 

Next for iPad (except Publisher which is not yet available)

Next all 3 Workbooks.

Next for MacOS (despite having no Mac at time of purchase)

in total about 350€ in 3 years.

Why ? To fund the Affinity / Serif Company by purchasing alternatives to break the brain-damaging monopoly of Adobe products. To ensure users have a CHOICE. Same reason i bought a PC with AMD Ryzen CPU instead of Intel. Same reason i recently bought a Mac (after 35 years on Windows PCs). 

 

 

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, Designer1 said:

So vector graphic 1200 dpi. However, then export a PNG in the size 2000 px x 4000 px. Do you think that resolution of 1200 dpi. will help?

What matters here is the pixel dimensions of the exported PNG, not its DPI. The pixel dimensions contain the actual image data "payload" of the file. DPI is just metadata that may be ignored or overridden, for example when a browser resizes an image to fit within the page boundary, or something is printed scaled to the paper size.

[Designer1]

What I have found is that if you increase the vector graphic to 1200 dpi and then rasterise, the quality of the exported PNG file becomes very good even at 2000 px x 4000px. The smoothing is very good then! So the question is whether it is the rendering of vector graphics that needs to be improved?

[Designer1]

11 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

I bought Designer, Photo, Publisher.

First for Windows. 

Next for iPad (except Publisher which is not yet available)

Next all 3 Workbooks.

Next for MacOS (despite having no Mac at time of purchase)

in total about 350€ in 3 years.

Why ? To fund the Affinity / Serif Company by purchasing alternatives to break the brain-damaging monopoly of Adobe products. To ensure users have a CHOICE. Same reason i bought a PC with AMD Ryzen CPU instead of Intel. Same reason i recently bought a Mac (after 35 years on Windows PCs). 

 

 

That is a noble effort. Realistically, however, it changes nothing. Adobe is a very successful, globally established company. Affinity is currently a good alternative, especially for individual designers, but not for publishing houses, advertising agencies, etc. Affinity has too few useful functions. Not even Photoshop mockups can be opened and edited properly in Affinity Designer. There is also no 3D function, e.g. for logos. Unfortunately!

[Designer1]

Here exported from a 1200 dpi document. Font Open Sans. Still not perfect. With inner o and p contour you can see that smoothing is not perfect.

[Old Bruce]

3 minutes ago, Designer1 said:

Here exported from a 1200 dpi document. Font Open Sans. Still not perfect. With inner o and p contour you can see that smoothing is not perfect.

To my eye those are no better and no worse than the curves on the n or S or g or h.

I think you are suffering from the opposite of a Placebo effect. You are never going to be satisfied with the export of text from Affinity. Why? I don't know.

[Designer1]

Here is another example rasterized at 1200 dpi and exported to PNG. Font Open Sans. Smoothing perfect!

[PaulEC]

7 hours ago, Designer1 said:

Not even Photoshop mockups can be opened and edited properly in Affinity Designer. There is also no 3D function, e.g. for logos.

As far as I am aware, Photoshop no longer supports 3D functions either and subsequently many Photoshop mock-ups no longer work in the latest version! 

("As of Photoshop 22.5, released in August 2021, Photoshop’s 3D features will be discontinued." – Adobe Community Support.)

You can hardly expect Affinity apps to offer better support for Photoshop files than Photoshop itself offers! 😁

[NotMyFault]

52 minutes ago, Designer1 said:

smoothing is not perfect.

 

39 minutes ago, Designer1 said:

Smoothing perfect!

I really suspect the difference you observe is actually caused by your display, and/or the viewing situation . This does not mean you display is defective or flawed. It only means that different display vendors use different LCD/LED panels and RGB patterns which actually have a noticeable effect on rendering. If you state that there is a quality difference, then those details (unnoticeable for most users ) are highly relevant for your eye.

My LG displays has its RGB pixels aligned horizontally. This leads to color seams when rendering black / white fonts. I get dark or light lines between colored areas (e.g. red ang green) which are the result of the display technology (different for horizontal vs. vertical edges)

If you wear glasses, this can dramatically amplify unwanted effects on sharp edges like color fringing.

Try rotating the display by 90 degrees (and the rendering by -90 degrees) and check if the rendering differs. If yes, its your display (and not Affinity)

 

[Designer1]

18 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

 

I really suspect the difference you observe is actually caused by your display, and/or the viewing situation . This does not mean you display is defective or flawed. It only means that different display vendors use different LCD/LED panels and RGB patterns which actually have a noticeable effect on rendering. If you state that there is a quality difference, then those details (unnoticeable for most users ) are highly relevant for your eye.

My LG displays has its RGB pixels aligned horizontally. This leads to color seams when rendering black / white fonts. I get dark or light lines between colored areas (e.g. red ang green) which are the result of the display technology (different for horizontal vs. vertical edges)

If you wear glasses, this can dramatically amplify unwanted effects on sharp edges like color fringing.

Try rotating the display by 90 degrees (and the rendering by -90 degrees) and check if the rendering differs. If yes, its your display (and not Affinity)

 

I don't think it's because of the monitor. With Adobe and Corel, the exported PNGs are always perfect. With Affinity, we have now found a way to export satisfactory PNGs. So 1200 dpi and then rasterised.

[NotMyFault]

Just now, Designer1 said:

With Affinity, we have now found a way to export satisfactory PNGs. So 1200 dpi and then rasterised.

Glad to hear. 👍🏼

[User_783649]

@Designer1 The difference is obvious and notable between your latest "Shopping" samples.

First one (Affinity?) really shows fuzzy edges around letter shapes. Overall contour quality is much better in the second image (CorelDRAW?).

If we can make an analogy here with 3D rendering ray-tracing algorithms, I would say that in first case I feel like there were significantly less ray bounces used. So it looks less polished and feel like it needs some more time to be refined.

I believe that someone from Serif team like @MattP or @Mark Ingram can probably explain us (sorry for disturbing you guys, we're stuck here with different theories) what rasterizing algorithm is used for vector shapes and text objects in Affinity apps. And why it doesn't look as refined as other apps' output. Maybe it is all due to Bilinear resampling method or any other built-in rasterization optimizations more targeted towards general performance rather than precision.

[Designer1]

19 minutes ago, Alex M said:

@Designer1 The difference is obvious and notable between your latest "Shopping" samples.

First one (Affinity?) really shows fuzzy edges around letter shapes. Overall contour quality is much better in the second image (CorelDRAW?).

If we can make an analogy here with 3D rendering ray-tracing algorithms, I would say that in first case I feel like there were significantly less ray bounces used. So it looks less polished and feel like it needs some more time to be refined.

I believe that someone from Serif team like @MattP or @Mark Ingram can probably explain us (sorry for disturbing you guys, we're stuck here with different theories) what rasterizing algorithm is used for vector shapes and text objects in Affinity apps. And why it doesn't look as refined as other apps' output. Maybe it is all due to Bilinear resampling method or any other built-in rasterization optimizations more targeted towards general performance rather than precision.

The second shopping image is also Affinity Designer. It is a 1200 dpi file. Before exporting to PNG, font was "rasterised". Then it was exported to PNG. Exporting fonts and vector graphics to PNG does not produce good results. You have to rasterize first and then export. Actually, it is awkward and strange.

[User_783649]

@Designer1 Can you please post screenshots of Document Setup... windows for both of these documents? 

I'm wondering what pixel dimenions you have for 1200dpi one? Should be huge file.

So rasterizing it in that huge resolution first and then exporting to the same size as first image should involve downscaling procedure which can smooth out any imperfections.

[Designer1]

It also seems that a document made for RGB or CMYK plays a role. The documents in CMYK have worse antialiasing than RGB documents, both when displayed on the monitor and after export to PNG.

[Designer1]

18 minutes ago, Alex M said:

@Designer1 Can you please post screenshots of Document Setup... windows for both of these documents? 

I'm wondering what pixel dimenions you have for 1200dpi one? Should be huge file.

So rasterizing it in that huge resolution first and then exporting to the same size as first image should involve downscaling procedure which can smooth out any imperfections.

A4 1200 dpi. 9922 px x 14032 px. Export Lancos 3 (separable).

But one would have the problem with A0 format. The files at 1200 dpi would be too large.

[User_783649]

@Designer1 Thanks for the information provided. That proves my theory.

When you use 1200dpi you will always have to deal with huge raster exports.

You already see that with things like 9922px x 14032px. Imagine what pixel dimensions would be calculated for A0 1200dpi...

I opened both of your attachments and each of them is actually 1900px x 2687px.

Can I ask you — did you resize both of them to these dimensions before upload or it is the forum engine max attachment size limit which downsized your second image?

Because if it was you then it explains everything — of course, downscaling 10k image to 2k will smooth out any imperfections and you'll get more refined result.

But... that doesn't solve the initial problem. The quality of 1:1 exports.

They are all different to each other. Maybe that's just ok and we should stop our researches.

[JimmyJack]

In the shopping examples the text is different sizes on the page, so of course there will be tiny differences... even with the exact same export protocol.

[Designer1]

45 minutes ago, Alex M said:

@Designer1 Thanks for the information provided. That proves my theory.

When you use 1200dpi you will always have to deal with huge raster exports.

You already see that with things like 9922px x 14032px. Imagine what pixel dimensions would be calculated for A0 1200dpi...

I opened both of your attachments and each of them is actually 1900px x 2687px.

Can I ask you — did you resize both of them to these dimensions before upload or it is the forum engine max attachment size limit which downsized your second image?

Because if it was you then it explains everything — of course, downscaling 10k image to 2k will smooth out any imperfections and you'll get more refined result.

But... that doesn't solve the initial problem. The quality of 1:1 exports.

They are all different to each other. Maybe that's just ok and we should stop our researches.

@Alex MI rasterised the vector graphic in Affinity Designer and then exported it as PNG with 1900px x 2687px. The result is very good. As you said, this does not solve the problem in Affinity Designer when exporting 1:1. Actually, when exporting vector graphics, the quality of the PNG should be flawless, as with Adobe and Corel.

In your example, the export quality of Photoshop Ps (Sharp) is excellent! Much better than Affinity. Unfortunately.

[User_783649]

@Designer1 Totally agree with you. Because even if this high dpi workaround may work for quite simple documents (logos, for example); but upscaling, rasterizing and then downscaling complex documents with many layers, objects and images will result in heavy resources usage, hangs or even crashes. Which is an unacceptable price to pay in order to get the same output quality that other products can provide without these extra steps.

But, after all, I really love these apps. Once I discovered Affinity apps, I simply don't want to use any other software.

[R C-R]

57 minutes ago, Alex M said:

When you use 1200dpi you will always have to deal with huge raster exports.

Not necessarily. For example, you can change the DPI of a *.afphoto file using Document > Resize Document but with the "Resample" checkbox unchecked. The document's pixel dimensions will not change no matter what DPI you set. Again, this is because DPI is just metadata, not actual image data.

But of course, if you do enable "Resample" the pixel dimensions will change if you change the DPI, although after changing the DPI you can still change the document dimensions in the "Size:" fields to whatever you want without further changes to the DPI.

[User_783649]

@R C-R I know the difference between these. If resample option will be unchecked then pixel dimensions will remain the same and any DPI value will be irrelevant (we can put any value there).

But in this case @Designer1 won't see any quality increase during his trick with 1200dpi workaround, because image will remain the same (it won't be enlarged).

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, Alex M said:

But in this case @Designer1 won't see any quality increase during his trick with 1200dpi workaround, because image will remain the same (it won't be enlarged).

Which is what I have been saying all along -- if you want higher "quality" (meaning more fidelity to the original vector shapes) then the only way to do that is to increase the pixel count of the export. DPI doesn't have anything to do with that.