Bilinear filtering appears to not work

[sacb0y]

 

I just bought affinity photo, and it appears the viewport bilinear filtering isn't working.

This could be an issue specifically for me cause I'm using a 55" 4K HDR display (the above image is an HDR with 32-bit preview enabled).

For me at any zoom level the image appears to have pixelization the I don't see in photoshop or any other program. The filtering setting in preferences appears to do nothing. 

[NotMyFault]

If you zoom above 100%, you will see document pixels enlarged. Photo will always respect document pixels and show them pixelated, no matter what view mode you have selected.

The view mode does not change (or smooth) the pixel structure. It mainly influences how the color of document pixels are calculated. This becomes important if you have layers inside the document which have a different DPI (or pixel density) as the document, and use zoom levels below 100%. Another effect is misalignment of layers with detailed structures, which can cause severe blurryness.

The tutorials might help:

 

 

[NotMyFault]

More important is view quality. I would suggest to set it to best (slowest). Otherwise you might get rendering in half resolution, depending on factors like PC performance, GPU driver etc.

[sacb0y]

I have view quality set to "Bilinear (Best)" and it looks no different than nearest neighbor. 

The problem occurs regardless of zoom level. 

My PC hardware is more than capable (3090, etc)

[NotMyFault]

Hi, I try to get a better understand of the problem.

Can you provide more details?

• For screenshots, please include the Navigator panel, which shows the zoom level and a thumbnail of the canvas, and whole app window incl. window frame to see which persona is used
• Can you please upload one example image (source file, not image)
• For the screenshots, please describe what we see (left and right side) which app, which settings like zoom, which persona (Photo or Develop)
• Please add screenshot of Performance settings

If the pixelation you see is in the size of 1 canvas pixel: this is by design. Affinity does not smooth document pixel structure. Bilinear resampling is only used to resample document layers (which may have totally different DPI / pixel size) into the canvas DPI / pixel size.

So if you use a 4K display in 4K resolution, and open a document in 100% zoom level, Affinity Photo should render the document pixels 1:1 to display pixels. These are normally not observable as individual pixels for humans with normal eye sight.

If you zoom in e.g. 1600%, every document pixel will cover 16x16 display pixels, to make the pixel structure visible. If you activate grid in mode "automatic", Affinity will add a visible grid to show the edges of individual document pixels.

When you observe pixelation outside the context described above, we can try to find the cause bur need your support with the listed information.

[Chris B]

On 1/6/2023 at 11:42 PM, sacb0y said:

I have view quality set to "Bilinear (Best)" and it looks no different than nearest neighbor. 

Quick test:

1. Place a quick shape
2. Rasterise it
3. Scale it smaller
4. Toggle between Bilinear and Nearest Neighbour
5. You should then see the difference.

If you do it on a rasterised shape that has not been scaled, you won't see any change. This is where what NotMyFault was saying here - 'This becomes important if you have layers inside the document which have a different DPI (or pixel density) as the document'

[sacb0y]

Both screens are at 150% If you guys choose to have pixels at that zoom level fine. But it looks nasty. Photoshop doesn't pixelate until like 200%+

 

[Chris B]

I've just done a comparison on my 4k monitor and I honestly cannot see much of a difference between PS and Affinity - as you say you can probably tell because you're workong on such a large screen. 

I've tried to do a full HDR comparison (in case it makes a difference) but for the life of me I cannot seem to figure out how to enable HDR in Photoshop...

Though I'm not sure if there will be a huge difference between 8 bit, 16 bit and 32 bit for Bilinear filtering. I couldn't see a difference when changing the mode.