Studio Link Photo 2 pixel brush bug.

[DM1]

When using pixel brush in Studio Link Photo, the 1px brush is rendered as two shaded pixels. Switching to Designer renders the pixel brush correctly. Using Photo standalone also renders correctly.

[NotMyFault]

Can you share the file?
 

Designer and Photo behave differently wrt to Anti-Aliasing / edge pixels. Is the pixel layer pixel-aligned?

Are the squares 1px wide? The grid let me assume there are multi px large.

can you try split view with vector + pixel view?

[DM1]

15 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

Can you share the file?

Any file will do. I just started a new file and selected a solid round brush set to 1px width. Zoomed in to get a grid showing and tap on screen.

There is no Split view available in Photo persona. Display looks fine in Designer persona.

Is layer pixel aligned might be a clue. In standalone photo tapping between 1px grid lines results in more than 1 px so this may be what is happening here.

Edit. I tried various snapping options but always get the two squares of shade rather than one square of black🙂

[NotMyFault]

I’m still unable to reproduce.

I can reproduce this only by intentionally mis-aligning the pixel layer by a fractional position. Based on the grid visible in your screenshot, this is exactly what happened. But in that case, getting blurred pixels is totally expected in pixel view mode while bilateral resampling is active.

Designer in vector view shows everything sharp (by design)

If you switch to pixel or retina view, you see the blurred pixel similar to photo (who only gives pixel view and has no option to use something else - except you can use preferences on Desktop to activate nearest neighbor view mode which hides such blurriness in certain cases like this).

can you please make a screen recording, and include transform panel from time to time to check if misalignment occurs?

In Designer, please use Split View Mode with vector and pixel.

[NotMyFault]

A redraw bug requires to re-apply view mode every time when you switch personas in Designer. Otherwise pixel mode will be shows as vector mode.

please, share your test file, it will be the fastest way. Include screenshots of grid settings, transform panel (while move tool is active and the pixel layer is active), and activate Split View.

A spread or margin can cause misalignment.

[DM1]

1 hour ago, NotMyFault said:

please, share your test file, it will be the fastest way. Include screenshots of grid settings, transform panel (while move tool is active and the pixel layer is active), and activate Split View.

Two files, first file pixel brush test.afphoto works correctly in both Photo standalone and Photo StudioLink.Second file pub pixel test.afpub created in Publisher and same pixel brush settings. Gives 2 pixels.

 

1 hour ago, NotMyFault said:

grid settings, transform panel (while move tool is active and the pixel layer is active), and activate Split View.

Move tool is not used. There is no Split View in Photo. Grid setting is auto. 

 

pub pixel test.afpub pixel brush test.afphoto

[NotMyFault]

There is a fractional mismatch between shown layer position in transform panel and actual layer position. You can use move tool to correct the layer position.

So the rendering works as designed, but something causes a relative fractional point of origin of the layers (move tool). Maybe its facing pages - the width is 2480.3 so pages with odd numbers start with fractional position.

[loukash]

On 1/12/2023 at 12:18 PM, DM1 said:

When using pixel brush in Studio Link Photo, the 1px brush is rendered as two shaded pixels. Switching to Designer renders the pixel brush correctly. Using Photo standalone also renders correctly.

I've noticed this or a similar bug on iPad recently as well. It also affects desktop v1, likely also in v2 (i think I've tested it as well a few weeks ago).

As far as I can say by playing with a document on desktop v1, the culprit is the bleed:
When you create an APu document, make sure the bleed has an integer pixel value, e.g. 36 px if you want to keep it around the standard 3 mm.
Unfortunately, at least in v1, the bug seems to persist even if you change the bleed to an integer pixel value later, i.e. it seems that the pixel grid remains firm at the original absolute position while the document was created.

So the best workaround is to always create a new document with bleed in integer pixels.

APh and afphoto documents are not affected because APh can't create bleed.
But if you open an affected afpub in APh, the bleed offset bug remains.

ADe Pixel persona (v1 desktop) seems to be "unaffected", regardless if the bleed is integer pixels or not, but ADe has already enough other bleed problems…  

(I don't have the iPad at hand at the moment.)

[NotMyFault]

I tried to create a fresh A4 document, converted units to pixel, rounded all margins / bleed / spread etc to whole pixels. 

The issue persists. When you cycle between Publisher and Pixel persona, (or Designer vector / pixel view mode), you can see the grid is jumping by a fraction.

[loukash]

21 minutes ago, loukash said:

it seems that the pixel grid remains firm at the original absolute position while the document was created.

Well… unless you actually started with an integer pixel value but changed the bleed later to integer mm. Then your pixel grid is off again and will stay so… Duh.
(Still talking about v1 desktop though.)

Meanwhile, I fetched the iPad, and in APu 2 it appears to be the same scenario as in my previous v1 desktop observation:

• create document with integer mm bleed = pixel brush in Photo persona off the grid
• change existing document to integer pixel bleed = no fix, still off the grid
• create document with integer pixel bleed = pixel brush aligned

This is a major bug, as far as I'm concerned.

[NotMyFault]

Talking about V2.

The issue is even worse. 

I created a test file with 64x64px size, all margins / bleed zeroed or de-activate where possible, target "web", using px as units.

After adding more pages, the relative misalignment changes from one double-page to the next.

This means you have absolutely no chance to get pixel-accurate (non-blurry) results for Publisher documents.

I will try different export settings next. 

[NotMyFault]

Exports to PDF or PNG give mixed results. Some exports are correctly pixel aligned, other show the misalignment, found no reproducible pattern.

The misalignment is almost 1/3 or 2/3 of a pixel. See post from @loukash for more precise details. It is remainder of 30mm / 300dpi to pixels conversion.

Edited January 15, 2023 by NotMyFault
added knowledge gained since initial post

[loukash]

This seems to be the ultimate workaround to fix the pixel misalignment on APu desktop, tested in v1 so far: 

 

Haven't checked yet if it also works on APu 2 iPad.

[loukash]

35 minutes ago, loukash said:

Haven't checked yet if it also works on APu 2 iPad.

Hm. My DPI workaround doesn't work with multiple spreads on iPad because APu2 only accepts integer DPI. Fractions are being rounded, thus the grid will off again if you have multiple spreads.
Bummer.

So it will only work if you apply an integer DPI that will also convert the firm 30 mm spread gap to integer pixels…

And the winner is…

Either DPI 254 or DPI 381
Duh.  

[Dan C]

Hi DM1,

Thanks for reporting this, it's currently a known issue and will hopefully be resolved soon.

Lee