Upping the Resolution of an image in Affinity Photo?

[Gemini80]

Hi all!

While I am working more in Designer these days, I did recently integrate an actual photo image into an otherwise total Vector based design - it looks cool - I showed it to my uncle who is an old school photographer with a background in analog photography but dabbles in Affinity Photo sometimes and he said I should 'Up the Resolution' of the image so I said, 'sure, sounds good, how?' to which he said 'no idea.' Haha! So I googled it and read this:

https://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/increase-resolution-of-image/

There are apps out there, Gimp being one, that can 'Up the Resolution' - (Adobe Photoshop was also mentioned as being able to do this) - but no mention of Affinity Photo.

I am a bit out of my depth here and wondered if anyone can tell me how to achieve this in Affinity Photo or point me towards a link?

Thanks for your help!

[Pšenda]

For example:

 

[Gemini80]

Hi! Thanks for your reply - I boosted the DPI from 72 to 400 and now the Image is less pixelated when zoomed in - I would like to import this version into Designer - but I would have export it first - which leads me to my next question: what is the highest export quality file type? Or is there another way to import the image into Designer without having to export it first in Photo?

 

Thanks!

[Pšenda]

7 minutes ago, Gemini80 said:

Or is there another way to import the image into Designer without having to export it first in Photo?

Menu File, Edit in Designer..., or Ctrl+C in APhoto and Ctrl+V in ADesigner.

[Gemini80]

Hi - thanks for your help -  unfortunately that option is greyed out. Might be because I have Designer Version 2 and Photo Version 1.

 

I read the link you provided but it is still quite hazy to me. I really just want to make an image the best it can be for the event it is printed at larger sizes - when imported into Photo I see the image is roughly 2000 x 2000 pixels at 72 DPI.

 

As previously mentioned I would like to integrate this image into a design which will eventually be printed at various poster sizes - which is why I would like to preserve as much detail as possible.

 

When I increased the DPI to 400 the image enlarged to about 10,000 x 10,000 pixels and I had resample checked with Bicubic to add some sharpness - is this the correct approach and if so, how would you now export this image to retain as much quality as possible? Jpeg, TIFF, etc?

 

Thanks for your patience!

[Pšenda]

On 2/11/2023 at 4:35 PM, Gemini80 said:

how would you now export this image to retain as much quality as possible? Jpeg, TIFF, etc?

JPEG is a lossy format, so if you require the highest possible quality, then a lossless one, such as TIFF or PNG.

 

On 2/11/2023 at 4:35 PM, Gemini80 said:

Hi - thanks for your help -  unfortunately that option is greyed out. Might be because I have Designer Version 2 and Photo Version 1.

Yes.

Try Copy/Paste with image, or Place embeded (*.afphoto) document.

 

On 2/11/2023 at 4:35 PM, Gemini80 said:

As previously mentioned I would like to integrate this image into a design which will eventually be printed at various poster sizes - which is why I would like to preserve as much detail as possible.

It would be good to work with an "Image layer", which is a container for image data that is kept at full quality.
That is, insert an image (or an original *.afphoto document) using the Place command.

Edited February 13, 2023 by Pšenda

[Gemini80]

Thanks for your reply!

 

I ended up importing the image into Affinity Photo first, increasing the DPI to 400, then exporting it as a TIFF and placing it into Affinity Designer - as a comparison, I also tried placing the image directly into Designer (without first putting it into Photo and raising the DPI) and when comparing the images side by side, the image whose DPI I increased looked sharper when zoomed in. Does this make sense? 

 

For example, the original image is 2.3 MB and the same image with a higher DPI saved as a TIFF is 84,5 MB - I guess what is confusing me a little bit is that I know you cannot add megapixels - so when increasing the DPI what exactly is happening that makes the image less pixelated when zoomed in? 

 

I come from the audio world - it is not possible to increase the sample rate of an audio file that was already recorded, but you can boost certain frequencies to make it sound more clear - I feel like something 'similar' is happening when increasing DPI, right?

 

Thanks!

[Pšenda]

DPI in itself is not interesting for raster images - it is only about how many pixels the given image has and therefore how detailed it is. If you increase the number of pixels, when using the Bicubic or Lanczos methods (you can try which is more suitable for you), the missing information will be added (of course, this is only an interpolation of the existing image information), which then looks more detailed and therefore sharper. You can then try to improve the sharpness with Sharpening.

[Gemini80]

Brilliant reply! Thanks for taking the time to explain it in a way that makes sense - that is something so many online articles do not accomplish!

[R C-R]

@Gemini80, you may find the Affinity Spotlight article Understanding DPI helpful, particularly regarding when it does & does not matter.