Affinity Photo Transform Selection

[jankljuc]

Hello everyone,

I'm trying to switch from Photoshop to Affinity Photo and I cannot get over a weird thing that is happening when transforming a selection. In Photoshop when you transform a selection is "extends" pixels, but in Affinity Photo it looks like it "stretches" them in a weird way, where the layer gets some kind of a shadow. Please see the attached picture. I make a selection and use the move tool with the upper or lower point to transform the selection. Would anyone know how to transform a selection in a similar way that Photoshop does?

Thank you in advance!

[GarryP]

Welcome to the forums @jankljuc

Photo doesn’t do this the same way that Photoshop does.

As you have seen, Photo ‘stretches’ the pixels in the selection – the ‘content’ of each original pixel is ‘shared’ between the new pixels so that transparency is introduced where the ‘content’ becomes ‘thinner’.

Think of stretching a balloon, where the material of the balloon becomes lighter in the areas which are stretched because there’s less material in those areas.

As far as I know the only way to alleviate the effect is to duplicate the ‘stretched’ layer until the transparency isn’t as noticeable and then, if necessary, merge the duplicated layers. If there is a better way of doing this then I would also like to know about it.

There have been requests for this to change.

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

39 minutes ago, GarryP said:

Welcome to the forums @jankljuc

Photo doesn’t do this the same way that Photoshop does.

As you have seen, Photo ‘stretches’ the pixels in the selection – the ‘content’ of each original pixel is ‘shared’ between the new pixels so that transparency is introduced where the ‘content’ becomes ‘thinner’.

Think of stretching a balloon, where the material of the balloon becomes lighter in the areas which are stretched because there’s less material in those areas.

As far as I know the only way to alleviate the effect is to duplicate the ‘stretched’ layer until the transparency isn’t as noticeable and then, if necessary, merge the duplicated layers. If there is a better way of doing this then I would also like to know about it.

There have been requests for this to change.

Is this behavior changed in Affinity Photo 2.10 beta 1732?

I can’t reproduce this - for me it is the Adobe Photoshop way of stretching that occurs when doing the above example…

[Hilltop]

Just tried this in APh 2.0.4 and I don't see what the OP described. The selected bitmap is extended w/o 'stretching issues'.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[GarryP]

It doesn’t seem to be as obvious to me in V2.0.4 as it was in V1 but there’s still some ‘stretching’, at the transitions to transparency at least – see attached video.

But maybe I'm doing something wrong.

[jankljuc]

Thank you everyone for a reply. Maybe I should mention that I'm also running version 2.0.4 on macOS. @GarryP I think it's not as obvious on your end, because you are dealing with much bigger squares that I did. The example of squares I posted were much smaller in comparison to yours.

@HilltopWhat if you try grabbing just the upper or the lower point and then "stretch"?

[GarryP]

The smaller the initial selection, the larger the ‘stretching’ will be because there are fewer pixels to ‘stretch’.

In other words, the amount of ‘content’ in the pixels being ‘stretched’ is smaller so that ‘stretched content’ has to cover a larger area and gets ‘stretched’ more.

[GarryP]

Maybe a better way of thinking about it is this:

Imagine dripping a small drop of dark paint onto a while tile.
The drop looks dark because the paint is mostly in the same place and so all of the ‘pigment’ in the paint is mostly in the same place making it look dark.

Then imagine spreading that drop over the white tile.
There is the same amount of paint, and therefore the same amount of ‘pigment’, but, because it’s spread over a larger surface area, the colour isn’t as dark as it was when it was all in one drop.

The pixels being ‘stretched’ are the ‘pigments’ in the paint, the larger the area the lighter they will look.

[Pšenda]

43 minutes ago, GarryP said:

at the transitions to transparency at least – see attached video.

Do you have pixel perfect drawing and selection? My "stretch" is completely clean.

[Hilltop]

30 minutes ago, jankljuc said:

@HilltopWhat if you try grabbing just the upper or the lower point and then "stretch"?

That's what I did. First the upper handle and then the lower, and next the screenshot.

[GarryP]

6 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

Do you have pixel perfect drawing and selection?

I’m pretty sure that I did.
My pixel snapping is set to Force Pixel Alignment and my Transform Panel shows me integer values (Decimal Places set to 3 in Preferences / User Interface), as can be seen in my earlier video.
If I’ve missed something then please tell me.

The effect can be seen more easily by using the Column Marquee Tool to make the selection, copying the selection and pasting, and then dragging one of the left/right sizing handles.

[Hilltop]

I took another look and with a magnification of close to 600%, there's some blurriness at the edges that were extended:

[jankljuc]

24 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

Do you have pixel perfect drawing and selection? My "stretch" is completely clean.

Yes, i believe it's pixel perfect.

[lepr]

6 hours ago, jankljuc said:

Hello everyone,
I'm trying to switch from Photoshop to Affinity Photo and I cannot get over a weird thing that is happening when transforming a selection. In Photoshop when you transform a selection is "extends" pixels, but in Affinity Photo it looks like it "stretches" them in a weird way, where the layer gets some kind of a shadow. Please see the attached picture. I make a selection and use the move tool with the upper or lower point to transform the selection.

 

The "shadow" in your example is the dark background being revealed where the pixels of the stretched layer have reduced opacity.

The opacity reduction is a result of bilinear resampling of both the alpha of pixels in the coloured layer and alpha of pixels in the selection mask.

 

[Pšenda]

Just for interest - strange behavior.

 

 

58 minutes ago, jankljuc said:

i believe it's pixel perfect

To be sure - "Move by whole pixel" must be Off. 

 

[jankljuc]

Any useful solution to this problem (using any other tool, changing some settings, etc.) or some kind of a workaround would be much appreciated, because currently I still need to use Photoshop to do this thing and then use Affinity Photo to continue with my edit. Thank you in advance!

[lepr]

32 minutes ago, jankljuc said:

Any useful solution to this problem (using any other tool, changing some settings, etc.) or some kind of a workaround

Attached is a macro named 'Fill alpha of selected pixels'.

Fill alpha of selected pixels.afmacro

To use it:

1. Select the region of pixels to be stretched
2. Press cmd+J to duplicate the region to a new Pixel object
3. Do not clear the pixel selection and do not deselect the object
4. Press V for Move Tool and stretch the object
5. Run the macro to make the stretched object entirely opaque

 

[lepr]

Here's another method by @thomaso: 

 

 

[lacerto]

You might be able to work around simple compositions, but as there is nothing like this available in Photo:

...I think that you just need to cut (or copy), paste [a new document from Clipboard (File > New From Clipboard)], then do Document > Resize Document:

...and paste back:

 

[jankljuc]

Thank you everyone for the suggestions and help. Really appreciate it.

[Reitei17]

hi, i downloaded the Fill alpha of selected pixels.afmacro, but i cant import it. when i drag it says not an affinity doc, when i import from macro and from the library i cant find that file. it is hidden means it is not the supported file

[R C-R]

35 minutes ago, Reitei17 said:

hi, i downloaded the Fill alpha of selected pixels.afmacro, but i cant import it. when i drag it says not an affinity doc, when i import from macro and from the library i cant find that file. it is hidden means it is not the supported file

It should be wherever you downloaded it to, probably your Downloads folder if you are on a Mac. You should be able to search on its file name to find it if you don't see it there.

Also note that you can only import *.macros files (note the plural) in the Library panel. Individual *.macro (note the singular form) into the Macro panel, & only when you have a document open to receive it.

[Reitei17]

ok it works with open document, thank you

Edited June 15 by Reitei17

[lepr]

Also, after importing the .afmacro file to the Macro panel, it can be saved from there into your macros library.

Edited June 15 by lepr
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