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I asked it once and got answered "it might be nearest neighbor".

 

Hm, “might be”. Who answered? Hopefully not a Serif developer … found your topic … well, it’s about “resize method” … answered from MBd. Can’t be nearest neighbour. Hopefully it is something intelligent, at least bilinear. Hm, two weeks ago. Perhaps Serif does want to keep details secret. Try to ask again.

 

What you see on screen depends on your preferences (bilinear/nearest neighbour, dither, clipping, GPU, …) and this is not the whole process … and often: what you see is not what you get.

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  • 1 year later...

I am having the exact same problem. Photoshop, when reducing image size, remained crisp, regardless of the resampling, which I never had to check. If I uncheck the resample option, Affinity makes no change to the image size. If I leave it checked, things pixelate. This is going from high-res to 72 dpi...standard for web. I've tried various options. The following image is from a high res (2362px x 2126px) image...down to 300 px wide (and, small note, when I leave the lock on width locked to height, I don't see the height recalculate...it's a minor issue if the resizing actually worked well). The attached is with Bilinear resampling, but the results were similar with all others, if not worse... *(the below preview is not 300 px wide...but when viewed at 300 - particularly on the purple text, the pixelation is terrible). I am working with designers who cannot have this, and I just shelled out $80 bucks thinking I could move away from Photoshop.

disability-expo-logo-resized.jpg.b170c9ea9f01e3645a20ec7df5438b08.jpg

My apolgies - it is displaying at 300px wide...but I need it larger than that, and the large I make it, the more pixelated it becomes (not enlarging this image...just reducing the original to say 600). But event the one above is not as clear as it should be.

Edited by brendon
Mistake in my sizing comments
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2 hours ago, brendon said:

This is going from high-res to 72 dpi...standard for web.

DPI is irrelevant for web page images. See for example https://daraskolnick.com/image-dpi-web/ or https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2010/02/the-myth-of-dpi/ or just do a web search on "DPI for web." Or watch the Understanding DPI Affinity video.

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Good call R C-R

Bad call.

Simple thing I could do in photoshop....was say...700px wide image...(F**k your resolution) is be 300px wide. Look the same.

This did not work in my version of Affinity. I am not a math dude or a photo spectacular fart from 1920. It did not do what was expected. Downsize a picture's size, keep the clarity, and export it. I program in enough other fields...I can't also do this. It is not a graphics worthy program until that just works. It's the simplest task of my graphics day.

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I only say that in that, if I accidentally (regularly) don't downsize to 72 dpi...it still looks the same if I downsize the image from a camera size (guessing 64000 x 48000) it looks the same, then I export, it's crisp (any DPI). These haven't been.

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11 minutes ago, brendon said:

Downsize a picture's size, keep the clarity, and export it.

If you reduce the number of pixels in an image, no matter how you do that or in what app, the quality will be reduced. There is no way around that, not even using Photoshop. See for example https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/key-concepts/resample.html or https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/advanced-cropping-resizing-resampling-photoshop.html, among many others that will tell you the same thing.

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Well PS uses as default the bicubic interpolation filter which gives better results than bilinear interpolation here when downscaling, when you use bicubic also in AP you get pretty much the same results as in PS. You have to zoom in both apps to the same zoom level in order to compare here. - Depending on the used filter there are always differences in the interpolation quality for down- and upscaling images.

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Just  thinking out loud here.
When Using text, those layers are basically in curves (Vector) format which dynamically reacts to resizing etc and retain clarity. You can go large or smaller and the text (Vectors) stays clean and sharp.

Once the text is rasterized or flattened, it then behaves as a pixel image. This means you are going lose some amount clarity if you reduce the image size. You've asked fewer pixels to display information formerly addressed by far more pixels. If you go larger, the distance between the pixels quickly increases to the point of being unusable. If the pixels cant hold hands, they aren't going to work together. Not much can you do to improve on a photo that is enlarged to the point of blowing up. These are the same limitations that have plagued digital graphics from the get go. (Photoshop doesn't get any free passes to escape these rules, although the algorithms they employ do try )

In the case of a loss of sharpness in a reduced image, there are a couple of ways to deal with it in one's normal work flow. The Clarity or Unsharp filters are usually enough to fix things in a single application, when the reduction was only a few hundred pixels. In a case where the reduction is more intense....from say, 6000px x 4000px down  600px x 400, use a bit of forethought. Make the reduction in more than one step and sharpen the image at each interval. You can sometimes intentionally over sharpen things a bit and let the act of reduction work as a balancing effect, on the reduced image. This little trick is good when the adjustments are just too intense when applied after the image has been reduced.

For day to day usage, I generally save mine at 300 dpi and forget about it. Any increase in file size is small enough to be bearable, it has no noticeable effect on how the image displays on line  and I might want to print the image from time to time.

As I said above, just thinking out loud.  I'm not recommending that anyone try my madness, but it has served me well for more than a few years.

Steve

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46 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Depending on the used filter there are always differences in the interpolation quality for down- and upscaling images.

Perhaps the most basic (& probably the most often misunderstood) concept here is the difference between scaling a digital image (which does not involve interpolation) & resampling one (which does). In essence, when interpolation is not performed there is no change the number of pixels & thus quality will not be affected. Conversely, when interpolation is performed there is a change in the number of pixels & thus quality will be affected.

 

Regardless of the interpolation method used, it is only an approximation & thus there will always be some loss of quality each time it is performed. There are many good articles about this available on the web, including this Cambridge in Colour one. That site is one of my favorite "go to" sources for clear, easy to understand info about just about anything related to digital photography.

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Even Wikipedia explains it quite good here.

28 minutes ago, R C-R said:

In essence, when interpolation is not performed there is no change the number of pixels & thus quality will not be affected.

There is always a visable quality loss in the process of scaling bitmaps, everything else is eye wiping.

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1 hour ago, v_kyr said:

Even Wikipedia explains it quite good here.

There is always a visable quality loss in the process of scaling bitmaps, everything else is eye wiping.

Nope. The reason that Wikipedia article has a banner saying it needs attention from an expert in Computer graphics is because scaling a raster image does not, as it says, involve generating a new image with a different number of pixels. All it does is change the DPI, which can cause an apparent loss of quality depending on how the image is rendered on a display, but that is not the same thing as resampling the image data in the document.

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4 hours ago, R C-R said:

Nope. The reason that Wikipedia article has a banner saying it needs attention from an expert in Computer graphics is because scaling a raster image does not, as it says, involve generating a new image with a different number of pixels. All it does is change the DPI, which can cause an apparent loss of quality depending on how the image is rendered on a display, but that is not the same thing as resampling the image data in the document.

Read and translate instead the german one which is better in this regard.

 

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1 minute ago, v_kyr said:

Read and translate instead the german one which is better in this regard.

Regardless of the translation, the confusion occurs because "scale" is an imprecise term with several different meanings. One of them is reduce or increase something in size, number, or extent, especially by a constant proportion; for example as in a scale model. In this sense it is similar to "resize," & in digital image contexts it is common to use that word when contrasting the differences between resizing/scaling & resampling/interpolating a digital image.

 

I probably should have done that here, but truthfully I doubt that would have made much difference. Several of the terms are used in too many different ways that make a concise explanation  difficult. Consider for instance "resolution" or "quality" or even the "dot" in DPI. None of these terms have context-independent meanings everyone can agree on.

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@R C-R Well that's a problem with many terms which are commonly used also for/in slightly different contexts and area, so scale is no exception here in computer graphics and just one of those.

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  • 3 years later...

I came here because I am preparing images for the web and was also unhappy with the default image rescaling in Affinity Photo. Like Brendon, I expected the results to be pleasing without having to tweak settings. Coming from PSD, some of us don't expect to have to do anything more than click Export and choose a "quality setting."

I think the answer that Brendon was seeking is this. Correct me if I'm wrong:

If you scale a layer down, the original size is retained. The image is only resampled when the export is made. At this stage there are several resampling options. v_kyr stated that Photoshop uses Bicubic. I see that our default option is Bilinear, and I think that's why some of us have been startled by the results. Switching to Bicubic on Export does yield smoother results. The Lanczos 3 options yielded even better results for my use case.

In summary, it's a bit more work to experiment with the option settings. I would prefer a "Preview" mode so I can see the expected results without having to complete the export and then check each file. The ideal solution for me would be a preview gallery showing the various resampling results. Nevertheless, it looks like you can get some good results with the product as is.

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10 hours ago, chillywilly said:

I came here because I am preparing images for the web and was also unhappy with the default image rescaling in Affinity Photo. Like Brendon, I expected the results to be pleasing without having to tweak settings. Coming from PSD, some of us don't expect to have to do anything more than click Export and choose a "quality setting."

I think the answer that Brendon was seeking is this. Correct me if I'm wrong:

If you scale a layer down, the original size is retained. The image is only resampled when the export is made. At this stage there are several resampling options. v_kyr stated that Photoshop uses Bicubic. I see that our default option is Bilinear, and I think that's why some of us have been startled by the results. Switching to Bicubic on Export does yield smoother results. The Lanczos 3 options yielded even better results for my use case.

In summary, it's a bit more work to experiment with the option settings. I would prefer a "Preview" mode so I can see the expected results without having to complete the export and then check each file. The ideal solution for me would be a preview gallery showing the various resampling results. Nevertheless, it looks like you can get some good results with the product as is.

Hi,

Affinity actually already provides the preview functionality for Export, and it correctly shows the effect of the chosen resample method when you change it.

There is no global “best quality” setting possible. Which resample method works best depends on both the document content and you artistic intentions. Affinity is currently unable to read your thoughts and depends on explicit input in the UI. This is not intended to offend you. Sometimes you need a smooth (=soft) result (Portraits), sometimes you want hard edges and blocky rendering (80 style retro pixel art)

Affinity provides even  a dedicated export method for Pixel Art to offer the experts as much choice as possible.

 

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3 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

Hi,

Affinity actually already provides the preview functionality for Export, and it correctly shows the effect of the chosen resample method when you change it.

There is no global “best quality” setting possible. Which resample method works best depends on both the document content and you artistic intentions. Affinity is currently unable to read your thoughts and depends on explicit input in the UI. This is not intended to offend you. Sometimes you need a smooth (=soft) result (Portraits), sometimes you want hard edges and blocky rendering (80 style retro pixel art)

Affinity provides even  a dedicated export method for Pixel Art to offer the experts as much choice as possible.

 

Crap. I thought mind-reading was included in the package.

Anyway, thanks for mentioning the preview mode was included. I went looking for it just now, and there it is... "Preview" in the Export dialog. I just didn't see that. Strangely the preview is showing my web art at 119% size, and I don't see a way to resize the preview. I would much prefer to see the image at 100%.

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43 minutes ago, chillywilly said:

Crap. I thought mind-reading was included in the package.

Anyway, thanks for mentioning the preview mode was included. I went looking for it just now, and there it is... "Preview" in the Export dialog. I just didn't see that. Strangely the preview is showing my web art at 119% size, and I don't see a way to resize the preview. I would much prefer to see the image at 100%.

https://affinity.help/photo/English.lproj/pages/Sharing/export.html
Will show the shortcut keys to zoom preview. CTRL -1 for 100% zoom. The same key as almost everywhere in Photo.

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  • 9 months later...
34 minutes ago, BowArrow said:

Hi, I am new to affinity photo. I have an image that is 49,9 MB and I need to save it to around 130kb with the same quality. Is there any way to do this?

 

 

No. You can use lossy compression, but to get down to 130kb you need to accept severe loss of quality. Using lossless compression will never achieve 130kb. Another option would be to convert into vector format (svg), but again this would not achieve an identical image.

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