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Affinity 2.1.0 - Better antialiasing required.


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As you can see in this example, it is an Affinity example, the contours of the black letters are a bit pixelated. I now suspect that it is not due to the export, but to the antialiasing in Level panel. The antialiasing of the typography could be better. Especially for round shapes: d, e, o, 0, etc. This example was exported from Publisher 2.1.0 bilinear. To check this, view this file at 100% and notice the contours of the black letters.

Skills_On_Show_CV.png

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1 hour ago, LeeThorpe said:

Hi Designer1,

I'm not really able to see what you are describing viewed on a 27" 4k and a 15" 1080p monitor at 100% it looks fine.

Moving this to Feedback & suggestions as this is not a bug.

Lee

@LeeThorpe I also have a 27 inch monitor. Please look at the contours of the black letters on the screen. For example at 10 the 0. The outlines of the 0 are a bit pixelated. The smoothing could be better.

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@LeeThorpe Here is another example from Affinity Publisher 2.1.0. As you can see, the contours of S and o, for example, are exported uncleanly. This must be corrected. The export quality or antialiasing in the layers panel can be significantly improved so that the contours are smoother when exported.

Unbenannt.png

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If you are exporting to raster format (PNG, JPEG, TIFF etc.) then there will be pixelation on the letters. No way to get rid of it other than using a font that is designed for that sort of work. In all honesty I am not sure if such beasts are still being designed/produced. And you will have to work with Pixels as your Unit of Measurement and have integer sized Pixel sizes for the text.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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57 minutes ago, LeeThorpe said:

You could try forcing pixel alignment, as it appears you aren't quite lined up. (this is visible on the vertical edges of the "t".

 

image.png

image.png

I have activated pixel alignment. However, round letters o, e, etc. could be a bit smoother.

Unbenannt.png

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@LeeThorpe Pixel alignment cannot work with typography. For example, if letter spacing is increased typographically in a word, how is pixel alignment supposed to work? Pixel alignment does not work in this case.

From my point of view, the biggest disadvantage compared to Illustrator CC is that Affinity 2.1.0 is not able to export perfect PNG and JPG with smooth outlines.

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Hi @Dan C If you are not responsible for this problem, please forward it to the relevant Serif staff:

As you can see from the PNG exported from Publisher 2.1.0, the typographic quality is very poor in terms of clean and smooth letter outlines. I am very surprised that Serif has not solved the problem of poor anti-aliasing until today. The exported fonts have unclean, pixelated outlines. No comparison to Illustrator. Simply not good enough for professional demands. I exported the Affinity file with the Billinear setting.

Unbenannt.png

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I have to agree especially for smaller type the exports are hazier. Their AA gives a halo effect which is undesirable for certain documents, especially those indicating higher contrasts in both edges, hue, details, etc... my eye goes right for the haze, but I'm accustomed to searching for these pain points in final output, so I'm more sensitive to it.

It does impact readability where letters have counters or smaller x-height where details are more likely run together more with fuzzy AA. Plotting on whole pixels doesn't always boost clarity all that much for the rounder sections. Those edges being clearer are needed to help with easier recognition and scanning. I always want to make adjustments manually, but obviously outside of logos and small pieces of text that can be converted to Curves, there's not really much that can be done to manually hint paragraph text where the program is largely responsible for how type falls onto the final pixel grid.

As you mentioned, snapping a text element "on grid" means nothing. Sure, setting at baseline and working with type set to whole pixels perhaps, but that solution is also imperfect if the under-the-hood AA is subpar. I've considered they use something closer to a linear gradient (just to describe in a non-technical manner) to render AA. It's just basically like adding an FX. It does not consider "hinting" when dealing with type at all it appears. The default curve for Layer>Blend Options which is a linear plotline along a 0-100 ramp would suggest this. This could be fine if we could edit the AA manually to help clarify smaller type, but that functionality is still broken.

They could come up with their own formulas for clarifying AA for type under the hood. Similar to Photoshop's precious drop down with multiple options for smoothing or clarifying text, but I think Serif could have the ability to do something far better with a type designer involved.

With CM still broken, I don't hold my breath it will be anytime soon if ever this level of polish and critique will be looked into. Having the option to adjust the curve manually could help if CM is fixed and we should be able to setup an optimized curve as a default for type. Still, if there is no algorithm under the hood to help those pixels find their grid a bit more intuitively (for type), then our efforts to clarify on top of a poor grid alignment is more like a bandaid than a cure. Though tbf, Adobe could just be using a sharpening filter akin to what @Red Sands mentioned. These are proprietary programs so we don't know anything for sure... and it's hard to search such information.

It's worth noting, some fonts are setup either poorly or just not designed to hint well at smaller target sizes no matter how well any AA algorithm is written. I don't see a likely candidate in your examples. I have some on my system I've paid a little money for, got them from God knows where, but they work fine as display fonts at larger sizes so it's fine I guess... embedding for web is more questionable, however. It's common to have problems with fonts not hinting well in a web browser... type design in general needs a specific toolset/talent stack to tackle professionally in any application, just because of the amount of variables involved... is innumerable.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Unfortunately, in Affinity 2.1.1 the export quality of PNG and JPG or the antialising has not been improved. It is clear that a professional software should include a high quality export of files. Although many comments have already been written on this topic, Serif ignores this. What a pity!

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5 hours ago, cgidesign said:

There is the Text Blend Gamma preference.

It helped me in some cases. Might not be a solution but at least something to try out.

8 point text created with various gamma values (value must be set before creating the text element).

text-gamma.thumb.png.612d481707e886628635890954551d01.png

Do you think Gamma 3 ensures better quality when exporting PNG and JPG?

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5 hours ago, cgidesign said:

Not better or worse but different.

My experience ist, that a higher gamma gives a more crisp antialiasing (which is expected due to the way gamma curves work).

But the effect can be subtle. With thin fonts at tiny sizes it can be obvious but with bigger or thicker fonts less so.

I don't see any improvement in the gamma settings. As I said, the problem is with the anti-allising setting.

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  • 1 month later...

@Ash @debraspicher

 

I tried Inkscape 1.3, the PNG export is excellent. There is a great function in Inkscape when exporting to set the edge smoothing of the contours so that the contours are very smooth. This feature of Inkscape would be very desirable for Affinity 2.2. Inkscape is free and exports PNG and JPG in much better quality than Affinity Designer.

Zeichnung.png

Screenshot 2023-08-13 181509.jpg

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