Refining selection sometimes does not work as expected in affinity photo V2

[Jo Caribu]

I was always really impressed how good the selection tool in Affinity Photo V1 worked. Especially with the "refining selection" tool I got very good results. Since the first V2 version and still in the latest release, I sometimes can't get the results I expected. And often there are some gliches. I am not sure why the occure, I don't get them allways. I found the following problems (while using "refining selection":

• The matte brush in some parts of the picture doesn't select foreground although there is enough contrast (see attached picture)
• Some artifacts with straigt lines appear in the selection, most often small rectangular areas (see also attached picture)
• The edge between foreground and background is not clearly defined. Along the edge there is some area marked as background (but not 100% background). in this cases using foreground or background brush always "bleeds" into the other area.

the attaches picture shows a detail of a foto at 100%.

I am using Affinity Photo on Windows 10. I use the current release (i.e. 2.1.1). Is there any known issue with affinity? Or could it be a problem with ressources in Windows?

Thanks for any answer or recommendation! 

refining selection problem.pdf

[Dan C]

Hi @Jo Caribu,

Sorry to hear you're having trouble!

On 8/5/2023 at 3:39 PM, Jo Caribu said:

• The matte brush in some parts of the picture doesn't select foreground although there is enough contrast (see attached picture)

Are you able to please provide a copy of the source image, or the .afphoto file that shows this issue?

On 8/5/2023 at 3:39 PM, Jo Caribu said:

• Some artifacts with straigt lines appear in the selection, most often small rectangular areas (see also attached picture)

This appears to be issues with the mipmap rendering in Affinity which is used when viewing an image at zoom levels other than 100%. I'd recommend ensuring that your GPU drivers are up to date, directly from the manufacturers website to resolve this. If this still occurs, you can try disabling Hardware Acceleration under Edit > Settings > Performance as this may also stop this from happening.

On 8/5/2023 at 3:39 PM, Jo Caribu said:

• The edge between foreground and background is not clearly defined. Along the edge there is some area marked as background (but not 100% background). in this cases using foreground or background brush always "bleeds" into the other area.

This will depend on the specific image that you are refining and is mostly affected by the resolution of the image and the definition / contrast of these edges. The Refine Tool will attempt to differentiate between these elements, but may struggle with certain sections of images.

[Jo Caribu]

Dear @Dan C,

thank you for your reply. I tried to show in more detail what the problems are I experience. I also compared this behaviour between V2 and V1. And the selection in general and especially the refinement of the selection is (at least in my environment) far better in V1 then in V2. I could change back to V1 but on the long run it makes noch sense to stay with an old version of a software. And I would like to help to improve a really great product I love.

I did the following (see attached .pdf and .aphoto):

• open raw file
• change settings in the raw editor
• develop
• use perspective and crop tools on the image
• select the sky using the select brush
• press "refine..."
• set zoom factor to 100%
• screenshot of the church towers on the right. An error in the selection can be seen here
• Improve selection on the left side of the towers (this works)
• Use the matte brush on the tree on the left. The aim is to select the sky between the branches. Here an error occurs. Only on part of the tree the matte brush works. Below a straight line in one are everything is foreground an in another area everthing is background. Using the matte brush again on one of this areas doesn't change anything.
• Then in another small detail of the photo I tried to improve the selection. Here the recognition of the edges doesn't work proberly.

I did the same in V1. There everything worked fine in the three cases mentioned above.

In both versions the hardware accelaration is off.

As I use the german version of Affinity Photo, I am not sure if I use the correct terms used in the English version. I hope, it is still clear what I mean.

Thank you very much for your effort!

refining selection problem 2.pdf DSC08798.afphoto

[Dan C]

Many thanks for the further information and files provided!

Quote

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Following the steps provided in your document, I'm not seeing the above issue - and this does appear to be an issue between Affinity & your GPU, rather than an issue with the app tools directly as other users aren't reporting this and we can't replicate this here.

Can you please ensure you have updated to a clean version of the latest driver, directly from the GPU manufactures website?

 

However, I am seeing other unexpected issues with the selection refine, I believe due to the Perspective Live Filter in your file.

If you Group both the Image layer and the Perspective Live Filter together, then right-click this Group and select Rasterise... Now create your selection using your selection tool of choice and Refine the selection. Does this stop the above issues with the selection artefacts, or improve the results using the Foreground/Background brush?

1 hour ago, Jo Caribu said:

I did the same in V1. There everything worked fine in the three cases mentioned above.

Our team has since informed me that we have previously logged with our development team a noticeable difference in selection accuracy between V1 & V2 when using Refine and therefore I will be sure to update this internal log with the information provided here now for you

[Jo Caribu]

I think we got the cause of these strange effects! After grouping the image layer and the perpective live filter and rastering the group the selection an refining of the selection work as expected.

Thank you very much for your help!

 

[Dan C]

Thanks for confirming that for me!

I'll be sure to get this logged with our development team to request this to be resolved in the future