Final .jpgs are wrong

[Announcement]

Hi all,

got an issue I can't figure out. When I export my images, they become a lot less sharp and they export with a white line along one of the edges. This happens to both landscape and portrait oriented images, but curiously, square images seem to export correctly. Have a look at the attached image - the image open in Affinity is (supposed to be) the same as the open .jpg, but they're not. What in the world is happening?

Edit: Images removed due to privacy concerns. Both problems stemmed from the fact that the images were cropped in decimal numbers, so for example they could be cropped "1024x767.5", leaving the short end with a white space to "fill in" the missing area between 767.5 and 768. Both that and sharpness issues solved by unlinking X and Y and setting both to the nearest whole number (so "1024x767.5" would be manually adjusted to "1024x767").

 

Edited May 14, 2024 by Announcement

[v_kyr]

8 minutes ago, Announcement said:

When I export my images, they become a lot less sharp and they export with a white line along one of the edges.

How are the images opened and processed, are they placed on some setup doc size canvas? - For sharpness compare them in 1:1 scaled sizes and not a smaller pixel one with a bigger one. - Further if you resize images etc. you can also apply some little amount of sharpness before exporting them.

[Announcement]

On 9/21/2023 at 1:59 PM, v_kyr said:

How are the images opened and processed, are they placed on some setup doc size canvas? - For sharpness compare them in 1:1 scaled sizes and not a smaller pixel one with a bigger one. - Further if you resize images etc. you can also apply some little amount of sharpness before exporting them.

Here you go, a 100% comparison. The issue here isn't the zoom level of either image, something is happening when I export my images that causes the finished .jpg to be significantly less sharp and to have a white border on one side. This doesn't happen with my square files that go through the exact same editing process, only difference being the ratio of the finished image. My square images look exactly like the image on the left here, except they're square. This also wasn't an issue before - previously, ALL my exported images have looked like the image on the left, so this is a new problem that has appeared in the last two-three days.

I open the images as RAW files in Develop Persona, I don't paste them into a premade canvas.

Edit: Images edited for privacy concerns. See edit in OP for solution.

 

Edited May 14, 2024 by Announcement

[v_kyr]

Did you compared the output result also with other JPG capable image previewers (IrfanView, XNViewMP etc.), do the white lines appear there always too? - Further are your JPG export settings and JPG compression as always, meaning nothing has changed or beeing reset to other values there?

Maybe you can share one of those RAW images, so forum people who also use APh v2.2 on Win can take a look on it and see if they can reproduce that problem or not.

 

[James Ritson]

Hey @Announcement, would you be able to post a screenshot of your layer stack? Are you using any live filters or adjustments?

Regarding a difference in sharpness, if you flatten your Photo document temporarily (Document>Flatten) and view at 100% zoom (Ctrl/CMD+1), does it then look the same as the exported JPEG at the same 1:1 zoom level?

[Old Bruce]

I will wager this is a Pixel alignment issue. Check the x, y alignment and width and height of the picture using the Transform panel. If you are cropping the image at stage in the editing process this may result in fractional pixel values for the x, y and or width height. That in turn will result in the white line you are seeing.

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

I will wager this is a Pixel alignment issue.

I think you are right about that.To check, the OP can set the decimal places to 4 or more in Settings > User Interface & the Transform panel should show if everything is pixel aligned or not.

[Announcement]

 

On 9/21/2023 at 4:58 PM, James Ritson said:

Hey @Announcement, would you be able to post a screenshot of your layer stack? Are you using any live filters or adjustments?

Regarding a difference in sharpness, if you flatten your Photo document temporarily (Document>Flatten) and view at 100% zoom (Ctrl/CMD+1), does it then look the same as the exported JPEG at the same 1:1 zoom level?

Hey, thanks for your response! I use both live filters (high pass) and adjustments. I'm adding a screenshot of my layer stack - no high pass filter there because I add that as the very last step after cropping & resizing the image. And no, the Affinity file and the exported .jpg don't look the same, that's what I've got a screenshot of in the first post. The right image (the exported jpg) is visibly blurry and has that white line on the right-hand side.
 

On 9/21/2023 at 5:03 PM, Old Bruce said:

I will wager this is a Pixel alignment issue. Check the x, y alignment and width and height of the picture using the Transform panel. If you are cropping the image at stage in the editing process this may result in fractional pixel values for the x, y and or width height. That in turn will result in the white line you are seeing.

Hey, appreciate the input! What am I looking for in the Transform panel? I've attached a screenshot, as you can see all the values there are set to zero.

Edit: So I tried exporting the uncropped image to see whether that would do it, and it did. The white line is gone and my sharpening adjustments export, so there's clearly something in the cropping that's causing it (even though I've cropped images before without this being a problem, so who knows why it's suddenly a problem now). Any idea what I can do to continue being able to crop my images without these issues happening again?

On 9/21/2023 at 9:06 PM, R C-R said:

I think you are right about that.To check, the OP can set the decimal places to 4 or more in Settings > User Interface & the Transform panel should show if everything is pixel aligned or not.

Hey, so I'm looking at the settings panel now - I assume it's the pixel one I'm supposed to set to 4? I tried that, but the Transform panel still shows a value of zero for me.


Edit: Images removed due to privacy concerns. Please see edit in OP for solution.

 

 

Edited May 14, 2024 by Announcement

[NotMyFault]

Can you please upload the actual afphoto file?
For the screenshot of transform panel, the move tool must be active, and the bottom layer selected in layer stack.

and zoom level must be exactly 100% if you want to inspect sharpness.

did you use the crop tool to cut off edges?
 

[R C-R]

17 minutes ago, Announcement said:

Hey, so I'm looking at the settings panel now - I assume it's the pixel one I'm supposed to set to 4?

Yes, but in your screenshot it is set to 1, so have you tried a higher setting?

[Announcement]

23 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

Can you please upload the actual afphoto file?
For the screenshot of transform panel, the move tool must be active, and the bottom layer selected in layer stack.

and zoom level must be exactly 100% if you want to inspect sharpness.

did you use the crop tool to cut off edges?
 

 

21 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Yes, but in your screenshot it is set to 1, so have you tried a higher setting?

Good god, I think I figured it out. I think y'all were right about it cropping at a pixel decimal rather than a full pixel, and for whatever reason that also messed with the sharpness of the exported file. Once I unlinked the X and Y pixel sizes in the "resize document" and made sure that both values were decimal free the cropped and resized file exported correctly and gave me a sharp, white line free jpg.

Thank you so much for your help and patience, guys. I really appreciate it!

[DaveMcA]

It would really help if it were impossible to have fractional pixels as a result of resizing or any other action on a photo. I tried resizing a photo to 1080px high, sharpening then increasing the canvas size by 2 for height and width (centre anchor) to give a 1px border around the photo. Complete mess with a mix of border sizes or none at all around the image.

Of course, this occurred because the resized width was not a whole integer. There needs to be a whole-pixel switch somewhere or a photo-mode for people who just want to edit photos.

Trying to make a macro to automate the resize>sharpen>frame process is laughably impossible. For the aforementioned problem but also that images with different proportions can't be macro-resized by a fixed height yielding different widths.

Sadly, I'm having to export Tifs from APhoto in order to resize them in an old version of Photoshop (CS4) which can do this stuff properly.

Sad,

David McA

 

Edited December 4, 2023 by DaveMcA
hit enter by accident

[R C-R]

19 minutes ago, DaveMcA said:

There needs to be a whole-pixel switch somewhere or a photo-mode for people who just want to edit photos.

Have you tried using Snapping > Force Pixel Alignment without also using Move By Whole Pixels?

[DaveMcA]

2 hours ago, R C-R said:

Have you tried using Snapping > Force Pixel Alignment without also using Move By Whole Pixels?

This didn't work for me in this context, however after discovering that cropping was non destructive, by trial and error I discovered a method:

Crop the 4x3 original to 3x2.
Rasterise & Trim the layer (I had missed this step).
Resize the document to width x 1078 (manually rounding the width to eliminate the decimal points).
Increase the canvas to width+2 x 1080.
This gave a border at top & right
but if I zoomed to 100%: a border at top & left
at 200%: border on all sides

I notice quite often that screen rendering is poor. Even when initially loading an image, a faint white line on the left side.

I feel fairly underwhelmed/dissapointed with my experience of Affinity Photo after having used many photo editors over the last 30+ years.
I'll hang on though, even if just for the stacking functions (though they could do with more than just the one panorama projection). Perhaps some of my frustrations will be addressed in future updates. Until then, for macros and even layer based editing, I'll soldier on with my old Photoshop CS4. It's very reliable and the basics are all there and easy to use without needing workarounds.

David McA