Copy and Paste quality issue.

[HuwR]

I use Affinity Photo to illustrate. With copying and pasting to a new layer the new layer loses quality and sharpness. Line work becomes less precise and more blurred.

Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

[walt.farrell]

It would help to have a screenshot to illustrate the problem, including the Layers panel, @HuwR. Even more helpful would be a sample .afphoto file where we can see the problem. I might guess you're doing something other than a simple copy and paste, as that should not cause problems, so you might also explain what you do after the paste operation. Moving the pasted item, or resizing it, may be the cause of the problem for example. Or something you do after that.

[NotMyFault]

Most probably the position of the copied layer is not aligned to integer positions. Use the transform panel to inspect positions, and activate snapping with forced pixel alignment on and move by whole pixels off.

[Hangman]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

I might guess you're doing something other than a simple copy and paste, as that should not cause problems

If the pasted object is not pixel-aligned then it will suffer from the applied anti-aliasing making it appear blurry...

[walt.farrell]

32 minutes ago, Hangman said:

If the pasted object is not pixel-aligned then it will suffer from the applied anti-aliasing making it appear blurry...

But it would be pasted at the same location it was copied from, usually.

[Hangman]

4 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

But it would be pasted at the same location it was copied from, usually.

It would but I was assuming that @HuwR was likely subsequently moving the object on the new layer at some point in the process which is when the effect of the anti-aliasing will show itself but maybe I'm wrong about the moving part...

[walt.farrell]

22 minutes ago, Hangman said:

It would but I was assuming that @HuwR was likely subsequently moving the object on the new layer at some point in the process which is when the effect of the anti-aliasing will show itself but maybe I'm wrong about the moving part...

Preferring not to guess, I asked for more details or a sample

[HuwR]

Thanks for the responses - so quick! I need sometime to take screen shots and upload so I will get back to you all again. Your assumptions about pastin then re-sizing and moving are correct. I often need to do this with the pasted layer/selection.  

I will come back with evidence to explain tomorrow. Sorry for the delay.

 

[HuwR]

@walt.farrell

Sorry for the delay in responding. I'm afraid what I have here in terms of screen shots might not be much help. (also I struggled uploading the screen shots)

The first screen shot shows a copy of the image pasted to another document and then worked on again to modify it's appearance somewhat.

The second screen shot shows the image as it was originally drawn using a drawing display.

The first screen shot shows the image following pasting to another document. It has been moved and (I'm not sure here) I may have re-sized the second document following pasting - enlarged slightly.

Check the blur in the first shot in the beard especially compared to the original drawing.

Hope this helps - and a massive thanks for your advice.

[walt.farrell]

Thanks. As you're pasting into another document, you need to verify that the two documents have the same DPI, and you need to verify that in the target document the layer is properly located on the pixel grid (with no decimal places in the X and Y coordinates). Also, if you resized the layer after pasting, that could cause this problem as the layer then doesn't match the document's DPI.

[HuwR]

@walt.farrell

Sorry - the DPI's were the same at 300.

Thanks for this.

The pixel grid is something I am not familiar with. I am an amateur trying to create graphic fiction in a minority language so for me it's raw art ability and get stuck in with the software with youtube tutorials. If you know of a guide to such things I'd love to have the details.

With regard to the pasting I was using the selection tool and pasting to isolate part of an image rather than grabbing the whole layer. Not sure whether this makes any difference?

Thanks for your help.

[HuwR]

@walt.farrell

Also apologies for the double pasting of the one image. There were only two in screen when I left the forum. Hope it was not too confusing.

[walt.farrell]

11 minutes ago, HuwR said:

Not sure whether this makes any difference?

It probably does.

12 minutes ago, HuwR said:

The pixel grid is something I am not familiar with.

I'm afraid that I wouldn't be able to do a good job of explaining it right now. With luck, another user or one of the Serif Staff can provide some details and pointers for you. But my hope was at least to get more details of your workflow explained so someone would be able to provide an answer

[Dan C]

Hi @HuwR,

@NotMyFault posted an excellent explanation of pixel alignment that may help you.

Lee