nickbatz Posted August 17 Share Posted August 17 Typically I'd probably use the Brush or Clone Brush to get rid of stairstepping like this (leaving aside that I want it in this specific case). Or maybe I'd use the blur tool - there are several ways. But is there a way - even using another program - to smooth all jagged edges within a selection, sort of like a very extreme Refine command? My application is different from most people's, but it's something I'd use all the time. TIA Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thomaso Posted August 17 Share Posted August 17 Do I understand right that you want to do the selection manually but the smoothing with 1 click (no brush painting)? If yes, I would use the Flood Fill Tool with an average fill colour and a suitable blend mode. Quote macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickbatz Posted August 17 Author Share Posted August 17 That's definitely one way of doing it, but it's still a manual operation and there are other methods that can do a more elegant job (and that aren't really any slower, since you still have to make the selection manually). I want to make a bigger selection, go abacadabra, and have every stepped line or border within the selection turn into a smooth one. You'd think that a program like Gigapixel AI would be able to do that, but... well, for people who are taking pictures of birds I'm sure it's great, but for what I do it's not much use. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
user_0815 Posted August 18 Share Posted August 18 Just a wild guess… how about the feature Find Edges? If that selects edges then you could try to grow or blur the selection apply the restore command via menu. Not sure though if that’s possible. nickbatz 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickbatz Posted August 18 Author Share Posted August 18 20 minutes ago, user_0815 said: Just a wild guess… how about the feature Find Edges? If that selects edges then you could try to grow or blur the selection apply the restore command via menu. Not sure though if that’s possible. See, this is why I post here. I didn't know about that feature and will check it out later today. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickbatz Posted August 19 Author Share Posted August 19 Find Edges is an interesting effect - and it turns out I have played with it before - but unfortunately it doesn't work for this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thomaso Posted August 19 Share Posted August 19 On 8/17/2024 at 8:12 PM, nickbatz said: smooth all jagged edges within a selection On 8/18/2024 at 12:48 AM, nickbatz said: I want to make a bigger selection, go abacadabra, and have every stepped line or border within the selection turn into a smooth one. You seem to want a largely automated process, from selection to smoothing, – not the smoothing only (as I thought from your initial post)? Since 'Find Edges' doesn't work for you (probably because it finds any edge, regardless of jagged or not): How would you distinguish / describe / define for an automatic process "all jagged edges" that should get smoothened from those edges that should not be affected? Quote macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickbatz Posted August 19 Author Share Posted August 19 2 hours ago, thomaso said: You seem to want a largely automated process, from selection to smoothing, – not the smoothing only (as I thought from your initial post)? Since 'Find Edges' doesn't work for you (probably because it finds any edge, regardless of jagged or not): How would you distinguish / describe / define for an automatic process "all jagged edges" that should get smoothened from those edges that should not be affected? If the entire brick wall is the selection, then all the edges inside the selection would be smoothed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thomaso Posted August 19 Share Posted August 19 27 minutes ago, nickbatz said: If the entire brick wall is the selection, then all the edges inside the selection would be smoothed. Ah, then I don't understand your goal, I had expected in your example just the 4-5 large steps at black background should be smoothed. Quote macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickbatz Posted August 19 Author Share Posted August 19 1 hour ago, thomaso said: Ah, then I don't understand your goal, I had expected in your example just the 4-5 large steps at black background should be smoothed. That's because you use Affinity Photo the way normal people do - to edit photographs. I use it for abstract art. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thomaso Posted August 20 Share Posted August 20 1 hour ago, nickbatz said: That's because you use Affinity Photo the way normal people do - to edit photographs. I use it for abstract art. I think it's more because you originally described the goal as "get rid of stairstepping". If you want to get an automatic selection for your goal you need to define the relevant areas more precise. The algorithm should be enabled to know that you want to smooth in your example the steps at their upper edge only, but in the brick wall image the entire wall. How gets this goal defined for an automatism? If the "stairstepping" is the result of upsampling, it might be easier to avoid the steps when upscaling rather than to get them corrected afterward. You mentioned Gigapixel AI, this tool seems to be able to avoid (~ smooth) the steps when upscaling (... but not to remove them after scaling). However, this blurs the edge. –I assume you don't want it blurry but clear, something like in the 'painted' example above, correct? Quote macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickbatz Posted August 20 Author Share Posted August 20 All I'm asking about is whether there's something like the Refine process that recognizes jagged lines and makes them curves, either in Affinity Photo or another program. Probably not. Thank you. The end. R C-R 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thomaso Posted August 20 Share Posted August 20 1 hour ago, nickbatz said: process that recognizes jagged lines In a digital image with its grid of horizontally & vertically arranged pixels, there will usually be always jagged lines where a subject/detail in the image is meant to show a round shape and is different from mere vertical/horizontal edges. Obviously, an initial and the current image resolution is relevant in deciding which edges to smooth (curve, round, blur, …?), what to exclude and where horizontal/vertical lines may/shall become jagged lines instead to make a particular subject/detail looking less 'technical' ('rounder', more 'organic', 'natural', …). For concrete, known topics, the automation you want may be possible with AI, ... for the "abstract art" you mentioned as your goal, the right selection of jaggy lines for rounding may be more of a coincidence or lead to undesirable results if it combines (re-shapes) areas that should remain separate from an artistic point of view. Quote macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickbatz Posted August 20 Author Share Posted August 20 It isn't available in Gigapixel AI, that's for sure. And yes, of course you'd need some parameter settings. As I said, this is close to what Refine does already. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thomaso Posted August 20 Share Posted August 20 1 hour ago, nickbatz said: It isn't available in Gigapixel AI, that's for sure. Isn't it? – It appears Gigapixel AI can do it – but it smoothens via resampling (adding pixels, not 're-painting' edges in identical image size) and either globally at all edges & in each direction ('blur', as shown in this example above) or for structures/objects that are 'known' to the AI, like 'hair/fur/feathers' for instance, as in this example by Topaz: 1 hour ago, nickbatz said: And yes, of course you'd need some parameter settings. As I said, this is close to what Refine does already. Does "Refine" work indeed automatically? In my impression it just offers tools for manual editing of a selection via brush painting or slider moving. But you desire / asked for magic automatism: On 8/18/2024 at 12:48 AM, nickbatz said: That's definitely one way of doing it, but it's still a manual operation and there are other methods that can do a more elegant job (and that aren't really any slower, since you still have to make the selection manually). I want to make a bigger selection, go abacadabra, and have every stepped line or border within the selection turn into a smooth one. It might be possible via AI only but then rather not for your "abstract art" since there is no generally valid definition of the relevant edges for abstract, for non-representational image motifs. If I understand right, the selection quality (position and limitation) is one major task for your goal while smoothing is a entirely separate one. And I think you want to avoid upscaling/upsampling but would prefer repainting of edges with same image size, similar to this initial example but, if not with fill colour, maybe with a smudge brush along the edge. Quote macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickbatz Posted August 20 Author Share Posted August 20 Gigapixel works if you're taking pictures of ducks or something it recognizes, which makes it useless for what I do. I have an old version of it, but I don't use it. It shouldn't need AI to do this, it just needs to know what constitutes a jagged edge - again, just like Refine does, only for lines rather than the edges of a selection. Anyway, the feature I'm looking for doesn't seem to exist, so it's moot. There are other ways to accomplish the same thing. They just take some work, but it's not a big deal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted August 20 Share Posted August 20 55 minutes ago, nickbatz said: It shouldn't need AI to do this, it just needs to know what constitutes a jagged edge - again, just like Refine does, only for lines rather than the edges of a selection. Refine works by detecting color/contrast differences between adjacent pixels along the edges of 'marching ants' pixel selections. It has no way of knowing if a line should be jagged or smooth. Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.5.5 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 All 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firstdefence Posted August 21 Share Posted August 21 I'm surprised nobody has suggested the Smudge tool... Ooh! I have lol! Quote iMac 27" 2019 Sequoia 15.0 (24A335), iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9 (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum) Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickbatz Posted August 21 Author Share Posted August 21 33 minutes ago, firstdefence said: I'm surprised nobody has suggested the Smudge tool... Ooh! I have lol! There are lots of ways to do it, as I said in the first post, but yeah, that's a good one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thomaso Posted August 21 Share Posted August 21 52 minutes ago, firstdefence said: I'm surprised nobody has suggested the Smudge tool... I am surprised you haven't noticed it. Lol? 17 hours ago, thomaso said: similar to this initial example but, if not with fill colour, maybe with a smudge brush along the edge. firstdefence 1 Quote macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firstdefence Posted August 21 Share Posted August 21 I've just received a letter from Specsavers too, I didn't see that coming either lol! R C-R and BiffBrown 2 Quote iMac 27" 2019 Sequoia 15.0 (24A335), iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9 (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum) Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted August 21 Share Posted August 21 23 minutes ago, firstdefence said: I've just received a letter from Specsavers too, I didn't see that coming either lol! My optometrist informed me I was developing color blindness. I didn't see that coming either. It hit me out of the purple. 😆 BiffBrown, firstdefence and Ldina 3 Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.5.5 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 All 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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