Multiple images on page - how to sharpen image edges?

[Leonora]

I have Affinity Photo v2 running on Windows 11.

Every year I do a calendar, which involves combining 6 - 14 images onto a page.

In the past when I did this in Photoshop CS3, often the image edges would appear a bit blurry and running into each other. I would zoom in and copy-paste one or 2 lines at the edge of each image to make the demarcation line sharp between each separate image.

Is there a way to do this in Affinity Photo please? 

The only similar tools I can find are the Clone tool and Healing brush tool - but they are round and don't seem to allow precise manual selection of pixels.

Thank you very much.

[GarryP]

Welcome to the forums @Leonora

Can you show us a visual example of the problem you are having so we can get a better idea of what you are doing?

Please include full-screen (whole application UI) screenshots if you can, including the Layers Panel, and highlight the areas you want us to look at.

[wonderings]

Do you only have Photo? Or do you have the whole suite? If you have the whole suite I would seriously recommend laying a calendar out in Publisher, which is what it was made for, page layout. Photos, like Photoshop is really made for editing photos, not for doing calendars, flyers and other things like that. Yes you can hack your way through it, but if you want to make life easy, going with the proper tools for the job. 

[Granddaddy]

5 hours ago, Leonora said:

Every year I do a calendar, which involves combining 6 - 14 images onto a page.

This sounds like you are making a photo collage by assembling several images onto a single image. There is no reason I can think of that would cause you to have blurry edges or images running into one another. When you put several images onto a page they each occur on a separate layer. The layers will overlap one another sharply and distinctly. 

However, when making a photo collage, you will be better served by placing the photo images as child layers of shapes on the page that is the final collage image. You can then adjust the position and size of each image within the parent shape. The shapes can be regular geometric figures such as rectangles and circles available on the Tools Panel, or they can be totally arbitrary shapes that you draw with  the pen tool.

See the Affinity Revolution tutorial from four years ago at

 

or the more recent tutorial using the same design by Technically Trent from two months ago at
 

The possibilities for rearrangement of the images within the shapes are endless.

Consider using linked images in the collage to keep the aphoto file size smaller.

[Leonora]

Thank you for the replies.

I need to re-think my question (and also get better at using the software).

[Brian_J]

On 10/23/2024 at 6:01 AM, Leonora said:

In the past when I did this in Photoshop CS3, often the image edges would appear a bit blurry and running into each other. I would zoom in and copy-paste one or 2 lines at the edge of each image to make the demarcation line sharp between each separate image.

Is there a way to do this in Affinity Photo please?

You can use the Rectangular Marquee tool to copy/paste part of a layer. If the layer is an Image layer, it needs to be converted to a Pixel layer (rasterized) before you can copy/paste a selection.

To rasterize an Image layer: From the Layer menu, select Rasterize. Rasterize is also available in the context menu when a layer in the Layers panel is right-clicked.

Marquee Selection Tools
https://affinity.help/photo2/en-US.lproj/pages/Tools/tools_marquee.html

About layers (see Layer Types section)
https://affinity.help/photo2/en-US.lproj/pages/Layers/layerImage.html

[GarryP]

10 hours ago, Leonora said:

I need to re-think my question

Most of the confusion at my end comes from where you said:

On 10/23/2024 at 2:01 PM, Leonora said:

In the past when I did this in Photoshop CS3, often the image edges would appear a bit blurry and running into each other.

I don’t use Photoshop so I never seen that, or know why might happen, or know if it should happen.

In Photo, when I place an image, the edges of the image are almost always crisp, except, perhaps, when the image layer is not wholly-aligned with the pixel grid (when the X, Y, W and H values of the layer are not all integer pixel values).

Because of this I am having difficulty understanding why you want to try and ’fix’ something that normally doesn’t happen, for me at least.

As mentioned above, if you can let us see what you can see then we should have a better idea of what’s going on.

[Leonora]

Garry P, thank you - hopefully this screenshot is clear enough - I tried to find one with a bit of contrast. I am technologically challenged, so not sure how to highlight things.

Here is a zoom into the intersection of 3 images (the grey on the left is the largest, centre image). They are all placed with the magnet ON so they snap together at edges, corners etc. However, along each edge there is a ghosting/ grey line that to my eye makes it look like the images are not sharp and clear unto themselves.

Is there a way to have this not happen? I'm sure there must be, but the program has so many features I don't even know are available.

 

[Leonora]

Brian_J, thank you also for your response. This I think is similar to the way I have dealt with the issue (am still coming to grips with changing the views to do different tasks). But having thought more about the initial question, I wonder if the issue is being created by something I'm doing or not doing - and if so, could it be completely avoided if I changed the way it was done?

[GarryP]

Thanks for the screenshot.

It looks like the layers aren’t aligned to the Pixel Grid.

You have two things in the Toolbar set to ON where, for this kind of work, you probably only should have one of them ON.

You have Force Pixel Alignment set to ON, which is right for this sort of thing, but you also have Move by Whole Pixels set to ON which may be causing the problem.

If the layer isn’t aligned to the Pixel Grid (non-integer X/Y/W/H values), Move by Whole Pixels tells the software to keep the fractional position/size values when you move the layers around on the canvas. It overrides the Force Pixel Alignment functionality for those layers which aren’t already aligned.

Keep Force Pixel Alignment ON and set Move by Whole Pixels OFF and move (and resize if necessary) the layers to see if that helps.

Also, your document UOM is set to Millimetres which will cause Pixel Grid alignment issues if you are snapping to the document right-side/bottom-edge or any margins or guides as they will likely not be aligned to the Pixel Grid.

[Leonora]

GarryP, I unclicked ‘Move by whole pixels’, and resized each image as pixels instead of mm, placed them again on the page (also in pixels) and all the edges are perfect. Thank you so much for your simple logical explanation on two things that weren’t even on my radar as issues.

Thanks also to everyone who took the time to respond, I’m going to check out all the links suggested, as they will all teach me more about the program, which can only be good!

[GarryP]

You’re welcome.

I’m pretty sure that I was ‘caught out’ by those settings early on so I know where you are coming from.