Image quality dropping a lot compared to photoshop

[aryanshirani]

We are testing Affinity, and compared to Photoshop the image export even if we keep it high quality is very bad, here is the comparison.
Any idea?

[Pšenda]

4 hours ago, aryanshirani said:

We are testing Affinity, and compared to Photoshop the image export even if we keep it high quality is very bad, here is the comparison.

Which is which? - I can't tell which one is the "very bad" one and which one is the "excellent good" one, because at first glance they look the same to me.

[carl123]

5 hours ago, aryanshirani said:

compared to Photoshop the image export even if we keep it high quality is very bad, here is the comparison

I'm not seeing anything that would be classified as "very bad"

Also, you mentioned "high quality" which is a setting found for JPG files but you seem to have uploaded PNG files. Are you sure you uploaded the right images for the comparison?

[lepr]

One has additional sharpening, but I don't know which one is preferred by @aryanshirani.

[Hangman]

6 hours ago, Pšenda said:

Which is which? - I can't tell which one is the "very bad" one and which one is the "excellent good" one, because at first glance they look the same to me.

Maybe it depends on the monitor and monitor resolution used to view the forum post but to me, they're very noticeably different even in the forum post... The top one is clearly sharper. Look at the TV on the wall, the sink tap, the chair edges, the cupboard edges and the buttons on the coffee machine...

[Pšenda]

1 hour ago, Hangman said:

and the buttons on the coffee machine...

Sorry, but by "very bad" I imagine something definitely different than what I find by examining the buttons on the coffee machine 🙂If it was stated that Affinity provides less focused images, which some applications do without the user's knowledge when exporting, which is completely outside the Serif philosophy and can be done very easily (if the user requires this adjustment), then please, but do you really see it as "very bad"?

[Hangman]

I think it’s very subjective and equally depends on how and where the image is used, on screen or high end print (where I personally wouldn’t be using PNG files)…

Perhaps some context from @aryanshirani would be helpful…

[walt.farrell]

15 hours ago, Hangman said:

or high end print (where I personally wouldn’t be using PNG files)

I'm curious why not. I certainly wouldn't use JPG in that case, but PNG should be fine as it doesn't use lossy compression and doesn't suffer from JPG artifacts.

[Hangman]

55 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

I'm curious why not. I certainly wouldn't use JPG in that case, but PNG should be fine as it doesn't use lossy compression and doesn't suffer from JPG artifacts.

Mostly because PNG lacks support for the CMYK colour space. By high-end print, I was referring to printing on a press...

[walt.farrell]

34 minutes ago, Hangman said:

By high-end print, I was referring to printing on a press...

Thanks. I was thinking of art printing, not book printing.

[David in Яuislip]

From the metadata the image was taken with an iPad Pro (12.9-inch) which has a max resolution of 2732x2048
Resampling down to 1200x900 is going to be different based on the algorithms used so there is no surprise that PS and AP differ however, for critical work images should be sharpened after resampling, even with the mighty Photoshop.

The attached psd uses a raw exported full size as a 16bit tiff from Photolab then downsized using both PS and AP and saved as pngs without sharpening. Reloaded into AP, cropped and exported as a psd. If you switch the layers on and off you should see that the PS one is sharper. It also includes the PS option of bicubic sharper which is convenient and pretty good in my experience although some consider it to oversharpen.

The picture below shows the difference between PS & AP using a pretty savage curve to maximise the effect, you can't judge sharpness of course but it's quite pretty. Can't do this with the OP's images as they used different profiles

Victor.psd

[aryanshirani]

Hello everyone here is a video on the steps and testing I done:

https://sharing.clickup.com/clip/p/t30364001/74eeefcc-a0d3-4c7b-a52e-bc98baa5daef/screen-recording-2024-11-09-07%3A36.webm

Thanks for the help!

[carl123]

In the Affinity export dialog, you have different resampling methods, you can play with these to see what works best for your images

I would try Lanczos 3 (non-separable) first as it's supposed to produce the sharpest results, if that is what you are looking for.

[aryanshirani]

15 minutes ago, carl123 said:

In the Affinity export dialog, you have different resampling methods, you can play with these to see what works best for your images

I would try Lanczos 3 (non-separable) first as it's supposed to produce the sharpest results, if that is what you are looking for.

Omg this solved the problem also looks sharper than photoshop now!
Thanks a lot you are amazing

[carl123]

Also, bear in mind that the 100% quality setting you used will produce the biggest file size. Since you appear to be designing for websites, the size is important

Personally, I use 85%, which for me gives me the best quality versus size for my website images and dramatically reduces the file size from 100%

[Alfred]

3 hours ago, carl123 said:

Personally, I use 85%, which for me gives me the best quality versus size for my website images and dramatically reduces the file size from 100%

Even 95% can dramatically reduce the file size compared to the size you get with ‘100%’ quality, but 85% is usually high enough (and you can occasionally get away with less than 75%).

[Gripsholm Lion]

As a web dev myself, I stay in the high 90s in Affinity exports. Reason being if it's going to be processed automatically by a CMS's media tools, the file size doesn't matter but the starting quality does. The final webp outputs will be super tiny. For other uses, I drop the exports onto ImageOptim, because that produces smaller files for a given quality than Affinity's export. ImageOptim is reckoned to be about the best compression algorithm going and I can't disagree with that.

[aryanshirani]

On 11/9/2024 at 9:29 AM, carl123 said:

Also, bear in mind that the 100% quality setting you used will produce the biggest file size. Since you appear to be designing for websites, the size is important

Personally, I use 85%, which for me gives me the best quality versus size for my website images and dramatically reduces the file size from 100%

 

On 11/9/2024 at 1:05 PM, Alfred said:

Even 95% can dramatically reduce the file size compared to the size you get with ‘100%’ quality, but 85% is usually high enough (and you can occasionally get away with less than 75%).

 

On 11/9/2024 at 3:56 PM, Gripsholm Lion said:

As a web dev myself, I stay in the high 90s in Affinity exports. Reason being if it's going to be processed automatically by a CMS's media tools, the file size doesn't matter but the starting quality does. The final webp outputs will be super tiny. For other uses, I drop the exports onto ImageOptim, because that produces smaller files for a given quality than Affinity's export. ImageOptim is reckoned to be about the best compression algorithm going and I can't disagree with that.

Thanks a lot, we are very happy with the final results and now we don't even need to use an external Webp converter with Affinity we are able to do it even better, thanks to you guys!