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May I suggest in the Exporting as a picture adding a bit depth of 32 for a PNG image. I like that feature in DrawPlus. It provides an automatic transparent background. In the Affinity Designer the largest bit depth is 24 and this produced a white background, not the transparent background that I was looking for. Also, would it be possible to include the preview function when exporting to the different image formats?

 

I do like the many image options. It could be that I need to do something else to have my transparent background. If anyone can help me understand how to do this in the Affinity Designer, that would be helpful.

 

However, I was thinking of the official rollout of the final product. A lot of DrawPlus users will need to switch to stay current. We'll just need a little help in learning how to use the Affinity Designer from what we used in DrawPlus for the many years it has been around.

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  • Staff

Hi geotev,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

A 32 bit PNG is the same as 24 bit PNG + alpha (8 bits for alpha). To make the background transparent in Designer go to File ▸ Document Setup..., Colour section and check Transparent background. You can then export as a transparent PNG selecting PNG-24 from the Export dialog (or Export Persona if you are working with slices).

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  • 3 months later...

Sorry to bring back this old thread but I have to create a launcher icon for ios and android. Android's page states that

 

"Launcher icons should be 32-bit PNGs with an alpha channel for transparency."

 

If I export it in Designer according to MEB's recommended method, will it still be recognized as 32bit? I have opened the exported PNG in Windows (right click, Properties, Details) and it still shows up as 24bit, while if I export from Photoshop it shows as 32bit. Would appreciate if someone could shed some light on this.

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  • 6 months later...
4 hours ago, Jaxx said:

Also I need 32bit png's and I can not create one.
With photoshop is no problem to do that.

As MEB said, 32 bit PNG is the same as 24 bit PNG (8 bits for each of the three RGB color channels) plus an 8 bit alpha transparency channel, for a total bit depth of 32 (8+8+8+8=32) bits. So, as he said, to export a "32 bit PNG" from Affinity Designer, just make sure the AD document has Transparent background enabled & use the PNG-24 export preset.

 

This is equivalent to what is called in the PNG documentation a PNG image type of "Truecolour with alpha" (Colour type 6 in the table) with an Allowed bit depth value of 8 bits. Note that the PNG documentation also defines an Allowed bit depth value of 16 bits for Colour type 6 PNGs, which produces what could be called a "64 bit PNG" (16+16+16+16=64) or "48 bit PNG" (16+16+16=48) if the alpha channel bits were not included in the total bit count, but as far as I know that terminology is rarely if ever used for PNG files.

 

FWIW, Affinity Designer can also export these 16 bit per channel PNG files if you ever need them. To do that, in the "More" export window, change the "Pixel format" setting to "RGB 16 bit." This will greatly increase color resolution at the expense of significantly greater file size, so they rarely would be used in web pages.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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I do not know if I understand correctly.
First I create a new document with RGB / 8 and activate transparent background, then I draw a rectangle with a gradient and export it with RGB / 24, correct?
The result is a png with 24bit :(
What am I doing wrong?

Bildschirmfoto 2017-08-30 um 21.33.52.JPG

Bildschirmfoto 2017-08-30 um 21.34.07.JPG

Bildschirmfoto 2017-08-30 um 21.34.25.JPG

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52 minutes ago, Jaxx said:

First I create a new document with RGB / 8 and activate transparent background, then I draw a rectangle with a gradient and export it with RGB / 24, correct?
The result is a png with 24bit :(

The result is a PNG file with 8 bits for each of the three RGB color channels plus an 8 bit alpha transparency channel, for a total bit depth of 32 bits (because 8+8+8+8=32).

 

"PNG-24" is just the name of the preset, based only on the bit depth of the color channels. The other 8 bits (of alpha channel transparency) are added automatically to the export if you use the transparent background option. You can sort of test this for yourself: export the document using the PNG-24 preset with & without the transparent background option ticked. Note that the file sizes are different, & that the transparent background version is larger (because it includes an extra 8 bit channel's worth of image data). You can also place each version into any app that shows transparency & note that both have identical colors but only one is transparent anywhere there are no image pixels.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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2 hours ago, Sima said:

Just out of interest, is there a valid reason for Google to request that all PNG's be 32-bit, even image files that don't contain any transparency?

None that I can think of.

 

EDIT: However, from what I can tell from (among others) this page, icons should never be "full frame," which I assume means there should be at least some transparent or semi-transparent pixels in the "frame:"

Quote

Icons should make use of the alpha channel, and should not simply be full-frame images. Where appropriate, distinguish your icon with subtle yet appealing visual treatment.

 

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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@Sima

I want to create gui background graphics for a linux receiver and these need a 32bit color depth.

 

9 hours ago, owenr said:

A better alternative might be for the PNG export controls to have a checkbox for "include alpha" and that it be honoured regardless of the transparent background setting or the opacity of the composite image.

that would be perfect

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33 minutes ago, Jaxx said:

I want to create gui background graphics for a linux receiver and these need a 32bit color depth.

What exactly do you mean by "32bit color depth"?  If you are working in an RGB color space, there are three color channels, each of which will require some number of bits to encode the contribution of that color channel to each part of the graphic. Allocating more bits to a channel increases the depth (range) of colors it can encode. But it is usual to allocate the same number of bits to each channel, so how would you allocate them among 32 total color bits? If you need PNG format graphics, you can't do this because the only Allowed bit depths for RGB triples in the PNG standard are 8 or 16 bits per channel.

 

More to the point, why do you think you need this? If you really mean you need 24 bit color plus 8 bit alpha transparency, it has already been explained how to do this in Affinity. It is true that if a graphic is completely opaque, Affinity will not export a PNG file with an alpha transparency channel, but there is no point in including one if the graphic includes only 100% opaque pixels -- nothing behind/below it would ever be displayed.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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1 hour ago, R C-R said:

why do you think you need this?

Because 24bit graphics do not work

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

If you really mean you need 24 bit color plus 8 bit alpha transparency, it has already been explained how to do this in Affinity

Yes, it works.
But I also have full-screen graphics without transparent areas and these also require 24 + 8 bits

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

What exactly do you mean by "32bit color depth"?

24 bit color plus 8 bit alpha transparency

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1 hour ago, Jaxx said:

But I also have full-screen graphics without transparent areas and these also require 24 + 8 bits

Maybe I am just being stupid, but I do not understand why any full-screen (or full frame) graphics would ever need an alpha transparency channel. What doesn't work if they don't include the alpha channel? Nothing can be displayed behind them if they include no transparency at all, right? So when would anything need an alpha transparency channel that did nothing at all besides increase file size?

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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If you absolutely have to have the alpha channel for whatever GUI you are working with to display the graphic, & you only have the Affinity apps to work with, you might try forcing the creation of the alpha channel, for example by using the corner tool to change one corner of the rectangle to have a radius of at least 0.5 px. (Anything less & the app will rasterize it to a zero radius.) This should be almost undetectable in the GUI because it affects only one pixel.

 

You can also try rasterizing the graphic (which exporting to PNG will do anyway) & using the Erase Brush set to 1 px width & less than 100% opacity (I tried 65% & it works) to partially erase a single corner pixel, which should be even less detectable in the GUI.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
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  • 3 months later...

Dear Affinity developers.
I am an experienced user of graphics software.
And I could not stay out and I have to say that saving PNG in Affinity is very confusing.
Why the export persona does save the transparency, but the export dialog does not?
Please make it more obvious. The user should know what to expect after saving the file.
Probably a checkbox for saving transparency or a new preset named "PNG32" / "PNG24 + 8" / "PNG 24 with Alpha" will make it more clear for the user.
Please see the attached screenshots and files.

 

Clip2net_171215114801.png

test.afdesign

test.zip

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  • Staff

Hi root,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

The Whole Document should also export a transparent image. It may be a bug on Windows (it's working fine on the Mac). I'm checking this on Windows.

 

[EDIT] This is working fine for me on Windows. Are you checking the exported PNG using the same software for both exports? Some software/viewers display the transparent background with a solid colour unless you change a setting/configure them.

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3 hours ago, MEB said:

Are you checking the exported PNG using the same software for both exports?

Thank you for fast response.

I do know, that some software just does not show the transparency even if it is really there. That is why I have used my Firefox browser to compare these files. I have placed all of them into one html page. The PNG exported through whole document export does not have transparency.

Another test I have made - opened both files in Affinity and got the same result - one is transparent, the other is not.

If it is important, my OS version is Windows 7 Pro 64bit SP1, Affinity Designer version is 1.6.3.96 beta

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