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pixelation while applying gradient


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I'm designing a sign that has some gradient applied to it (see arrow in attached file). When I zoom in towards that part (in AD), I can see some pixelation; it's not present in parts where I don't have a dark gradient.

 

If I export it as a jpg, the pixelation is even more pronounced. Jpg will compress it to a certain extent, but this is at 4242x6000 pixels, so I wasn't expecting it at that resolution. Is this sort of thing expected with gradients (both in AD and in the exported jpg)?

 

thanks.

homesalesign.afdesign

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I believe that's part of the gradient algorithm to make it look smoother. But when exporting the image, that "pixelation" doesn't look bad.

 

Look at the following examples of a circular gradient and you will see what I mean (check the names, Inkscape.png and Affinity Designer.png). The both look good to me, but if you zoom you will notice that "pixelation".

 

Best regards!

post-41989-0-00666800-1490241126.png

post-41989-0-16112700-1490241128.png

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Hi kufloyd,

Where are you seeing the pixelation exactly? Can you please mark the area where are you seeing it with small arrows pointing to it and export the file as JPG so I can see what you are talking about exactly? I'm not able to see any pixelation other that the effect of the antialiasing if looking very closely to the screen (but that's expected specially in high contrast areas with angles closer to the horizontal/vertical axis)).

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thanks for your replies Mithferion and MEB.

 

MEB - I've attached the jpg with an arrow pointing to the pixelated area. It shows up when I zoom in to the jpg. I personally don't care about it, but I plan on submitting it to a stock site and I think they get picky about stuff like that. Maybe it's expected with that gradient? thanks.

 

edit - looks like it fails to upload (error 500: upload skipped). It's a 1MB file so should be under the 20MB limit? Not sure how to fix that, but maybe you could export the .afdesign file (attached to the original post) as a jpg? 

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Hi kufloyd

I believe you are talking about the banding/pixelation of the gradient itself (not the edges of the objects).

Go to Affinity Designer Preferences, Performance section and make sure you have Dither gradients checked. Changing the Colour format in menu File ▸ Document Setup, Colour Tab, Colour Format dropdown to RGB/16 may also help. When you export as JPG are you compressing the image? What's the compression value you are using?

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Hi kufloyd

I believe you are talking about the banding/pixelation of the gradient itself (not the edges of the objects).

Go to Affinity Designer Preferences, Performance section and make sure you have Dither gradients checked. Changing the Colour format in menu File ▸ Document Setup, Colour Tab, Colour Format dropdown to RGB/16 may also help. When you export as JPG are you compressing the image? What's the compression value you are using?

thanks MEB. I tried both those things; it seems to help a bit. question about exporting as jpg - right now, I'm not compressing the image. I export at best quality with resample set to Bilinear and quality = 100. Are those the optimal settings? I will be uploading to a stock site. The document size is 4242 x 6000 pixels.

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Hi kufloyd,

You are exporting the image at the same size as the document so there's no resampling going on. The Resampling algorithm only matters when you are scaling up or down the image on export.

JPG is a lossy compression format. It loses quality every time the file is saved, even when saved at 100% quality. You are simply saving it with the least quality loss possible. So if you want to provide a version in JPG for a stock site use 100% quality as you are doing. To keep image data without any compression you have to use a losslessy format like TIFF, or PNG.

 

 

 


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Hi kufloyd,

You are exporting the image at the same size as the document so there's no resampling going on. The Resampling algorithm only matters when you are scaling up or down the image on export.

JPG is a lossy compression format. It loses quality every time the file is saved, even when saved at 100% quality. You are simply saving it with the least quality loss possible. So if you want to provide a version in JPG for a stock site use 100% quality as you are doing. To keep image data without any compression you have to use a losslessy format like TIFF, or PNG.

 

 

 

 

thanks for the clarification.

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