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Hi,

 

I just bought Affinity Photo for Mac. I followed the first introductory tutorial video, taking a photo I shot and turned it into black and white, as well as making some other basic adjustments. But the resulting image is really terrible; there are blotches in the sky, and in a field. 

 

I don't think I did anything to mess this up, unless there's a setting somewhere that I need to alter. Can anyone help? 

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With notice boards, what usually happens is that people use a photo hosting site. I use Photobucket. You put your images on there and get a link to paste into your post (image link, in the case of Photobucket). The same thing happens with Youtube videos. Then, when people look at your post they see the picture in all its glory, or lack of.

 

No need to get annoyed (life is too short ;) ), that's just how they all seem to work. It's a bandwidth thing. The photo hosting sites, or youtube and vomeo, specialize in that sort of thing.

Windows PCs. Photo and Designer, latest non-beta versions.

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Okay, that worked. The original file was a JPEG from an Olympus Pen-F, 20 Mp. The blue sky is perfectly clear. Converting it to black and white in Affinity has added splotches in the sky, and in a green field. If I uncheck the Black and White layer, and look at the sky, zoomed in, it's extremely clear. 

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what you are seeing are (most likely) results of a bad quality source like a jpg

 

you probably pushed some tones heavily (like cyan in one and blue in another direction) and therefore artificially increased the difference between two similar colors

 

thus you now see issues, which were not noticeable before 

 

 

 

Solution:

use RAW images or make sane adjustments  :D

 

 

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Here's the photo, slightly tweaked in other software:

 

https://500px.com/photo/215071543/lone-tree-by-kirk-mcelhearn?ctx_page=1&from=user&user_id=13442613

 

In Affinity, I've imported the original JPEG. I did make some level alterations, but if I uncheck all the layers other than the black and white, I still see this splotching. And it's not just in the sky; I can see it in other areas.

 

If I convert the same photo to BW in Apple Photos, the sky is buttery smooth. 

 

To me, it looks like noise created by Affinity, the kind of dithering you'd see from an app that isn't handling enough colors. That's why I'm asking if there's a setting that I've missed.

post-61283-0-75619300-1496862597_thumb.png

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Could you describe your B&W conversion process too, that might be where your going wrong.

 

Regards

I just followed the tutorial which suggested moving the various sliders in a live layer. If I reset them all to 0, it's a lot cleaner, but it's much more washed out than the conversion I did in Photos. 

 

I started with a JPEG to follow the tutorial; I have a RAW shot as well, and I'll see what happens with that. But does this mean that Affinity doesn't give good results with JPEGs? I've been using Photos for quite some time, and never seen this type of artifact. Buying Affinity is the first time that I'm trying more powerful photo editing software, so, as my subject line suggests, I am a newbie.

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Can you post complete side by side pictures of affinity / Apple, is the contrast/ tonality the same in both or does Apple maybe have a different default black/ white look/ adjustment?

 

Have you modified the sliders of the black and white adjustment in affinity?

 

 

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Its hard to see what you are doing so apologies if questions seem silly but are you using the same slider settings as in the video tutorial? If so it's very likely they will be totally wrong for your image.

 

Understandable if you don't want to do this but if you upload the whole unedited jpg there are generally plenty willing to try see what can be achieved or if indeed there is an issue.

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This only shows up on the BW conversion; the original is very clean. It clearly has something to do with the various sliders; I'm not using the exact same settings as in the tutorial, but adjusted according to the photo I selected. In Photos, you have far less latitude with these settings, you don't have access to the six different colors. 

 

But what I don't understand is how Affinity is rendering something without at least smoothly dithering the similar colors. 

 

I've loaded the RAW file in Affinity and it's a lot cleaner. Which makes me think that this software is fine for RAW files, but not very good for JPEGs. Again, I'm a newbie, but I've never, ever, seen photo editing software that would render something as badly as this photo in black and white. 

 

I'll attach the JPEG here and if anyone wants to have a look, I'd appreciate it. I'd like to understand if it's me doing something wrong or the software. 

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I'm confident it actually is just 

 

"you probably pushed some tones heavily (like cyan in one and blue in another direction) and therefore artificially increased the difference between two similar colors

thus you now see issues, which were not noticeable before "

 

if you want to read up and get going, besides the official tutorials, this compilation may be useful to you

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/37125-ap-ad-beginner-amateur-pro/

 

 

Affinity does give good results with JPG, it just gives you a lot more ways to mess up your photo than Apple Photos (as you said, the sliders have more range e.g.), on the other hand it also has many more ways to improve your photo 

 

there really is not much to dither in this case, not much AP can do for you except just keeping the sliders position moderate yourself 

 

with great power....comes a great learning curve, keep going/ asking/ trying 

 

cheers 

 

 

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Hi kirkmc,
 
I had a go at that file and I've attached the results. MBd is correct that jpg has very little tolerance in it. The sky isn't clean you've actually even got some lens flair at the top middle which you can see if you push settings to far.

 

Anyway this is the link to the project file so you can have a play with the layer settings I also changed DPI and added a print profile. It's a bit thrown together but hopefully it helps.

 

https://1drv.ms/f/s!AK0hjB5UUVTLaQ

 

 

PS When I do B&W I use a plugin called Silver Efex Pro which basically takes the pain out of setting up a bunch of adjustment and filter layers by giving you pre-set styles to choose from. Do a search on this forum for more details! 

 

Regards

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the sky is definitely very sensitive to banding or artifacts, however you want to call it, not an easy move 

 

you can also add some noise (live filter > noise) or add some blur (filter > bilateral blur) (first blur, then noise obviously) and restrict that to the sky 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0n_AZO7pFk9TjF2aWhDVXJUems/view?usp=sharing

EDIT here is one example, works surprisingly well

EDIT2: Denoise instead of blur is probably worth a try as well

 

if you do not darken the sky too much you can do without though 

 

 

 

in such a case, where the sky is very even, banding occurs quickly and thus RAW is the way to go

 

if you use AP you have a very sophisticated tool so using AP with JPG is like pouring ketchup on a gourmet dinner - you may do it and like it but it is probably not the best idea in all cases  :)  cheers and sorry for not giving a quick and easy answer  ;)

 

PS: I don't use Plugins 

Edited by MBd

 

 

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This only shows up on the BW conversion; the original is very clean. here and if anyone wants to have a look, I'd appreciate it. I'd like to understand if it's me doing something wrong or the software. 

The JPEG in your Dropbox link is not really as "clean" as you might think. It is easy to see this if you open it up in Affinity Photo, & add the Black & White adjustment to it. With the adjustment panel open, drag down the Cyan or Blue sliders toward -200%. You will see the blotches starting to appear in the sky.

 

That's because what appears to be uniform blue patches of the sky actually have small differences in their color values you do not notice in the full color version. You can also see this by dragging the eyedropper in the Color or Swatches panel or the Color Picker tool over the blue parts of the sky -- you will see the RGB values below the magnified viewer change as you drag from pixel to pixel. Yet another way to see this is to zoom in on the sky in the full color image (500% should be enough) -- you will start to see that individual pixels have discernibly different colors.

 

So basically, it is not that AP is not good with JPEG files; it is that it is good enough to show you how "dirty" they actually are.

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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To add my observation to R C-Rs comments, I find if I look carefully at your original I can see some of the blotches your B&W conversions emphasized. That suggests your jpeg isn't as clean as you might wish for. Since you seem to have the option I recommend you get into the habit of working with RAW files. You'll get much more data that will give you more latitude when manipulating your photos.

 

Much will depend on what you're going to do with your finished image of course. If you are posting small images out-of-camera jpegs will probably do just fine but if you want to enlarge your images or manipulate significantly I think you'll be happier with the results you get by working with RAW. That said, RAW does take some learning - it's easy to overdo manipulation there too. Affinity Photo is a very powerful tool that's very capable of overdoing it if you push it too far. One of the great aspects of this app is that you can do non-destructive manipulation - try things and go to the extremes to find what the limits are for your taste and work back from there. 

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the sky is definitely very sensitive to banding or artifacts, however you want to call it, not an easy move 

 

you can also add some noise (live filter > noise) or add some blur (filter > bilateral blur) (first blur, then noise obviously) and restrict that to the sky 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0n_AZO7pFk9TjF2aWhDVXJUems/view?usp=sharing

EDIT here is one example, works surprisingly well

EDIT2: Denoise instead of blur is probably worth a try as well

 

if you do not darken the sky too much you can do without though 

 

 

 

in such a case, where the sky is very even, banding occurs quickly and thus RAW is the way to go

 

if you use AP you have a very sophisticated tool so using AP with JPG is like pouring ketchup on a gourmet dinner - you may do it and like it but it is probably not the best idea in all cases  :)  cheers and sorry for not giving a quick and easy answer  ;)

 

 

Thanks for this. There are light streaks across the field around the tree; what is causing them?

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