How can I achieve Photoshop simple edits in Affinity

[DDC-R]

My PS CS4 has been snatched from me in a nasty move, as it is not supported anymore.

So - how can I do the following Photoshop routine in Affinity, and importantly acheive the exact same reuslts

1.    Batch resize multiple images, at the press of a preset.

2.    Simple edit for Brightness / contrast / Colour touch ups {I have achived this bit, but it is part of my routine}

3.    Save as a JPeg 4500 x 3375 pixels in 300 dpi.......but have a file les than 1 MB, but which are pin sharp, not pixelated

So far in Affinity I have:

A.     Opened up to 10 files, but  they do not appear in number order on screen....Weird?

B.     Altered the brightness / colour / contrasts

C.     Saved my Jpeg, as an Export....BUT THE FILES are ENORMOUS!!!  

    If I save as low resolution it looks pixelated and rubbish.....lost a week of my life messing about tryng to get things "back to normal"

I would appreciate some simple How To Do instructions......and hoepfully buy some new software....but will it be Affinity or PS Elements?

Many thanks in advance

 

[Fixx]

On 7/23/2017 at 10:56 AM, DDC-R said:

C.     Saved my Jpeg, as an Export....BUT THE FILES are ENORMOUS!!!  

    If I save as low resolution it looks pixelated and rubbish.....

What is your quality setting? Test which number gets you under 1 MB. I think you are bound to have some compression artifacts there.

[DDC-R]

Thanks for looking at my question.

But I dont know what quality settings are?

no idea what this means either ...." I think you are bound to have some compression artifacts there.".......

I appreciate your time.

[gdenby]

I can't give you a list of instructions at this point. I've only used Photo enough to start being familiar w. the interface. Consider what I offer as being somewhat sketchy.

 

Photo, like Photoshop Elements, has a batch processor routine. I would suppose from your requirements that the batch processor in CS4 was mostly identical to the one in Elements, which I've used for years. It will do what you want. Affinity's does not have a dpi setting that I have found. Also, the included macros don't include any for the "quick fix" adjustments that Elements have.

 

I've only recorded 1 macro using Affinity. I was easy enough, so I suppose you could put one together that would change the dpi to 300, and run the auto adjustments options. 

 

As far as I can tell, Affinity by default saves .jpg files at maximum quality. At the size you specify, they would be large, almost certainly more than 1 Mb. Looking at some images I have sitting around that have the same dimensions, at high quality, not maximum, they are around 3 Mb.

 

By design, the .jpg format is "lossy." It throws out information, more as the quality settings are stepped down. At maximum, the losses are nominally not visible to ordinary eye sight. But once the setting are below high quality the blocky, streaky artifacts begin to appear, and the color starts distorting. I did a couple of tests, and I think you might be able to get images that are decent at 85% quality, and within the 1Mb limit.

 

FWIW, Affinities batch processor was more than 3 times faster w. the same images as Elements 11. Also, the file sizes were smaller. 

 

If you have the time, in the long run you will be able to do a lot more w. Affinity than Elements. Also, I've noticed that many people who have used Adobe's products for years tend to have problems adapting to how Serif's apps get the same things done.

 

[DDC-R]

Thank you GDenby,

I think you have nailed my problem......the "My PS Comfort Zone"!

I have to find something new, and for most days batch processing of my 'snaps'  PS and I whizz through the task!

And I know in time I will get to love Affinity, once I am in my Serif comfort zone, but it is the file size issue, which is causing me problems.

I love my crisp Jpegs, with terrific close up details....so I processed one of my original files in Affinity and ended up at 85% being 12 Mb.......now I think thats just a tad large......when i processed the same original in PS....got a 1.2Mb.....which I can live with.

So that's where I am at.......

 

[Merde]

1 hour ago, DDC-R said:

I love my crisp Jpegs, with terrific close up details....so I processed one of my original files in Affinity and ended up at 85% being 12 Mb.......now I think thats just a tad large......when i processed the same original in PS....got a 1.2Mb.....which I can live with.

So that's where I am at.......

This is strange... My impression was that Affinity Photo output jpegs are smaller with quality set to the same amount as in Photoshop [1]

I've tried random image to check wheter I was right.

AP jpeg with quality 85 outputs 2,71 MB file.

PS (CS6) jpeg with quality 85 outputs 5,52 MB file.

[1] that doesn't necessarily mean that actual compression is the same.

[gdenby]

This has me wondering what is going on. I tried working with some large files. The biggest was an 80 Mb .tiff at 1200 dpi. I ran it thru Elements, Affinity Photo, GIMP, and Apple's Preview. Resized to 300 dpi, and saved out with the largest dimension at 4500. .Jpg compression at no less than 80%, again around 85%. Elements did produce the smallest file, about 700K. Affinity came in at 1, GIMP at 1.7, and Preview at 1.9. I did this w. a few other large files that were already .jpg, but at 72 dpi, and saved at a higher quality. That resulted in files that were again roughly the same size. 

 

I will add the caveat that I don't do much photo/image processing, and fumble around some. But I think I was performing the same actions across the various applications. I did notice that some apps were less efficient that others, and/or embed proprietary data in the files. I use a freeware called ImageOptim that strips those out, or re-encodes the image better. With the exception of GIMP, all the files could be made somewhat smaller, averaging a 10% size reduction.

[DDC-R]

I am scratching my head - no idea what a re-encode or an embed proprietary data means.

I think of these pragrammes in the same way as i think of my car......i put the key in and press the peddles.....dont know how or what goes on to make it move......yes I am a pleb.....not a tech savvy person.

But I thank you all for looking and offering suggestions, sadly I am just going to do a trial of PS Elements then probably stick with that brand.

THANKS EVERYONE!!!

X

 

[IanSG]

1 hour ago, DDC-R said:

I am scratching my head - no idea what a re-encode or an embed proprietary data means.

 

If you think of an image file as a set of instructions for painting that image on a screen, re-encoding looks at the instructions and then writes better ones to produce the same result (at least in theory!).  Some image standards, such as JPEG, allow you to write "stuff" in the image file in addition to those instructions.  Typically it's things like the time and date the image was created as well as details of the camera settings - these are sometimes deleted when the image has been processed.  In addition, the software may also record proprietary data such as its name and version number, and other things the software authors thought would be useful.  Getting rid of this additional information will reduce the file size, though it may not be significant.

[R C-R]

13 hours ago, DDC-R said:

But I dont know what quality settings are?

no idea what this means either ...." I think you are bound to have some compression artifacts there.".......

There are lots of articles on the web that explain all this, often in mind numbing detail, but for standard jpeg files (there are non-standard versions too, but for now let's ignore that) these are the most important things to understand, as simplified as I can make them:

 

1. Quality settings can be expressed in different ways. Affinity uses an easy to understand scale of 1 to 100%. For reasons difficult to understand Adobe does not in PS or PSE, instead using instead a numeric scale of 0 to 12 (except for the now obsoleted "Save for Web" feature). This means different quality numbers in PS/PSE may have no exact equivalent in apps that use a straightforward percent scale (because of rounding errors). Worse, Adobe changes the compression algorithm (how the compression is done) between the 6 & 7 settings, with the bizarre result that level 7 'quality' can actually be lower than level 6 compression!

 

2. Standard jpeg compression is always lossy, meaning some detail is discarded to make the file size smaller (even at 100% or PS level 12). Higher quality settings preserve more detail but create larger files & visa versa. But unfortunately there is more to it than that because the loss of detail also depends on how "compressible" the image is. This depends on how much fine detail there is in the image to begin with, so for example for an image that has many large areas of the same or nearly the same color those areas will be more compressible with less noticeable quality loss or artifacts than for an image that has fewer areas like that.

 

3. This means there is no one "magic" quality setting that will provide the best jpeg compromise between file size & preserved detail for all images. Only trial & error guided by experience can determine the optimal settings for each image. There are also techniques that can be used to "preprocess" images to make better compression less noticeable like applying a small amount of blur to blend areas of nearly the same color to closer to the same color or applying a bit of noise reduction to do the same thing. Again, experience & experimentation is the best way to get a feel for how this works.

 

4. Weirdly enough, depending on the kind of image you are working with, there are times when using a format like png that supports lossless compression will produce a smaller file with higher quality than with a jpeg set to a high quality level.

 

So the bottom line is if you want the crispest possible images and the smallest possible file sizes, there is no way to avoid doing some experimentation & getting more experience with whatever app you decide to use for this.

[DDC-R]

Thank you all very much for the input here.

I know it will offend you all, but I dont care about the nuts and bolts, and have no interest in reading articles related to compresion etc.

Your knowledge is amazing, but it is wasted on me.

AS long as I can "put the key in the car and press the peddle and get from a - b, using the least amount of fuel and time"  I am happy......what goes on in the engine to make it happen......who cares!....

I do not want to be thought rude - it is just you are all smarter than me on this topic, and your super smart level of expertise is not what I need.

 

Many many thanks for all your input and advice.

I will just stick with what I know.......

[DDC-R]

Update...just bought AF Photo and will be purchasing Designer too instead of illustrator....photo size wise...bought Adobe elements = Easy life! {Again}

 

thanks all