Affinity Designer: blurry text on export

[hk1]

Hi, I‘ve just bought Affinity Designer but I don‘t know how to start.

 

I want to make a graphic for my website which is 600x600px. On this graphic there is some text.

 

When I‘m viewing my file in Affinity Desiginer on 100% percent, everything is fine but when I export the file to gif/PNG/JPEG it is so blurry I can‘t even read the text.

 

I used to work with Photoshop and Sketch, where you could just make a new file in the dimensions, export it and everything was fine.

 

Do I have to change some specific settings?

 

I‘m on the latest version of Affinity Designer and working on a 12“ MacBook.

[MEB]

Hi hk1,

Welcome to Affinity Forums

The exported file should look the same as what's displayed inside Affinity Designer when viewed at 100% (1:1).

Can you post at screenshot of what you are seeing at 100% in Designer and attach the exported image so we can check what's going on?

Note that Photoshop has several text antialiasing settings which we currently don't provide in Designer.

Thanks.

[hk1]

Hi, I think it has something to do with how the Macbook interprets Websites / Resolutions (Retina Display).

 

Attached are an export-test, a Screenshot of Affinity Designer on 100% and a Screenshot of the exported file in Firefox on 100%.

[John Rostron]

When exporting, AD has to create the text to a fixed pixel size. This look to be an x-height of about 50 pixels. It seems to have added anti-aliasing which gives a visually smoother appearence at normal viewing, but which looks fuzzy if you enlarge it. The original text is a vector and would not have been anti-aliased.

Personally, I cnnot see any problem with you the text you show.

[MEB]

Hi hk1,

Can you please post a screen capture of your document setup dialog (menu File ▸ Document Setup...)? Seems you are exporting at twice the size.

[hk1]

Hi Meb,

Thanks for the answer, here is my Screenshot of the document setup.

 

 

[JML90]

Hi, I’m facing the same issue. The text on images look blurry when I export them in PNG. Can someone help me out? I do not want to switch to another photo editor because I really like Affinity. 

[Komatös]

Hello @JML90 and welcome to the forums.

Can you provide us with a .png that happens to you?

[R C-R]

19 hours ago, JML90 said:

Hi, I’m facing the same issue. The text on images look blurry when I export them in PNG.

PNG is a raster image (A.K.A. bitmap) file format, so there is no way for text exported to it to have razor sharp edges except possibly for edges that are completely horizontal or vertical (IOW, no diagonals), same as with vectors exported to PNG files. So the only alternatives are either antialiasing the edges (so there is a slight blurriness to them) or disable antialiasing, which produces stair-step edges, sometimes known as "Jaggies."

Otherwise, all you can do is increase the pixel resolution so the antialiasing is less noticeable, include either no text or just block characters with no diagonal edges, or choose another export format that supports text as text.

[JML90]

Basically what I did is add a tag to the picture. The tag is a seperate PNG file and when I put it on the jpg picture and save it as PNG the tag looks blurry. For example the tag is “Google.com” and 1500 x 1500 pixels. When I resize it to 60% and add it on the picture and save the file as PNG the image seems to look fine but the text “Google.com” looks blurry. 

[NotMyFault]

If you want to achieve perfectly sharp text, there are better options, as other users already commented.

• Keep the text as text layer, and do all resizing and positioning with text layer. Do not raster (until export)
• Ensure text layers are positioned on exact pixel positions (no fractional / decimal), use transform panel
• Check the pixel dimension of a single letter. It will become blurry if going below ca. 100px.
• Deactivate anti-aliasing for text layer. Adjust Coverage Map.
  This still requires a reasonable text size and can’t solve 8-16 pix size, as letters could become to blocky to read.

please have a look at the tutorial:

 

[JML90]

12 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

If you want to achieve perfectly sharp text, there are better options, as other users already commented.

• Keep the text as text layer, and do all resizing and positioning with text layer. Do not raster (until export)
• Ensure text layers are positioned on exact pixel positions (no fractional / decimal), use transform panel
• Check the pixel dimension of a single letter. It will become blurry if going below ca. 100px.
• Deactivate anti-aliasing for text layer. Adjust Coverage Map.
  This still requires a reasonable text size and can’t solve 8-16 pix size, as letters could become to blocky to read.

please have a look at the tutorial:

 

“Check the pixel dimension of a single letter. It will become blurry if going below ca. 100px.” 

The height of a letter is 30 pixels. If I go with 100px or bigger, the watermark would be too big. I don’t know what you mean with the other suggestions since I’m kinda new to Affinity and English isn’t my first language. Can you explain in steps like on which buttons I have to click in Affinity and perhaps with screen shots? 

[NotMyFault]

38 minutes ago, JML90 said:

Can you explain in steps like on which buttons I have to click in Affinity and perhaps with screen shots?

1. Select the text layer which looks blurry
2. Zoom in 400% or more to be able to spot the result
3. Click the little cog wheel in the right of the layer stack (1)
4. Change "Anti-Aliasing" to "Forced off" (2)
5. Click "Coverage Map" and change it to L-shape profile. Adjust to taste / optimal result. You need to shift the middle gradient to the left or right.

With this method, you can achieve perfect pixel-art text. But you need to adjust the coverage map depending on selected font, font size etc.

 

Below some sample fonts, zoomed 10x to really see individual pixels.

I've added the .afphoto file so you can check the settings (they differ for every text layer, and are not final). Check e.g. the dot from the small letter i, it could be square or round depending on font.

The fonts are about 20px high and the result is quite usable. No. 2 from top is not yet edited, try on your own.

Have fun!

To learn more about the background, have a look at the video.

 

sharp text.afphoto

[R C-R]

15 hours ago, JML90 said:

For example the tag is “Google.com” and 1500 x 1500 pixels.

But how many of those pixels does “Google.com” actually fill?

35 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

1. Select the text layer which looks blurry

@JML90 wrote that the "tag" is in a separate PNG file so there is no text layer, no font, just a raster image.

[JML90]

Someone created the tag for me. I asked her what font she used. If I know the name of the font it might be easier. 

[R C-R]

34 minutes ago, JML90 said:

Someone created the tag for me. I asked her what font she used. If I know the name of the font it might be easier. 

How did she send you this? Was it a PNG file or something else? If it was a PNG it did not have text in any font, just a pixel bitmap.

[JML90]

5 hours ago, R C-R said:

How did she send you this? Was it a PNG file or something else? If it was a PNG it did not have text in any font, just a pixel bitmap.

It was a PNG file. She told me it’s easy to change the size of the tag by resizing it. She showed me some examples and they looked fine in her pics so I think she’s using Photoshop instead. 

[NotMyFault]

In case you cannot create the logo as text at your own and depend on using the png, you could

• add a threshold adjustment  

This assumes the logo is black&white.

If it has 2 colors (text and background), the colors needed to be restored e.g. by two fill layers and using the logo rasterized to mask.

Below a made a PNG containing text of different size, exported as PNG, imported again, copied, and applied threshold to the right, exported all as PNG again.

If it does not look sharp for you: then the app you are using to view the result might cause the issue. E.g. Apple Photo on iPad makes it look blurry when zoomed in. 

 

sharp text.afdesign

[R C-R]

10 hours ago, JML90 said:

It was a PNG file.

OK. Do you understand the difference between text objects (which cannot exist in PNG files) & bitmap images (IOW, pictures) of text objects (which can be part of PNG files)?

[JML90]

On 8/18/2021 at 4:40 PM, R C-R said:

OK. Do you understand the difference between text objects (which cannot exist in PNG files) & bitmap images (IOW, pictures) of text objects (which can be part of PNG files)?

No, I don’t unfortunately. 

[R C-R]

15 minutes ago, JML90 said:

No, I don’t unfortunately. 

Text objects are editable, like in word processors. They have properties you can change like the font, its size, the spacing between characters, & much more.

Bitmap images are just a bunch of pixels, like in photographs. Some while they look like they include text objects, they do not. They just have some pixels arranged to look like text characters.

[JML90]

I managed to resolve the problem… I downloaded XnViewMP to tag the pictures instead  It’s much easier cause now I can tag the picture all at once. 

[NotMyFault]

thank you for letting us know 👍🏼