Artem M Posted March 9, 2021 Share Posted March 9, 2021 It's extremely disappointing that this huge bug in base program functionality still exist! Dear developers why are you deaf to our complaints? Andrea Andrea 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BitBull Posted March 9, 2021 Share Posted March 9, 2021 It works fine once you figure out what's going on so it's hardly a bug, what it does need is the UI sorting out so you can work in whole pixels easily without changing a gazillion different settings. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Artem M Posted March 10, 2021 Share Posted March 10, 2021 I am sure that merging raster layers in application that deal with raster content should not be the cause of loosing information in both images that you merge by default. I can't imagine realistic work scenery when it should go the way it goes in AP now. Of course you can raster all layers every time before marge them and it helps but it not looks like normal workflow isn't it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BitBull Posted March 10, 2021 Share Posted March 10, 2021 5 minutes ago, Artem M said: I am sure that merging raster layers in application that deal with raster content should not be the cause of loosing information in both images that you merge by default. I can't imagine realistic work scenery when it should go the way it goes in AP now. Of course you can raster all layers every time before marge them and it helps but it not looks like normal workflow isn't it? I agree with you, the way it works at the moment is frustrating and unintuitive, especially when you're new to it. Something shouldn't change in appearance when merged, full stop. However, there are workarounds and I'm working fine with merging layers with no pre-rasterization at the moment. I'm not resizing or transforming content though (other than 90deg rotations). It's very finicky about snap settings. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erikxtz Posted March 10, 2021 Share Posted March 10, 2021 The conclusion with this issue: I need to concentrate to creativity, not on "rasterizing layers", I don´t need to even think about it. This whole idea of rasterizing and "wannabe non destructive editing" is stupid, because all of this leads to destructive editing on a pixel level. Thats a pity that Affinity isn´t still alternative to Photoshop to Pro users. Affinity is maybe good for common photo editing, not for pixel precise art yet. I will be back in half year, and maybe Affinity team will make something about this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ronald618 Posted March 13, 2021 Share Posted March 13, 2021 I need to merge down images onto one layer. It is not a stack of images that merge on top of one another but instead the images lie side by side. I was shocked to see that merging process creates a blur. I was not aware of this until I zoomed in closely, but that was after hours of work. Doing a search I now see others experience the same problem. And it's not a small one. I really want to like Affinity but between the bugs and quirks the program can be trying. Artem M 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted March 17, 2021 Staff Share Posted March 17, 2021 Hi @ronald618, Welcome to Affinity Forums Were the images pixel aligned (that is, their X,Y coordinates and width/height were integer pixel values)? You can check this clicking on them with the Move Tool (on canvas or in the Layers panel) and checking them in the Transform panel. You may have to increase the number of decimal places displayed there going to Affinity Preferences, User Interface section, Decimal Places for Unit Types, and increasing the Pixels value to 3 or more. There may be other causes for the blurring - do you mind attaching the file to be checked? Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software | Affinity Quick Reference Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ronald618 Posted March 18, 2021 Share Posted March 18, 2021 Thank you for your reply. This is a detail of the document. Merge the top layer down while zoomed in closely on one of the images. You will see the blurring. PROVA_AFFINITY.afphoto Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walt.farrell Posted March 18, 2021 Share Posted March 18, 2021 8 hours ago, ronald618 said: Thank you for your reply. This is a detail of the document. Merge the top layer down while zoomed in closely on one of the images. You will see the blurring. PROVA_AFFINITY.afphoto 17.95 MB · 3 downloads Neither of your pixel layers is aligned to the pixel grid. Here's what the Transform panel shows for the top layer, when the document units are switched to "px": Quote -- Walt Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases PC: Desktop: Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Laptop: Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU. iPad: iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard Mac: 2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anton Petrov Posted March 18, 2021 Share Posted March 18, 2021 (edited) From the UX perspective everything should work in integer pixels by default. And only those who want to mess with this sub-pixel technical details should be able to turn this feature on. Or we should have a document workflow setting to choose between "Pixel-perfect workflow" and "No pixels workflow". Edited March 18, 2021 by Anton Petrov David in Яuislip, Wosven, Artem M and 1 other 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ronald618 Posted March 18, 2021 Share Posted March 18, 2021 "Neither of your pixel layers is aligned to the pixel grid. Here's what the Transform panel shows for the top layer, when the document units are switched to "px": In any photo editing program...PS, Gimp, Photopea whatever...the simple act of merging layers causes no loss of quality. It would never dawn on me to fool around with pixel alignment. I lost hours of work with this. Sefif has very slick advertising, but the program is not designed for professional work. Artem M and Andrea Andrea 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BitBull Posted March 18, 2021 Share Posted March 18, 2021 4 hours ago, Anton Petrov said: From the UX perspective everything should work in integer pixels by default. And only those who want to mess with this sub-pixel technical details should be able to turn this feature on. Or we should have a document workflow setting to choose between "Pixel-perfect workflow" and "No pixels workflow". Agreed. As I mentioned above, even if you have things all set up correctly with 'pixel snap' on some other setting override this and give you fractional pixel placements anyway. Once you know what's going on you can figure stuff out but it's controlled by far too many individual settings at the moment and many of the settings conflict with each other. To say the app is 'not designed for professional work' is absolute nonsense though. It's excellent, as is Publisher. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ronald618 Posted March 18, 2021 Share Posted March 18, 2021 "As I mentioned above, even if you have things all set up correctly with 'pixel snap' on some other setting override this and give you fractional pixel placements anyway. Once you know what's going on you can figure stuff out but it's controlled by far too many individual settings at the moment and many of the settings conflict with each other." A pro workflow should be designed with as few clicks, surprises and interruptions as possible. Time is money. The software is very low cost and the company is offering months of free use so they deserve praise and understanding for that. Affinity Photo will get there but let's face it, it's not there yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erikxtz Posted March 18, 2021 Share Posted March 18, 2021 I agree, for example if you are working in 3D, you simply find that in 3D there are more complex problems that you can´t even imagine in "simple" Photo software. You don´t need waste your mental energy to concentrate on things like "I have to rasterize it every time, I have to rasterize it every time". Why would I do that? I don´t have time for this, I rather spend my money for software where I don't have to deal with such trivial things. I hope that Affinity will do something with this issue in near future. Andrea Andrea and Artem M 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrea Andrea Posted July 2, 2021 Share Posted July 2, 2021 Every time I give it a shot I get some stupid bug or bad functionality from Affinity, first I had problems with Publisher which made me stop using and today I tried Photo and guess what? I'll have to stop using it, small basic problems like these are not acceptable, really. Artem M 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrea Andrea Posted August 8, 2021 Share Posted August 8, 2021 I think this new update solved the issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lothyende Posted August 17, 2021 Share Posted August 17, 2021 On 8/8/2021 at 2:20 AM, Andrea Andrea said: I think this new update solved the issue. Sadly, it didn't. left: three layers "merged down"; right: the exact same three layers "merged visible". I read both related threads but can't make heads or tails of why the left image turns out blurry while the right one does not. Ah well, as long as I remember to never use "merge down" I'm fine. AF is good tool despite some quirks, but what software doesn't have those? It's affordable and no subscriptions. I'm glad it's there, especially now Gimp and Inkscape have become unusably slow on Mac OS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted August 17, 2021 Staff Share Posted August 17, 2021 Hi @Lothyende, Welcome to Affinity Forums Do you mind attaching the afphoto file shown in your screenshot above please? Thank you. Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software | Affinity Quick Reference Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrea Andrea Posted August 17, 2021 Share Posted August 17, 2021 41 minutes ago, Lothyende said: Sadly, it didn't. left: three layers "merged down"; right: the exact same three layers "merged visible". I read both related threads but can't make heads or tails of why the left image turns out blurry while the right one does not. Ah well, as long as I remember to never use "merge down" I'm fine. AF is good tool despite some quirks, but what software doesn't have those? It's affordable and no subscriptions. I'm glad it's there, especially now Gimp and Inkscape have become unusably slow on Mac OS. I tested very poorly to be honest, I just merged lots of layers gradually and couldn't see any problem, but I'm glad you posted so I'm not gonna work with Affinity Photo until they fix that 😅. Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted August 18, 2021 Staff Share Posted August 18, 2021 Hi @Andrea Andrea, Can you be more specific regarding the fix you are expecting please? As long as the layers have the same dpi and are pixel aligned they should merge without causing any blurring. Can you post a file/example where the merge operation blurs the output/result for inspection please? Thank you. Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software | Affinity Quick Reference Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ronald618 Posted August 18, 2021 Share Posted August 18, 2021 Affinity Photo is the only photo editing program that I have ever encountered that requires you to be concerned about having pixels aligned for the simple act of merging down. We're in the year 2021, not 1995. I worked long and hard on a project when just starting out with Affinity...only to realize the blurring upon close inspection. It was HOURS of work ruined. If Affinity is going to insist on keeping this absurd quirk, then there should be a pop-up warning explaining the blur. Artem M 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NotMyFault Posted August 18, 2021 Share Posted August 18, 2021 23 minutes ago, ronald618 said: Affinity Photo is the only photo editing program that I have ever encountered that requires you to be concerned about having pixels aligned for the simple act of merging down. Maybe intentionally Affinity leaves it to the user if he needs pixel-alignment or not. Both have totally valid use-cases. Affinity cannot distinguish between them or what the user intents. There are uncountable more functions where some users might need a warning. Other users may hate warnings unnecessary for them (e.g when closing Develop Persona). I share your frustration learning that you wasted hours based on app behavior that seems unintuitive to you. But maybe it isn’t Affinity to blame. R C-R 1 Quote Mac mini M1 A2348 | Windows 10 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080 LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5 iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589 Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ronald618 Posted August 18, 2021 Share Posted August 18, 2021 What would be a case where such blurring when merging down would be desired? Artem M and Wosven 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted August 18, 2021 Share Posted August 18, 2021 1 minute ago, NotMyFault said: Affinity leaves it to the user if he needs pixel-alignment or not. Both have totally valid use-cases. This I think is as it should be for all apps -- if nothing else, there is no way for a programmer to know if I would prefer for the position or size of anything to be rounded up or down to a whole pixel value. NotMyFault 1 Quote 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NotMyFault Posted August 18, 2021 Share Posted August 18, 2021 11 minutes ago, ronald618 said: What would be a case where such blurring when merging down would be desired? For similar reasons as we have blurring and sharpen filters resize with up or downscale convert between 8/16/32 bit in any direction convert between color formats in any direction B&W / threshold adjustment/ posterize filter and recolor / gradient map adjustments different blend mode categories … Quote Mac mini M1 A2348 | Windows 10 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080 LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5 iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589 Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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