A_B_C Posted February 23, 2015 Share Posted February 23, 2015 Hi everybody, there is an Assistant message I do not understand ... would you be so kind to help me out? Whenever I drop a TIFF image from the finder into an Affinity Photo document, a new layer gets created for this image. But when I start retouching, the Assistant says: "The Assistant rasterized the layer ... because it was not a raster layer" ... excuse me, if I miss something obvious, but why does this rasterization take place? And is there a quality loss caused by this? Thanks in advance, and sorry for my confusion ... Cheers, Alex Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted February 23, 2015 Staff Share Posted February 23, 2015 When you drop an image on a document it is treated like an Object layer and is identified in the layers panel as an (Image) object. There's other Object layer types: text, shapes, paths all are Object layers. You can think of Object layers as independent entities/elements you can manipulate individually. Pixel layers (and vector layers for that matter) are a different type of layer that act as containers for those Objects. In this context Pixel layers act as containers for pixel/raster data. When you rasterise an image you are effectively turning it (as object) into a container for pixel editing. It loses its "Object" status and becomes just an ordinary pixel layer that happens to look like the image you rasterised (and is now identified as (Pixel) layer on Layers panel). You shouldn't loose quality in this process. A_B_C 1 A Guide to Learning Affinity Software Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A_B_C Posted February 23, 2015 Author Share Posted February 23, 2015 Oh thanks, MEB, so detailed and fast ... I have never thought of these distinctions when using Affinity Photo but used them quite intuitively ... but now I see ... :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted February 23, 2015 Staff Share Posted February 23, 2015 I was referring to Affinity Designer in particular. Currently Affinity Photo's way of working with layers seems to be going under some changes so i'm not sure if all i said can be directly applied to it. For example the New Vector Layer icon is now used to group Layers.... But what i said for the Assistant, Image Objects and Pixel layers remains true. A Guide to Learning Affinity Software Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A_B_C Posted February 23, 2015 Author Share Posted February 23, 2015 Oh thanks, I had understood the layer behavior in Affinity Designer quite well, but I wondered why the same should apply to an image editing application ... this may have been the source of my confusion ... ... but you are right, when dropping a TIFF image on the document canvas you get a "Layer Name (Image)" entry in the layers list, and not a "Layer Name (Pixel)" entry. I never noticed this, since I thought intuitively that dropping an image would create a pixel layer straight away ... But I believe what you say makes sense in Photo too ... :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff Andy Somerfield Posted February 23, 2015 Staff Share Posted February 23, 2015 Yes, we still have the concept of a "placed image" in Photo - it's useful because it keeps the original JPEG / TIFF data - so if the TIFF was CMYK and dropped into an RGB document, then the document converted to CMYK, no RGB<-->CMYK loss would occur - because it can read the original CMYK data from the TIFF. Thanks, Andy. Haluke 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A_B_C Posted February 23, 2015 Author Share Posted February 23, 2015 Thanks, Andy, this is a very valuable clarification for me ... and I guess this does also mean, that if I drop a CMYK tiff into a CMYK document and the "placed image" gets turned into a pixel layer afterwards, no conversion will happen at all, right? Thanks again, Alex :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff Andy Somerfield Posted February 23, 2015 Staff Share Posted February 23, 2015 That's right - there is a general rule, with all Affinity apps - "unless it's a pixel layer, it will convert in a lossless way when you change document format". Thanks, Andy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A_B_C Posted February 24, 2015 Author Share Posted February 24, 2015 Beautiful, thanks :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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