Turn Anti-Aliasing Off. When will this frankly basic feature be introduced?

[IncognitoMode]

Turning Anti-Aliasing Off. When will this frankly basic feature be introduced?

I'm a big fan of Affinity Designer, and use it exclusively. Unfortunately, as a T-Shirt Designer, I'm really in need of a quick turn anti-aliasing off option, as anti-aliasing can lead to an unsightly white border around the edges of designs printed on black garments. I've heard that PhotoShop has this capability in the form of a simple check button. So far, all the suggestions have been to apply 'Coverage' adjustments to every single layer. Frankly this is a little tedious. I can't find anything online explaining how the coverage parameter works in Affinity. I've seen someone posting about this in 2015, and was wondering if we are any closer to a workaround that does not require a Guru level of technical knowledge to implement. If there isn't yet, perhaps it could be included in the next update of Affinity? Thanks in advance for your replies.

[Gabe]

Hi @IncognitoMode,

I will try to explain what the coverage map does. It adjusts the amount of anti-alias applied, clipping to black to a minimum and maximum value. 

With both nodes down, it clips to the minimum value, or to the very first non-100%black value. 

With a linear curve, you have a nice gradient between the max point and the min point, with white and gray values. - Default curve

Next one, clips to the maximum value of the anti-alias, or to the very least "black" pixels. 

The trick you saw on the forums with the "S" shape gives you a 50% clip. 

[IncognitoMode]

Thanks for your reply. Does the coverage map need to be applied to each layer, or can it be applied at the top of the stack? And what would a good general setting for designs destined for print be?

[Gabe]

I'm afraid it needs to be applied on an object-by-object basis. It does not inherit the settings if you place it at the top of the stack. As for the print, there is no general setup. It depends on how you want it to look, how your printer interprets the file, the file type you export it as ( Vector or raster ), the quality of the print - DPI wise, etc. 

[IncognitoMode]

Thanks for letting me know. I really hope this becomes a feature in future, as at the moment, the work around is a bit of a struggle.

[MEB]

You can apply the Coverage Map settings to more than object at once selecting them all first and adjusting the Coverage Map graph afterwards.

[IncognitoMode]

Thanks, I'll give that a try.

[pyxelles]

Oh wow, thanks for raising this as I having been having the same frustrating issue and was trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong. I'm also using ADfor print on demand and even though I export high resolution PNGs @300 dpi, when I upload my designs on t-shirts on Teespring and Redbubble, the images look OK only at 100% scale but rapidly appear more low res and blurry with jagged edges when scaled down to meet the dimension requirements of each apparel (by the time you get to 50%, it’s barely legible at a distance) and the fonts also appear fuzzy not crisp and sharp. 

When I compare my images (for print) to those of other designers on the POD platforms their images appear much sharper and even their  smaller fonts are more legible than my large fonts. No matter what I do (I export at 300dpi) my images look low res when scaled down, which is strange because isn't this supposed to happen when you scale up instead?

This appears to be an ongoing issue with AD. I’ve seen so many complaints about this since 2014! So many people using Affinity Designer have complained about this and it's not because people don't know what they are doing! People who use Adobe illustrator have sharper images because AI has the anti-aliasing feature which is switched off prior to exporting and this ensures that the images are crisp with smooth edges. 

I don't know why ADaren't sorting this out when so many people have complained- asking now to turn of ANTI-ALIASING. AD say the solution is to do with coverage maps but I don’t yet understand it and it appears complicated. Why can’t they just add this anti-aliasing feature? or put out a detailed tutorial explaining this map coverage stuff, showing an example of a text design exported to a Print on Demand platform and tested on several apparel with different dimension requirements. This will help a lot of us out while they sort this out. This person also posted this issue on another thread with clear images. https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/114272-how-does-anti-aliasing-work-on-affinity-designer/