Saved photos blurry

[SChristenson27]

Hello,

    After a little search, I found that others have had issues getting clear images after saving a finished product in Affinity.  I am not great with computers, and I bought Affinity because it looked simple enough to use and the one time payment vs subscription works well for me.  Overall, I have been happy with using Affinity, except that my images turn out fuzzy.  I am an illustrator (pen and paper) and after scanning my images, I upload them to make sure everything looks good, and save a large file for prints, and a smaller one for the web.  All is well, except when I upload them, they are not as crisp and clear as they are in the program, or when I look at my scan file.  Is there an easy way to combat this?  I would really appreciate any suggestions.  Thank you.

[Fixx]

Upload to where? Your service may recompress/rescale your images.

[Callum]

Hi SChristenson27,

Do the images look fine when viewed before uploading?

Thanks

C

[SChristenson27]

Yes, the images do look fine when I upload them into Affinity, I can zoom in and they are completely clear. I have uploaded my original scan file, and the file saved from Affinity to compare the 2, and there is a big difference in quality. The websites I’m uploading to are mainly Wix and Facebook.

[Callum]

Could you post one of the blurry images into this thread along with an image to compare it to?

[unni]

Try  :

1. In AP, when you want to finally save in jpeg, go to left top FILE>EXPORT to open EXPORT SETTINGS box.
2.First select JPEG. Then in Resample, select Bilinear. Quality 100%.Then click the More box.
3.In ICC Profile, scroll down to bottom and selece SRGB.
4.Now close the box once and then click Export.

Now you will have a big jpeg file.
Go to http://luci.criosweb.ro/riot/?ref=RIOT

use the RIOT utility to resize the created jpeg file to desired size and quality. If you keep quality
to 70 or above, there wont be any significant visual difference. I think facebook allows upto 2048 longer side
and a max of 400K per file. If you go above about 400K or 2048 longer side, FB will again cut the file.

I have noted softness issue in AP JPEG output when quality is kept below 100%.

[SChristenson27]

Ok, so I tried Riot and I wasn't able to get a better image quality.  Here is a file I am trying to use as the background of my website.  I went in, and re-edited the file from the scan, used a different profile for exporting, and when I reopened it in Affinity to check the quality, it looked great zoomed in.  Then, I place it in the appropriate file size for the Wix background.  It fit well, and did not have to expand the image at all.  Before I saved it, I zoomed in and it was pixelated, and looked bad.  Here is the screenshot, and as you can see it looks blurry.  If anyone has any further advice, please let me know.  Thanks!

[CleverGirl]

Hello! Was there ever a solution for this particular problem? I'm having the same one. I'll upload an example photo for reference on the issue. 

[Pšenda]

24 minutes ago, CleverGirl said:

I'll upload an example photo for reference on the issue. 

Wouldn't it be good to provide a sample of the same size? And when displaying 100% (pixel image to pixel monitor).

P. S. JPEG with 100% quality is still lossy compression. If you need 100% quality, try lossless format (for example TIFF). 

Edited March 19, 2022 by Pšenda

[CleverGirl]

2 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

Wouldn't it be good to provide a sample of the same size? And when displaying 100% (pixel image to pixel monitor).

Yes. How do I do that? Like, what should the information look like when posting a reference like this?

Edited March 19, 2022 by CleverGirl
Additional comment

[Pšenda]

6 minutes ago, CleverGirl said:

How do I do that?

Open original image in Affinity, 100%, Screenshot.

Export image, open exported image back in Affinity, 100%, Screenshot.

Then compare.

[CleverGirl]

33 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

Open original image in Affinity, 100%, Screenshot.

Export image, open exported image back in Affinity, 100%, Screenshot.

Then compare.

I'm honestly not sure if I did it exactly the way you described, but here's both photos, open in Affinity. 

 

Edited: Just figured out what you said. When they're both open in affinity, at 100%, the quality is the same. It's just when I'm zoomed out that it doesn't look good. 

2nd edit: A secondary(maybe the same?) issue I'm having is that when I edit and save a photo as a .tiff file, when I view it in photos, the quality is low like a jpeg. Is there a viewer I should be using instead so I'm able to send photos to people at the higher quality that they have in Affinity? Or do I just have to deal with photos looking great in Affinity and just lower quality no matter what when saved? 

 

 

 

Like

Edited March 19, 2022 by CleverGirl

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, CleverGirl said:

... when I view it in photos ...

Do you mean the Apple Photos app or the Affinity Photo app? 

[CleverGirl]

2 hours ago, R C-R said:

Do you mean the Apple Photos app or the Affinity Photo app? 

Hi there!

Photos are lower quality/blurry on the Photos app on an Apple laptop, even if I do not export or convert the photo. 

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, CleverGirl said:

Photos are lower quality/blurry on the Photos app on an Apple laptop, even if I do not export or convert the photo. 

In Apple Photos, open the Info panel window (Windows > Info menu item) & select one of the photos. What are the pixel dimensions shown in that window? Compare that to the size of the photo if you double-click on it to view it by itself in the Photos.app window. If its dimensions are smaller than that window then it will be blown up to fill it, so it will appear blurry.

[CleverGirl]

15 minutes ago, R C-R said:

In Apple Photos, open the Info panel window (Windows > Info menu item) & select one of the photos. What are the pixel dimensions shown in that window? Compare that to the size of the photo if you double-click on it to view it by itself in the Photos.app window. If its dimensions are smaller than that window then it will be blown up to fill it, so it will appear blurry.

I think I'm not sure what you mean by Apple Photos vs Photos.

This is the photos application I have that I use. When I click right click from Photos, I can edit in Affinity, and it shows up at a .tiff file. When I click "save" in Affinity photos, it saves it as a .tiff file to this application. It is the only app I have to view photos, outside of Preview and Affinity.

 

[NotMyFault]

The App you marked with the red circle is Apple Photos. To the right, partially covered by the red circle, there is Affinity Photo.

Both Apps let you view or edit Photos, but the user interface is totally different. 
 

It seems you may need some extended support with the very basic steps.

Do you have any chance that someone more experienced like a friend, teacher, etc could show you these basic steps interactively while being able to watch your screen and talk, like a classroom setup or a virtual meeting with screen share ?

If not, we could try to do this in the forum, sure, but it will take a really long time.

Another option for you is watching the excellent tutorial videos from Affinity, or one of the numerous other creatives, available for free. 

[R C-R]

12 hours ago, CleverGirl said:

I think I'm not sure what you mean by Apple Photos vs Photos.

Apple Photos is the app you have circled on your Dock. Affinity Photo (note that "Photo" in the app name is not pluralized) is the Affinity one.

The two apps will display the file in your screenshot differently, in part because it is not a TIFF file, which you can tell by the "ARW" suffix in the Apple Photos Info window & by the "RAW" label in the upper righthand corner of the main Apple Photos window. ARW is a Sony RAW image file format, which must be 'developed' into a tangible image before it can be displayed.

When you use 'Edit With..." in Apple Photos, it renders the RAW file & sends a tiff version of it to Affinity Photo. Depending on the version of Apple Photos that you have, I think the only way to open the actual RAW ARW file in Affinity Photo is to use File > Export > Unmodified Original in Apple Photos, & then open the exported version in Affinity Photo, which will open into the Develop Persona of Affinity Photo.

[CleverGirl]

21 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Apple Photos is the app you have circled on your Dock. Affinity Photo (note that "Photo" in the app name is not pluralized) is the Affinity one.

The two apps will display the file in your screenshot differently, in part because it is not a TIFF file, which you can tell by the "ARW" suffix in the Apple Photos Info window & by the "RAW" label in the upper righthand corner of the main Apple Photos window. ARW is a Sony RAW image file format, which must be 'developed' into a tangible image before it can be displayed.

When you use 'Edit With..." in Apple Photos, it renders the RAW file & sends a tiff version of it to Affinity Photo. Depending on the version of Apple Photos that you have, I think the only way to open the actual RAW ARW file in Affinity Photo is to use File > Export > Unmodified Original in Apple Photos, & then open the exported version in Affinity Photo, which will open into the Develop Persona of Affinity Photo.

YES!! Thank you so much! That was the information I was missing to understand why my photos were coming up differently in between apps. I kept trying to send photos to people from the Photos app, which left me with the lower quality. Disappointing, but *most* photos were fine with that quality.

I found that, in Affinity, I can click SAVE with the option save the layers and that will send my edited photo over to the Photos app, but if I EXPORT the photo from Affinity AS a  .TIFF  file and save in a separate place(like a desktop folder), I can upload  .TIFF  files to GooglePhotos and it preserves the quality(no soft, blurry faces!).

Thank you everyone for your help! I'm still learning how to edit properly, so I don't do a lot the "easy way" with editing. Knowing that my unnecessarily challenging edits aren't also being wasted by a low quality save job is keeping me from a lot of tears. I really do appreciate it! 🙇‍♀️