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To be clear, you're saying that in File > Document Setup, in the Color tab, you do not have Transparent Background checked/enabled?

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
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In the File > Export > PNG tab, click "More" & then click on the "Matte:" popup & change the setting to whatever color you want the empty pixels to be. Typically, that would be pure white but it can be any color. (The default Matte color is 'none,' indicated by the red slash through the color box.)

This should work even if the Affinity document has the background set to transparent.

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
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23 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

To be clear, you're saying that in File > Document Setup, in the Color tab, you do not have Transparent Background checked/enabled?

I have the "transparent background" checked/ enabled.

When I use the PNG-8 format for exporting the problem gets solved. The anti-aliasing effect does not get applied but the export gets dithered, which I don't want....

Basically I just want to find a way to turn of the anti-aliasing effect ;) 

 

15 minutes ago, R C-R said:

In the File > Export > PNG tab, click "More" & then click on the "Matte:" popup & change the setting to whatever color you want the empty pixels to be. Typically, that would be pure white but it can be any color. (The default Matte color is 'none,' indicated by the red slash through the color box.)

This should work even if the Affinity document has the background set to transparent.

The problem is that I work with an "empty" background. I do not have a background color therefor the "Matte" box does not help me

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It's unclear to me whether the problem is the antialiasing or the presence of transparency. If you don't want transparency (and you said in you first post that you don't use it) then turn it off in Document Setup and that should fix your problem.

-- 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

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49 minutes ago, Bones_the_Bones said:

The problem is that I work with an "empty" background. I do not have a background color therefor the "Matte" box does not help me

Have you tried what I suggested about setting the matte color? The only choices for PNG files are 'no color' (empty) backgrounds, which are inherently transparent where there are no pixels in the image (because they include an alpha opacity channel) or a matte color, which fills in the empty no pixel areas with the matte color. There is no workaround for this -- it is part of the PNG file format specification.

The PNG-8 works because it is an indexed color format with up to 8 bits per color channel, so PNG-8 files can have a maximum of 256 colors (8 x 8 x 8), one of which can be pure white.

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15 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

It's unclear to me whether the problem is the antialiasing or the presence of transparency. If you don't want transparency (and you said in you first post that you don't use it) then turn it off in Document Setup and that should fix your problem.

I have exported the same design twice (one with "transparant background" checked and one with "transparent background" unchecked) and both PNG-24 exports showed transparency (like in the picture I have attached in my first post) :/  So this sadly did not change the problem...

15 hours ago, R C-R said:

Have you tried what I suggested about setting the matte color? The only choices for PNG files are 'no color' (empty) backgrounds, which are inherently transparent where there are no pixels in the image (because they include an alpha opacity channel) or a matte color, which fills in the empty no pixel areas with the matte color. There is no workaround for this -- it is part of the PNG file format specification.

The PNG-8 works because it is an indexed color format with up to 8 bits per color channel, so PNG-8 files can have a maximum of 256 colors (8 x 8 x 8), one of which can be pure white.

I tried what you have suggested. I set the matte color on white (and on black) and it strangely did not change the export in regards to the transparency - I will try out some other colors but I did not have the time yet. I will keep you updated ;) Nevertheless good info on the PNG-8 and bit part. I did not know that.

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2 hours ago, >|< said:

256 does not equal 8 x 8 x 8

:$ I was using the same calculator they used to calculate the 30% Black Friday discounts at the Affinity Store.

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1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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2 hours ago, Bones_the_Bones said:

I tried what you have suggested. I set the matte color on white (and on black) and it strangely did not change the export in regards to the transparency...

That is strange because it has worked for me every time I have tried it, whether or not "Transparent background" is checked in File > Document Setup > Color tab. Just to make sure we are on the same page, you are talking about the retail version of Affinity Designer (not the beta) & setting the matte color in the "More" window in the export options, like this:
160225087_morePNGoptions.jpg.027d2a0158c2f22bd599929cad41a81f.jpg

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

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hey R C-R,

 

sorry for the late response!

On 11/24/2018 at 10:17 PM, R C-R said:

That is strange because it has worked for me every time I have tried it, whether or not "Transparent background" is checked in File > Document Setup > Color tab. Just to make sure we are on the same page, you are talking about the retail version of Affinity Designer (not the beta) & setting the matte color in the "More" window in the export options, like this:
160225087_morePNGoptions.jpg.027d2a0158c2f22bd599929cad41a81f.jpg

I am using the "normal" retail version of AD for Mac. I have tried what you proposed and it still did not work somehow.

 

But I did some further research and this seems to be a bigger problem. Anti-Aliasing can not be turned off globally, but there seems to be a workaround.

Transparency and anti-aliasing are very closely related. When anti-aliasing gets "used" in the PNG-Exports there will be some transparency in the image by default. That is what I meant in the original post.

 

Cheers,

Mark

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@Bones_the_Bones The simple answer is "No". Unfortunately none of the Affinity products feature a global option to turn anti-aliasing on or off.

Other software often does, and with a simple switch anti-aliasing is removed (both on-screen while working, as well as during output):

antialiasing1544721391.png

Ideally Affinity would allow the user to turn off anti-aliasing globally on the fly while working, but the only option available to sort-of work around this missing option is to set a custom coverage map like so:

coverage-nao1544721894.png

But there are still several issues with this approach: for one, it must be applied to each and every layer individually, which is a workflow breaker and very inconvenient to keep track of, and secondly, this approach will break under circumstances. For example, the star object does have the coverage map set correctly, but still is anti-aliased in places. The reason: the stroke setting is set to an outside stroke, which breaks that work around method.

Worse, when the circle's stroke is set to "align to inside", the yellow bleeds into areas outside the stroke! I use custom stroke alignment all the time to achieve certain effects, and this coverage map is incompatible with that workflow.

coverage1544722548.png

Others have already mentioned in other threads that this is really problematic for work like pixel art or textile printing.

There are other issues with this coverage map approach and the way strokes work in Affinity:

stroke-1px1544723071.png

Left is Affinity with the thinnest possible stroke applied and the coverage map method. Right is illustration software with global anti-aliasing turned off, and a 1px stroke. I probably don't have to explain the issue here: right is what we want, but left is what we get in Affinity.

In short: far from an ideal situation. I do hope the Affinity devs will fix this in an upcoming release, because for any aliased artwork Affinity is in a really bad place as it stands and the workflow is just not there in my opinion.

My suggestion would be to look elsewhere if this is important for your work.

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First of all I like your name, @Medical Officer Bones :D  And thank you for your great answer!

Yes I see what you are saying.... I actually created another discussion just this moment:

 

It seems that there are many problems with the "workaround" via the coverage map - I have described this further in the post. Take a look if you want ;)

I really don't understand why there is no global option for turning on/ off anti-aliasing yet - I mean this is a big turnoff for some people in regards to using AD and this has been requested in posts years ago.

Anyways... Cheers!

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Ah, I see you are into textile printing! Yes, that would be problematic.

I checked out your example file. My solution to your problem is to export to a PDF, and open it in PhotoLine. Then turn off global anti-aliasing. Done. Export to a bitmap.

The only issue is the pattern at the bottom. Affinity does not support vector patterns yet, so you would have to replace that pattern in PhotoLine with a pattern that consists of vector layers which must be set to aliased in the layer properties (PhotoLine allows for easy per-layer anti-aliasing control and for aliased vector patterns the layers themselves must be set to aliased before the pattern is defined.).

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