[By Design] Image scaling lose quality(pixelaetd)

[kinwolf 0]

Hi,

 I am trialing Affinity Photo 1.6.5 on windows 10 and I'm having problem scaling imported image.  basically, when I shrink an image it becomes pixelated.  This happen both with "resize document" and while dragging the corner.  The It does it with any algorithm chosen.    I tried to do the same in krita and it scaled perfectly, never losing quality.  Known problem?.

 

Edit: I've attached scaled down image as an example of the pixelated result.

 

 

[GabrielM 492]

Hi @kinwolf,

Welcome to the forums. 

Do you preview the image at 100% zoom?

I would say this is expected, as you're shrinking the image, and therefore, you will have fewer pixels. 

Thanks,

Gabe. 

[kinwolf 0]

Hi,

   Thanks for the welcome

Yes, I was zoomed in at 200%, but mostly to show the pixelation clearly.  It was noticeable to the eye without the zoom. 

If I try the same thing in krita, there is no problem, here is the same image scaled down to a much smaller ratio, and zoomed in at 400%, there is no loss in quality.  That's why I was wondering if it was a bug in affinity photo.

[walt.farrell 780]

Can you attach the actual image, rather than a screenshot? 

[kinwolf 0]

Hi,

 

Sure.  The original. 

Scaledown -> scaled down in affinity photo and exported using bicubic.

ScaledownL -> scaled down in affinity photo and exported using Lanczos.

krita-> You know what?  when I exported the scaled down version in krita, it actually "changed" the image on screen, and it now looks just as pixelated as in affinity.  So it seems krita is "cheating" on the display until you actually save the file.  That was interesting to watch.

So, I guess it's normal behavior and I got fooled by a small display cheat in krita. 

 

[GabrielM 492]

Other software might do smoothing preview when zooming, which is generally a bad practice for Pixel work. We will close this as "by design".