bug? in exporting Jpeg

[srg]

Hello everybody, 

Two screen shots: the first from a .aphoto before exporting and the second after exporting in .jpeg.

[Wosven]

Without looking at your export settings and the image's proprieties, it's difficult to help.

Did your export settings are set to a huge level of JPEG compression? (quality near 0 instead of near 100?)

[srg]

4 hours ago, Wosven said:

Without looking at your export settings and the image's proprieties, it's difficult to help.

Did your export settings are set to a huge level of JPEG compression? (quality near 0 instead of near 100?)

yes they seem to inversely correlate with the size, see .Jpeg images: first 3.2MB, second 2.4 MB, third 1.4 MB. Hope this will be fixed if possible.

[Wosven]

It's not a bug, it's an error in your settings, but without seeing them we can't help you.

[srg]

8 hours ago, Wosven said:

It's not a bug, it's an error in your settings, but without seeing them we can't help you.

[walt.farrell]

Well, you asked for low quality, and you got it

But if you want more info than that:

• What color space do you have for the original image? RGB/8? RGB/16?
• What settings are on the More... part of the Export dialog?
• Can you supply the .afphoto file you exported from?

[srg]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

Well, you asked for low quality, and you got it

But if you want more info than that:

• What color space do you have for the original image? RGB/8? RGB/16?
• What settings are on the More... part of the Export dialog?
• Can you supply the .afphoto file you exported from?

I saved in High quality (see previous post in this thread) and at the same file size the result is identical.

Wosven said that are my settings that are wrong. Well, I have no settings, AP does.

One final question: if this is not a bug why saving/exporting in  such a common format is so complicated?

 

[walt.farrell]

8 minutes ago, srg said:

I saved in High quality (see previous post in this thread) and at the same file size the result is identical.

Wosven said that are my settings that are wrong. Well, I have no settings, AP does.

One final question: if this is not a bug why saving/exporting in  such a common format is so complicated?

Saving at Quality 10 is not common, in my experience. Your image needs a higher quality setting. Try 60 or higher.

Yes, the file will be bigger then, but you need to make the tradeoff between quality and size. Perhaps you need to make the image smaller (smaller pixel dimensions) to get the JPG down to a smaller size if that's what you need. You can't have good image quality in a small file if you want an image that is 7376x4932 px. You either need to increase the quality, or decrease the px size, or both.

[carl123]

7 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Saving at Quality 10 is not common, in my experience.

Photoshop's Save as... function has a quality setting from 0 to 12 for JPGs

Maybe the OP is used to setting this to 10

 

 

[Jowday]

Fact time, @srg 

JPG export in Affinity Photo has serious problems below high quality. I never (have to) go below 100% ever in a professional context, but web editors on CMS-systems that does not server scale images need optimized JPG output. Affinity Designer, Photo and Publisher works through a shared code base, so you will get equally disappointing results in all three programs.

Example. Nice smooth high quality gradient from Affinity Designer 1.7 latest saved to 8-bit TIFF, reopened in Photo and Adobe Photoshop CC 2019, and saved as JPG low (in their own definition) in both programs (10 in AD, 3 in Photoshop). Compare visual quality as well as file size. 

Below: Affinity LOW, 473 KB (484.650 byte) Huge file compared to the sad remains of the original file:

Below:  Adobe Photoshop LOW, standard, 297 KB (304.821 byte) Much better. Almost tolerable for computer games and art.

Below: Adobe Photoshop, optimized: 121 KB (124.465 byte)

Below: And just to show Photoshops lowest setting, no optimization, zero (0 out of 12). 200 KB (205.502 byte)  Now it hurts, but still better:

Below: And Affinity Photo at 10% again again for comparison:

[srg]

59 minutes ago, Jowday said:

Fact time, @srg 

JPG export in Affinity Photo has serious problems below high quality. I never (have to) go below 100% ever in a professional context, but web editors on CMS-systems that does not server scale images need optimized JPG output. Affinity Designer, Photo and Publisher works through a shared code base, so you will get equally disappointing results in all three programs.

Example. Nice smooth high quality gradient from Affinity Designer 1.7 latest saved to 8-bit TIFF, reopened in Photo and Adobe Photoshop CC 2019, and saved as JPG low (in their own definition) in both programs (10 in AD, 3 in Photoshop). Compare visual quality as w

Thank you for your post, it shows my problems in a more clear way.

I believe a program is as good as is its usability and friendliness besides its raw power. I understand that AP is still very young but certainly it should use a lot of small and big improvements.

[Jowday]

7 hours ago, srg said:

I understand that AP is still very young but certainly it should use a lot of small and big improvements.

That is what you have been told, but Serif is not. Serif was founded in 1987 and the initial release of their previous photo editor, Serif PhotoPlus was released in 1999; 20 years ago. So were are dealing with real graphic software veterans. And you could expect JPG quality to be pretty good from a company with so many years of experience.

This is the very same file exported from Serif Photoplus X7 in low quality, the result of 15 years of development. It was retired in 2015.

Does it look familiar? Indeed it does. So... Side by side - Photoplus X7 to the left, Affinity Photo 1.7 to the right. No evolution.

 

At least PhotoPlus X7 offered a preview before saving (as does Photoshop):

And again, Photoshop for comparison:

Still, nothing good happens below 50% quality. I don't know why anyone would use it. I'd rather downscale images.

[MEB]

Hi srg,
Thanks for your report. The JPG export quality was already brought up a few times on these forums. The dev teams are aware of these issues. There's quite a few methods/parameters to generate JPGs (this also applies a few other formats PNG, GIF etc) but currently Affinity doesn't take advantage nor perform any optimisations to get the very best quality/size ratio on all cases. Gradients are particularly problematic as shown in your example. We hope to address this/improve our output/export later. For now i advise you to use a third party image optimiser such as ImageOptim (Mac) JPGmini (Mac and Windows), Optimage (Mac) or RIOT (Win), etc. if you need to get the very best quality/size ratio possible.

[R C-R]

On 9/30/2019 at 6:16 AM, MEB said:

For now i advise you to use a third party image optimiser such as ImageOptim (Mac) JPGmini (Mac and Windows), Optimage (Mac) or RIOT (Win), etc. if you need to get the very best quality/size ratio possible.

I regularly use ImageOptim on just about every JPEG I intend to upload to any web site. It has a batch mode, a drag & drop UI, & other features that make this easy to do, including on Macs in a semi-automated way. It supports just about every known JPEG optimizer algorithm. It is very fast unless it is set to use the most aggressive optimizations possible, marked as "Insane" in its Optimization Speed > Optimization Level preference for good reason -- even on a fast computer it can take a very, very long time to optimize a large file.

It is also totally free.

[deeds]

These problems seem to go back to the renderer itself, as png files have problems, too. Especially if alpha is involved. To get good glows and other gradients to look their best, from AD, I have to export at 4x or 8x the size, take into Photoshop, and then export at the correct size.

[heavyside]

On 10/6/2019 at 10:33 AM, deeds said:

These problems seem to go back to the renderer itself, as png files have problems, too. Especially if alpha is involved. To get good glows and other gradients to look their best, from AD, I have to export at 4x or 8x the size, take into Photoshop, and then export at the correct size.

The whole point of purchasing AD/AP was to negate the need for Photoshop. I don't have that option, nor do I feel that should be the 'solution'. 

If the software is used for digital asset creation (AD in particular, I know AP is mostly an editing/retouching suite) - it would be nice... no, it is a requirement that the software be able to export those digital assets to a useable file. For non-vector assets, PNG and JPG are by far the most widely supported formats online (and webP isn't even an export option in AD yet).

Just to be clear, I have no problem optimising the images after export, but I need to be able to create a high quality "original" ready for optimisation.

I would hope that this issue (including introducing the export preview panel) is at the very top of the development priority list!

For any moderators or Serif developers, please take my tone as 'persuasive' not 'aggressive'. I really love the software Serif have created and I am growing in confidence in using it all the time ( having come from a near 20 year history working with Photoshop ). Keep up the great work and please keep engaging with the growing community of users. 

Thanks, Sam.