Milomade

It is a vector - I created it in Affinity Designer. Thanks for the link - that's something I need to learn and add to my skill set. Very handy indeed! Not sure it's helpful in this respect though as it will only allow me to space things according to the boundary box of an object - but at least it will help with the horizontal alignment and speed up that process. I do a lot of templates for my jewellery in Affinity that I print off and stick to silver so that I can pierce them out with a jewellers saw, so this is super helpful. Thanks! Off to have a go and try that out.

I think my image was too small previously and that's why I was getting an error - thanks for the tip @N.P.M. Here's my template - as you can see the oak leaf is irregular in shape. I could space it 2mm apart according to the rectangular selection box around it - but that then would cause lots of offcut waste. So I'm trying to minimise the waste by arranging them like this. I just wondered if there was a setting in Affinity to determine the distance between objects. I've added a 2mm stroke around one oak leaf and then spaced manually.

It's OK - I did a quick Google - looks terribly complicated. I can't upload images - get an error every time.

Is there an online tutorial on this? Will have a look into the settings and see if I can figure this out. Thanks

Yeah - I can do the 2mm apart horizontally/vertically - but with an irregular object like an oak leaf it gets tricky. I've discovered that if I type 2mm into the stroke field, Affinity converts this into points, so I'm able to add a 2mm stroke around the elements and do it that way - it's just a bit tedious.

Hi All I need to set up a template for a laser cutter and they specify that there has to be a 2mm gap between all parts. I have an oak leaf design and want to set up the file in such a way to minimise on waste. At the moment it looks like the attached. Is there a way to evenly distribute elements so that there is a 2mm gap around each object in Affinity? Or will I have to manually move stuff around - how do I check that there is a 2mm gap all the way around each element? What's the easiest way to do this is what I'm asking. Getting an error every time I try and add an image, so can't show you the template!

Not for me - all the files I worked on today where I created slices, exported what I needed and then saved, the slices are not there on re-opening. I'm having to start from scratch which is really annoying. I've not done the latest update, so will do that now and try again to see if that makes any difference.

Is it just me, or do slices not get saved when a file is saved. I've re-opened a few of my photos to adjust the slice and re-export, to find no slices in place. I've had to re-create the slices from scratch. That's a bit annoying.

I figured out that I just need to add my width followed by the letter 'w' and it works - thank you so much - I don't think I would've found the solution without your assistance! So now I've got the 5 slices I need set up in each file and the export sizes I want for each and it's made my process so much faster. YAY!

YIPPEE! I just found this forum post - I'm not alone in my quest - just needed the correct search term: Off to try this out.

AH - that's maybe where the answer lies - no idea how to do that, but I can go and search as I think that might be a way to do it. Thanks

If I change the size of the slice in the transform panel then I won't be exporting the part of the image I want - it's the export size I want to be able to adjust - the size of the jpg that will be the outcome of exporting.

Thanks for this - I'll take a look later when I'm back in editing mode.

I have a master file that I use - I keep this large in dimension as I need to export for print as well as for screen in lots of different ratios and I don't like having multiple versions of the same image in different files. I grab the RAW file from my camera, edit and save and use this to export from. If I go into Export Persona, yes I can create slices to the exact pixel. But when I export these slices, they export at a size much larger than I require. So I understand what you're explaining, but what you demonstrate doesn't answer my query. In this example the 3:4 ratio slice is sized 2500x3125px but I'd like to export this at 1080x1350px - there doesn't seem to be an option to do this with slices. That's why I'm using the file>export option, but doing things that way requires me to crop my photo, then export and then undo the crop and re-crop for the other ratio I need and then re-export. If I could specify the export size of my slices, that would mean I could set up all my crop and export them all rather than having to change the dimensions of my file constantly. I hope that makes more sense.

I'm aware of that carl123 but I can't then set the slice to export at my desired size. When I use file>export I can input the exact size in pixels - I can't find a way to do this with the slice tool, so I'd have to export it and then open and edit the jpg to scale it down to the correct size.

Can somebody help me out here as there might be a better way to export my images. I export my images in different ratios for different platforms. For instance my online shop requires square images, whereas I use a 3:4 ratio for Instagram. Rather than create lots of saved files from the same image in different ratios, I just use one master file and use the crop tool to change the ratio before I export. After I've finished editing, I use the crop tool, set it to 1:1, crop then use the file>export option so that I can then set the dimension of the exported file to be 1080x1080px. I then go back into the file and re-crop it using the crop tool to be a 3:4 ratio and export again in the same fashion so that I can set the dimensions of the exported file. Seems a bit of a faff, so I wondered if this could be done using the Export Persona. I see there that you can create slices... but on export you can't seem to change the dimensions of the exported file and instead have to stick with the size of the master file. It would be great if I could set up a load of slices within a file and then export them all at the desired dimensions from the export persona. Hopefully I haven't made too many folk recoil in horror at my working process - I'm a jeweller, not a computer whizz.

Thanks for the reply - I thought jpgs could only be exported as RGB. I got some postcards back from the printers the other day and the images were really dark and I'm wondering if that's because they were RGB JPGS placed within designer, even though the designer file was set to CMYK and exported as a CMYK PDF.

Hi there Just looking for advice on image formats for print. I'm producing documents in Affinity Designer that need to be sent to the printer as a 'Press Ready PDF'. The documents will contain images and text - the document set up will be CMYK - the PDF export will be CMYK. So my question is what is the best format to use for images placed into the document. A jpg is RGB but that's what I've always used before, but now I wondering if I should use TIFFs instead as a TIFF is CMYK. Thanks E

Success! Hurray! Thanks!

Thanks for pointing this out - I hadn't noticed that at all - I'll change it to a solid line and see if that fixes it - thanks for checking.

I've designed a set of greetings cards in affinity - all b+w outline drawings, so when printed the kids can colour them in and send them off to friends and family. All the different designs are on separate layers - all print absolutely fine. Tonight I decided to add a rainbow design to the existing ones. Drew this out using ellipses and nothing out of the ordinary. When I go to print, it just hangs....forever! If I cancel printing I then cannot select anything in the file, can't edit, can't click on any tools or layers and simply have to shut it down. I started again with a fresh file and re-created the design - still won't print. I took the rainbow ellipses out. Took a while, but the rest of the design printed. So there's something about these elipses that will not print. My greetings cards are 120mm x 240mm and I've even tried a test to print the design onto A4 paper rather than the custom size. Again if the elipses are switched off, it prints the rest of the design just fine, if the ellipses are switched on it just hangs. I switched off my laptop and printer, restarted both, re-opened the file and the same issue occurs. My Canon printer is not low on ink and will print any other document I fire at it except this one. Does affinity hate rainbows?? SmileBoxCardsRainbows.afdesign

Apologies in the delay in replying. I installed the latest update and then the issue went away. So hoping that's that fixed now as I've had the issue with quite a few files and I thought it might be to do with the fact they were originally created in Adobe Illustrator.

I've experienced this issue ever since I started using designer and I don't know why it's happening. If I drawing a flower for example. I create a petal. I duplicate this layer, rotate it, then power duplicate it until I get a full flower. Everything looks great on screen, but when I print my document, the stroke of each duplicated element gets thicker and thicker. I've searched online, searched in the forums, but not found any solutions. Not really sure what to search for, so if this issue has already been tackled can you point me in the right direction? I've recently transitioned from Adobe Illustrator and I'm getting really frustrated with this issue as in order to create repeated designs, I'm having to draw each element individually to get it to work. Attached is a photo of my printed flower and what I see on screen. In this examples the dotted and plain lines are the issue. As I've duplicated them around, the stroke of each has increased a little each time. As I said this does NOT show up on the screen, only when I print the document. When I check the settings for each line, everything is identical.