Rachel75

That’s disappointing. I’m confused because I see pictures on other websites and blogs that are of great quality and I don’t understand how they are getting that. Thank you @GarryP and @NotMyFault for taking the time to answer my questions, it’s very appreciated.

Or what if I saved it as a pdf or svg, would that even work? Also, if it would work, would it be a big file size that could potentially slow a website down?

Thank you for the explanation. So for the Pinterest cover photo they recommend that it be at least 800 x 450 pixels so that’s what I made the document size as. Should I have made it much bigger that way it would be shrinking down once I uploaded it to Pinterest, or are you saying I should increase the DPI? If I should make the document bigger, how much bigger would you recommend? If I should make the DPI higher, how high would you recommend?

I'm a complete newbie when it comes to playing around with images in affinity but I was trying to make a collage for a Pinterest cover photo and the pictures were pretty small so I’m pretty sure they weren’t being enlarged. It was 15 different photos on a 800x450 pixel document. On affinity the pictures look great, but after they are uploaded as a JPEG and I open the file it looks terrible. What am I doing wrong? It also looks horrible saved as an affinity file. I’ll also attach a screen shot of what it looks like before it’s saved or exported. Should I be saving this as a PNG instead? If so, wouldn’t a PNG take up a lot of space on a website and slow it down? I’m asking because I also plan to use these photos on a blog I’m creating and I don’t want to slow the speed of the site. Every JPEG I’ve exported, even outside of affinity, looks terrible and it didn’t start that way. reaping-revival-pinterest-cover.afdesign

Oh wow, I feel dumb. Thank you for taking the time to help!

Sorry, I didn’t add it because my problem isn’t with the existing curves in the file. The problem occurs when I try to create a new design (snowflake) and I attempt to use the shape tool, pen tool, and pencil tool and the stroke will not allow me to change its size and remains at zero despite it showing a bigger number for the stroke size. When you open the file just try to use those tool off on the side. I don’t know if it’s something I’ve done because I opened a new file and the stroke works, but it continues to not work on this file. Thanks. strokeproblem.afdesign

My stroke stays invisible, or as 0, no matter which tool I use whether it’s the pen, shapes, pencil, ect. No matter what I adjust the size of the stroke to, it remains at 0 even though it shows that I set it to 14. I can’t complete any of my work. I’ve tried closing out the app and restarting my IPad but the problem remains. Please help, thank you!

I am trying to add all the words and letters together (for the object in the middle of the screen, disregard the one to the right) so that it is one curve. I will be cutting this out of wood with a laser printer so I need it to all be connected. I do this a lot, but sometimes I run into a problem where some of the curves disappear or the curve changes and just won’t add correctly. Right now I have all the letters for each word added together except the “w” on Matthew. That’s where my problem starts. Once I get the “w” to add correctly, I need to add all the words together to make one solid shape. Can someone help me to understand what I’m doing wrong? Thanks! celiachristmasornament2022.afdesign

@DM1thank you, that’s a real bummer, thanks for the input I appreciate it!

I just realized that if I rasterize it, and save it as a PNG rather than a PDF, it will upload to the glowforge without a mask, but I am still curious to know if there is a way to vectorize the vector paint brush strokes because using raster images is not desirable.

I made these designs to be cut and engraved with a laser, specifically a glowforge that cannot process masks. I really want my design to include the vector brush paths, but every time I upload the design to the glowforge it says that it’s a mask. I tried to rasterize it (because glowforge can process raster images), but even then it says there is a mask. Is there a way to remove the mask or a way to make these vector brush strokes a true vector image to where I can do an expand stroke command and have the stroke actually outlining the brush paths the same way it would any other vector? I don’t really understand masks, so forgive me if my question doesn’t make sense.

@Alfred oh ok, that’s very good to know. Thank you so much, all of the information you shared has been very helpful.

@Alfredok I’m going to measure the watch band, get it to the correct size, and then give it a try. I hope this doesn’t sound too stupid, but if I make the vector version bigger than what’s needed to engrave with the laser, then once I rasterize it and upload it to the laser, I will only have to scale the image down, therefore I shouldn’t loose quality as long as I’m only scaling down, correct? Forgive my ignorance, I would just rather ask than going through all the trouble of finding out through trial and error, and making the vector image a good bit larger rather than the exact size would be easier and more useful for me.

@Alfred it can laser raster images (I wasn’t thinking of this at first because I avoid raster images when engraving designs like this), the only problem with it is as I scale the image I’ll loose quality, but at this point I’m willing to try it to see how it will come out, that is only if the excess parts of the shapes will be even with the watch band of course.

@AlfredI understand. What if I rasterized it, would that work?