[document name as a variable in slice export]

I love the variables that I can use in the export settings for each slice. However, I miss a variable that holds the name of the document.

Whe I export slices of images from multiple documents, this would be very helpful for leter finding the source document when I recognize I a mistake when looking at one of the exported slices.

[[Multi] Duplicate slice?]

Why can't we just copy-and-paste slices from one document to another?

This would be very handy if you have to export images with similar width/height ratio from different documents.

[Export Persona / Duplicate Slice / Reference Slice / Batch Name]

Yeah, define a custom aet of default aspect ratios to be used for new slices. Like, the one that is needed for images for facebook. Or, at least, let me copy-and-paste slices from one document to another, so that I can keep the aspect ratio. (trksnoos, you can edit it by hand, just enter the px sizes in the box at the right-hand bottom corner of the Affinity Photo window.)

[Re-using aspect ratios (and px sizes) for export in multiple documents]

I have a lot of photos form a shooting. I am now editing them and finally want to export sections (details) of the images for use in a webshop and on facebook. So I need to export a square image, and one in the h:w ratio that facebook requires.

Obviously, I want to define the location and size of the slices for each photo individually (because I need to decide on the detail I want to show), but all the slices should have the same aspect ratio (and export pixel size) for all photos. I thought the export persona is great for this, but it appears quite clumsy to 1) create a slice in exactly 476x714px, then 2) scale the slice frame to fit my desired detail, then to 3) define the export width as actually 714w so that the exported image results as 476x714px.

I thought there must be smarter way to do this for each photo. Can't I create some kind of template that has a 476 : 714 aspect ration slice associated with a 714w export?

I noticed a menu called "create template for export settings" (translated from german), but it is grayed out.

How would you tackle this?

[Designer: Masked images missing in lo-res exported PDF]

Thank you Lee,

 

I tested the following:

Export to PDF for Web, disable Downsampling, disable Advanced Features --> problem remains (images missing).

Export to PDF for Print, enable downsampling (150 dpi), enable Advanced Features --> no problem (images ok).

Export to PDF for Print, enable downsampling (72 dpi), enable Advanced Features --> no problem (images ok).

Export to PDF for Print, Rasterize 72 dpi, enable downsampling (72 dpi), enable Advanced Features --> no problem (images ok).

 

Then I tried severeal other options (color model, color profiles, etc), it seems that whenever I start from the PDF (for Web) defaults, the images are missing, and whenever I start from the PDF (for Print) defaults, the images are ok.

And finally I tried:

 

Export to PDF for Web, enable Advanced Features --> no problem (images ok) !

 

However, this does not make sense to me, since some of the images work fine even without the advanced features.

 

Looks like a bug to me...

Any ideas?

[Designer: Masked images missing in lo-res exported PDF]

I included some png images, and put them behind a rectangle to mask the image.

Then I export to a PDF - and some of these images (about 50%) are missing in the low-res PDF.

The same image not behind the rectangle has no problem, and a higher-resolution PDF also does not have a problem.

 

Looks like a bug, doesn't it? Or did I miss something?

 

(Rasterizing seems to cure the problem, but that fixes my resolution, makes the file less re-useable and it causes unnecessary re-rastering when I export to various resolutions for web/print.)

 

Attached is a sample file with two images that are missing, and the 2 pdfs I created (see settings in the export persona).

 

BTW the "rasterize" function seems to use quite a low resolution. I set the document resolution to 300dpi, but when I zoom in a bit it looks lower (?).

Test.afdesign

Test-Web.pdf

Test-Druck.pdf

[** Important Designer Mac 1.5.2 Update Notice **]

For me (Austrian App-Store), the update to 1.5.3 was displayed and installed as usual.

After that, I restored the ~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinitydesigner folder from a week earlier using Time Machine, and all settings are back.

Happy again! :-)

(No need to restore the app itself, as someone suggested earlier.)

[Affinity Designer: Export presets lost - how to restore?]

Thank you, Lee,

this was exactly it!

I just restored the ~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinitydesigner folder from a week earlier, and all is back :-)

Thank you!

[Affinity Designer: Export presets lost - how to restore?]

Suddenly, all my custom export presets that I had defined have disappeared! (I remember recently changed the UI language from German to English and v.v., and I had one system crash - both should not cause this, but I could have??)

 

I am sure they should be included in my backup - which file do I need to restore from Time Machine to get them back?

 

Taking a quick look, I did not find aything suitable named SerifLabs or Affinity in my Library folder...

[Printing a detail of a drawing – why I need it, and 3 suggestions]

Thank you Alfred,

this sounds promising, but I cannot find what I need to do in step 2.

I cannot find any menu item like "clip" or "crop" (searched in "Help" after switching the UI language to english).

 

Having selected a rectangle, and after choosing Print, in the print dialog I cant find anything like "range" or "current selection". In which section of the print dialog should it appear?

 

EDIT: Ah, I am using Affinity Designer, not Affinity Photo! Sorry I did not mention that earlier!

[Printing a detail of a drawing – why I need it, and 3 suggestions]

EDIT: This is for Affinity Designer, sorry I forgot to mention in the subject!

 

When I create posters to be printed in larger formats (like DIN A1 or something), I sometimes want to print a preview on my A4 office laser printer, to get a better impression of some details (like font sizes, for instance). An A4 sheet that I can stick to the wall allows to see some things better than on the screen at my desk.

 

In this case, I dont want to print a "tiled"version of the whole drawing wasting time and 8 sheets of paper, only to find my desired detail printed prarted on two sheets that I need to tape together – I rather want the critical detail in 1:1 sale on one single page. So I am missing some option to print only a detail of the whole drawing, i.e. crop the drawing for printing (sorry for my English, is this the right term?).

 

I can imagine three locations where I would look for such functionality:

1. In the print dialog, where the preview is, I would like to drag a frame where I want the output to be cropped (very intuitive but probably more work to implement)
2. In the "Scaling and artboards" section of the print dialog, it would be nice to be able to select slices (from the export persona) as well as the ArtBoards and the whole document.
3. In the export persona, next to PNG, PDF, SVG, JPEG, etc., have an export type "Print" that I can add to a slice.

 

In my opinion, 2 and 3 would be nice and consistent with the overall concept. I could just create a slice covering the detail view I want to print, and the view would be stored in the drawing (so I can create consistent printouts of exactly the same view when modifying my poster).

Option 1 is very intuitive but has the disadvantage that the cropped area is probably not stored, but gone after each time.

 

PS. As a workaround, adding a temporary artboard (with transparent background) on the desired detail just for printing does not work, the resulting page is empty probably because the objects are not part of the actual artboard but in the artboard lying below. Of course, I can export a slice as pdf and then print the pdf, but that is not as efficient as I would think Affinity can be :-) .

 

Thanks!

BTW, great work, I really love to see how Affinity Designer gets even better with each update!

[Cut marks when printing multiple artboards on one page]

I am creating stickers to make a few product samples. I will print on transparent adhesive foils, cut the stickers out and stick them on the boxes.

 

2 stickers fit on one A4 page, so I created a file with two artboards.

 

When printing, I select "whole document", which seems to produce what I need. But it does not create the cut marks corresponding to the artboards. Instead, it only prints cut marks at the circumference of both items, but not for each of the artboards.

 

This does not make sense to me, because, given I choose to print all artboards and to print cut marks, I would assume that cut marks are printed for each artboard. Analogously to properties like bleeding that are specified for each artboard, I would assume that each artboard also has its cut marks.

 

Attached is a screenshot of the print preview, showing the black cut marks. In red, I sketched the missing cut marks that I need.

[Default location for Save As (and Export)]

First: Affinit Designer is really great - thanks to the Affinity team! (Former-time Corel user, then Inkscape, now switched to Affinity due to CMYK and better color management)

 

My request:

I often use Save-As to generate numbered versions of files (as backups, and so that when I discuss them with a client, we can refer to which version we are talking about). In the Save As dialog, it appears that AD defaults to the folder where I last saved anything. This is very tricky when working on files that lie in different folders. To me, the current behaviour is somehow unexpected, and I often accidentially store files in the wrong project's folder.

 

The same happens when exporting, to PDF for instance.

 

I can imagine that people might want to always export all PDFs to a certain folder no matter where the curent file is, so maybe we should also consider this use-case.

 

My suggestion is:

1.) Save As: Default to the folder where the current file lies.

2.) Export (pdf etc, but also for palettes): Default to the folder where I last exported the respective file type when the current document was open.

 

(Maybe its not a good idea to store file paths in documents (like the export paths necessary for 2.). For me, it would be ok if this only works for the last, say, 30 files I worked on, so it could be stored somewhere in the application options storage, not in the document files.)

 

Would this cover all use-cases?

 

Best,

Philipp

[How to use Global Colors across multiple files]

Ahhh — easy! :-)

Thank you!!

[How to use Global Colors across multiple files]

Hi Darren,

thank you very much - yes this works for me! I did not think about exporting and re-importing, which seems to be what I need.

 

I just found that if I import the palette as a Document Palette, it even preserves the Global Colors as such, which is what I had looked for.

(A side-question I have now is how to get rid of outdated/broken Application Palettes that I imported during testing? :-) )

 

The CMYK thing (Q2) was probably a mistake by me, I cannot reproduce it now – will come back here if it happens again.

 

Thanks again!

[How to use Global Colors across multiple files]

Hello!

I discovered Global Colors to be very useful. However, it seems difficult to use them across multiple documents (I was hoping for "global" to be "global" enough to at least cover my machine ;-) ).

 

Thus, I created a System palette from a palette of global colors, but when I use colors from the resulting palette in another file, the colors seem to have turned into plain regular colors, causing two disavdantages:

1) Obvious: Objects dont update when the color is chagned in the palette.

2) Less obvious: CMYK pure grayscale tones defined as 0/0/0/40 turn into a CMYK mixture of something looking like 81/80/99/26 (with non-zero CMY components), so the result in the printer's shop is probably a different gray tone.

 

So here are my questions:

Q1) How can I use global colors across files?

Q2) Is the behaviour mentioned in 2) expected (and why?), or is it a bug?

 

Thanks,

Philipp

[Affinity Designer Customer Beta (1.3.5.12 - RC2)]

When i start the beta, it tells me I need an AppStore version installed, and opens the app store.

But I do have the AppStore version installed, in fact it is running right now.

 

Can this be because I have moved Affinity Designer in a subfolder of my Applications folder?

 

Ok that indeed seems to be the cause (thanks A_B_C !).

So my suggestion would be to have beta versions also look for the paid version in the folder where the beta currently resides...

[Affinity Designer Customer Beta (1.3.5.12 - RC2)]

When i start the beta, it tells me I need an AppStore version installed, and opens the app store.

But I do have the AppStore version installed, in fact it is running right now.

 

Can this be because I have moved Affinity Designer in a subfolder of my Applications folder?