davidlower8

@MEB hey did you manage to check those files I sent you?

Ok it has been a week since this post and I believe this solution has indeed fixed the problem. Thank you all for your input.

Hi @MEB ok so I have sent the file. I have also sent a more modern file with a workflow I use frequently with a better awareness of how Affinity works. Again the main issue is being able to work without worrying if a layer is in full pixels and then being able to upload the various assets/slices. I want to avoid the gap that export persona creates with slices. If it is a workflow issue then fantastic, hopefully you will be able to enlighten me. Please note I have already had a couple of these threads before with other moderators telling me what I should do. It does not work. I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you. The video in the beginning thread highlights the issue nicely. Cheers.

@Ben I exported the document as a whole pdf document from the main menu. Not with export persona or multiple slices. If it is a workflow issue I’d love to know how to fix it. But from my understanding having tried to fix this issue over multiple threads it is to do with affinity exporting to whole pixels when my designs are perhaps not. As I showed in the video at the very beginning.

@Ben this was a digital brochure, so print was not needed. Also this brochure was exported as a whole document as a pdf (did not use export persona). I do all my work on art boards. Regardless the issue remains. Doesn’t matter the export or way I work. The simple fact is if I export anything in affinity that is not whole pixels affinity will export to the nearest whole pixel. That for me is broken and introducing ‘stuff’ I don’t want. Most of my work is making designs for websites and various other things. So I want to be able to export my assets simply with export persona for the various sizes and file types. It’s really great for that.

A clear example of this issue can be found here. https://abigaillower.com. Scroll down to about section and click on brochure button (it’s a large file so be patient). On this brochure you can see throughout, multiple thin white lines surrounding the different pages at varying degrees. Some on the side, some on top and other slides none at all. This is all because export persona is rounding up to the nearest solid pixel for every page/slide and therefore introducing a gap. I haven’t fixed it yet because I simply have not got the time to go into every layer and correct everything to solid pixels. There’s over 200 hundred layers.

@Ben I agree with your last assessment. Export persona needs to export images without this gap. For me it really doesn’t matter if it’s full pixels, in fact I think it’s better to not have full pixels as you just pointed out. But when you make a black and white brochure and every single page has a thin white edge, it’s highly contrasting. So affinity should program the export persona to export precisely the layer or round up the layer to full pixels. Either way the current setup is clearly broken.

Hey guys sorry for the delay in getting back to you all. @SrPx I only tried photoshop but limited amounts. I was not using it for the current workflow I am using affinity for. I am thinking I may have named this thread incorrectly. The real issue as @ashf pointed out is the 1px gap that export persona exports slices. If you export png with transparent backgrounds or none contrasting backgrounds you’re unlikely to see the problem. The issue is I can’t work in solid pixels. There is NO setting to do this. Forced pixel alignment and moving whole pixels is technically correct in their functionality. But it means every layer never works to whole pixels. As a result export persona always round up to nearest pixel. So there is always a gap between actually image and the slice dimensions the persona makes. So for me this means I can not work in solid pixels which really makes those other features somewhat pointless to have. I am wondering if there is a way to create whole pixel documents?

@SrPx thanks for the response buddy. Setting the decimal place to zero unfortunately achieves nothing. In essence all it is doing is hiding the decimal places so you can’t see them. But under the hood it is still introducing fractured pixels. So ultimately the pixel persona will still export slices with a 1px gap. This is the biggest grip for me because it is so freaking obvious when uploading these slices to client websites. Your other solution is a nice idea (thanks for that) but again it far more work than it should be. I don’t want to have to consciously be aware that my various layers are being contained in boxes. It completely defeats the simplisticty that affinity is suppose to be boasting. Until affinity decide to fix this I can’t see a walk around. As this has been a problem since launch (2014) and they have done nothing about it, does sadden me. I was / am a huge fan of affinity. But the work flow to export all my slices, symbols, images etc from my designs is simply making this a product I can’t use anymore. For messing around and chilling it’s fantastic. But for real client work uploading all your artwork with a white 1px gap is tragic. It even did it for a professional brochure I made (26 pages) with hundreds of layers. You can imagine my frustration when I had to refactor every single layer making sure both the physical size of the layer was solid pixels only, but also the position on the art board being solid pixels. If any one of those 4 measurements has a fractured pixel then it will upload the entire slice with a 1px gap. It is actually a really shocking error/bug and I can’t believe this hasn’t been given more light. thanks for the input

Hey I want to flag this bug/issue again since it is still not being address or fixed and is creating a workflow in affinity that I can no longer continue to use. Please see video below of the example of how force pixel alignment does not work. It is becoming a serious headache, namly the export persona constantly exporting images with a 1px gap. I have since, through shear perservance learned the work flow to get around this problem. Forced pixel alignment should do what it says and the whole document works precisely on whole pixels regardless of scale, snapping or repositioning. Perhaps affinity should even add this as a clear option when creating a document in the first place. Add a tick box option next to the 'document units' dropdown menu and call it 'work with whole pixels'. Then have the additonal forced pixel button in the toolbar. My problem I face now is when a scale an object, let's say a simple piece of text. It does not scale to whole pixels. It introduces the fractured pixels, even though the whole documnent is working in forced pixel alignment. Due to this I have to constantly monitor and be aware of resizing everything to make sure it is working in full pixels. Is there a way when I scale an object, ie grabbing the blue handle points and increasing or decreasing its size, while maintaining full pixels? This would help massively on my end in solving how affinity works. Like others though this is really beginning to dent my ability to use Designer going forward. It is literally adding hours to my work flow. https://www.loom.com/share/d4d68bbd50ac4a68892ca40852a5cf72

@Chris B Ok so have openGraph on but metal off. I was having issues and metal was 'on' so should I assume to now keep it off? Or can I flip it with metal on and openGraph off?

Thank you very much for those tips @Morten_Hjort and @Chris B. I will do that and see how it goes. Should I turn off openGraph. What does that do exactly and the other 3 settings there? Metal compute was on by default so I have turned it off since performance has been shoddy. It's great that this has boiled down to a simple setting. Thanks

Brilliant work. I think they look fantastic. Great job @TheEarnestBunbury

Hey, Is anyone else experiencing really slow, buggy performance from affinity designer on mac (desktop). Since the update to 1.7 the app is either really struggling or is using so much of my machine's resources. This was never a problem before. I just up and went, didn't matter how many files I had open or their sizes. Now I can't even have two open. What ends up happening is the machine slows down to a point the app simply crashes or I have to restart my mac. Like I say this was never a problem before so I am very skeptical to blame my machine. For example this morning in the space of just 1 hour I have had to force quit the app 3 times. Every day I am having to force quit and/or restart my computer. With the 'forced pixel alignment' issue, this app is regretably becoming unusuable, which breaks my heart because I love these products.

I would like to jump into this thread since it is one of the more expressive and factoral threads on this repeated issue. I have had a serious headache with this problem myself, namly the export persona constantly exporting images with a 1px gap. I have since, through shear perservance learned the work flow to get around this problem. I do agree force pixel alignment should do what it says and the whole document works precisely on whole pixels regardless of scale, snapping or repositioning. Perhaps affinity should even add this as a clear option when creating a document in the first place. Add a tick box option next to the 'document units' dropdown menu and call it 'work with whole pixels'. Then have the additonal force pixel button in the toolbar. My problem I face now is when a scale an object, let's say a simple piece of text. It does not scale to whole pixels. It introduces the stupid fractured pixels, even though the whole docuemnt is working in forced pixel alignment. Due to this I have to constantly monitor and be aware of resizing everything to make sure it is working in full pixels. Is there a way when I scale an object, ie grabbing the blue handle points and increasing or decreasing its size, while maintaining full pixels? This would help massively on my end in solving how affinity works. Like others though this is really beginning to dent my ability to use Designer going forward. It is literally adding hours to my work flow. https://www.loom.com/share/d4d68bbd50ac4a68892ca40852a5cf72

Thanks @PMudditt and @Alfred for this. @PMudditt I did not notice that feature before. I am almost certain it did not exist. Admittedly it was a good 6 months or more before I last checked. I just remember I couldn't get anything to work for ages. Anyway that feature worked very well. I imported all my fonts relatively painlessly. I have not noticed a lag in performance which is great. @Alfred I tried setting up individual profiles and although it worked it was too painful to do for 400-500 fonts. At the moment I only need the fonts for affinity designer. But it is a nice idea and useful to know. Thanks for the help everyone.

Hi, I have nearly 300 fonts on my Mac, which I would like to use on my iPad versions of the software (photo and affinity). Does anyone know how I can import all these fonts from Mac to iPad? That would be great help. Thanks. Ps I have tried using an app called all fonts from iPad. But I was not able to get it to work. Also to note my fonts are all contained within the font book folder as the default on the Mac.

@v_kyr Hey I saw your other post with the same question. Thank you for your help. That certainly solves the problem and gives more flexibility.

@v_kyr Thank you for your solution - I had no idea you could actually phyiscally add the values there (I thought the list was the predefined values). What a great revelation. Thank you so much. @>|< This solution was also brilliant. It turned out I did indeed have 144dpi selected and when I changed document to 72dpi it fixed the issue. THANK YOU. @walt.farrell Thank you as well for your help. I was on mac / affinity designer. The 1x, 2x, 3x is designed with the idea that you create an original image and then for the next x value it doubles the size of original image. In HTML you have the ability to do that same - add an x value to original image. In short it basically means if a device that has 3 or 4 times more pixels than a standard display you can give them a 3x or 4x image and it will display the same phyiscal dimensions, without being pixelated. So typical retina screen would be 2x. But some phones are 3x and even 4x. Forgive me if you already knew this info. Thank you everyone your help. Really appreciate it. This has been bugging me for months.

@R C-R This is slightly off top but relevant. You have been such a great help I am wondering if you can continue your help. I am having this issue. As you can see I am exporting 3 images at 700x367px (screenshot). I have selected them all as jpeg with 1x and 2x option. Yet when I export 1x (normal version) the output is 350x183px and 2x is 700x367px. Why is it exporting half the size for 1x? Do you know?

Here @R C-R is a new screenshot. Note it is the same as the transform panel in export persona. It is why I didn't have a preference over which version to select. I did notice that it was displaying the decimal value for pixel. I have since fixed that as you can see in the screenshot. However the slice is still displaying 1px larger. Very strange

So here is the screenshot you requested @R C-R. Note I made a duplicate vector and the height of vector is 367px. In the export persona (screenshot) you can see it is 368 and you can see the 1px difference at the bottom (screenshot). Does this help? Thanks Note: The unit pixels thing you mentioned is indeed set to 1.

@R C-R Yeah that seems to have fixed it maybe. It is definitely better working with fixed pixels, especially if you are exporting specific sizes frequently. However just playing with it now. I made a new vector and it added a pixel to the top, but correct dimensions on the sides. Not sure why it would do that. I'll keep an eye on this and see if it improves. I'll report back if it continues to be an issue. At the moment it does still seem off. Thanks for the help.

@R C-R I think what you have suggested is probably the issue. It certainly sounds logical. I did think it was something to do with pixel alignment (because this issue happens randomly). I'll check your suggestion and get back to you. BIG thank you for your time

@walt.farrell Hey did you manage to have any time to look at this question. I am also wondering if you could help me on a smaller issue, but similar theme. When I export a picture of 700x400px (for example). I click on the + to create a 2x and a 3x size (3 images in total). When I export, sometimes I get the original at 350x200px and 2x version at 700x400px and the 3x version at 1400x800px. Do you know why export persona is shrinking my first original file to half the size? It means now I have to exporting a x4 version and then rename the files to the correct naming onced exported.