(Re) Naming slices Affinity Photo Export Persona not working

[All Media Lab]

Hi,

I tried everything from the documentation but no luck to change a slice name! Only @2x @3x etc. seem to work but 1200w or any other naming doesn't!

When I have:

img-original.jpg

And I go to the Export Persona for 5 slice sizes. how do I get the slice names changed in:

img-1200px-wide.jpg

img-2000px-wide.jpg

img-4000px-wide.jpg

img-5000px-wide.jpg

img-6000px-wide.jpg

Regards & Thanks,

David

[All Media Lab]

nobody?

[carl123]

You can define your own exported slices file name format by combining system and users variables within the Export Persona

In the example shown a file called cat.jpg at 1200px wide will export a slice with the file name...

cat-1200px-wide.jpg

if exported at 2000px wide it will export with the file name

cat-2000px-wide.jpg 

etc
etc
etc

 

[All Media Lab]

Thanks Carl,

I did try that of course before, but it doesn't seem to work.

[carl123]

It works for me in the current 1.8 beta

Don't have the time today to test it in the 1.7 released version, maybe tomorrow 

[All Media Lab]

Despite the fact that I changed the name it doesn't change tried the Beta so I must do something wrong! The panel is reopened after name change.

[carl123]

You're doing it wrong.

Try to match mine.

Have to go now, back tomorrow

[Old Bruce]

You have no value for "othername". More importantly is that fact that you haven't put the 'tokens' in the Path components part of the dialog, just drag them in. Note that hyphens and spaces must be made first in the User Variables section.

[All Media Lab]

OK now I understand it! Thanks a lot!

What a complicated way of doing something so simple!

[R C-R]

9 hours ago, All Media Lab said:

What a complicated way of doing something so simple!

FWIW, you don't have to create user variables & assign values to them to add punctuation & text to slice names. Just type them directly into the path components field, like this:

But for example, if you wanted to use " px-wide" in several slice names, you could define one user variable with that entire text string (including the space if you want) for its value & use it in each of them.

EDIT: For no good reason that I can see, the User variable name only takes single characters, & while the value field will take more than one character, it only takes them one at a time, so to avoid the maddening process of reselecting that field over & over to add each character, I suggest entering the text somewhere else that takes text strings (TextEdit, art or frame text in the Affinity file, whatever) & copying that & pasting it into the value field.

Equally frustrating, user variables & names are not (as far as I can tell) 'global' in any sense, so they need to be entered separately for each slice!  At least the copy/paste trick makes that a bit less painful, but all things considered, I don't see the point in using User variables at all. 

EDIT 2: I just discovered that the User variable name field also works with the copy/paste trick to create variable names longer than a single character, but it still seems pointless to use them.

EDIT 3: <sigh> Eventually I will learn to do all my tests before posting but anyway, in the new Mac AP 1.8.0.163 customer beta at least the maddening one-character at a time thing is no longer an issue, so some progress on that is being made, but user variables still seem not to be global so there is more to do ... assuming I have not missed something.

[carl123]

2 hours ago, R C-R said:

Equally frustrating, user variables & names are not (as far as I can tell) 'global' in any sense, so they need to be entered separately for each slice! 

Once you have set up one slice with the system, user variables, names etc you want, you can create a preset and apply that to all other slices at once

What you cant do is copy the system, user variables, names etc from one particular size of a slice to another particular size of the same slice.

 

 

 

 

 

11 hours ago, All Media Lab said:

What a complicated way of doing something so simple!

Totally agree, this entire function is not in any way user-friendly or intuitive and the lack of documentation/examples makes it a function most users would never use. Which is a shame as it can be useful/powerful in some situations, it just has a steep learning curve in its current implementation.

[markw]

6 hours ago, carl123 said:

Once you have set up one slice with the system, user variables, names etc you want, you can create a preset and apply that to all other slices at once

What you cant do is copy the system, user variables, names etc from one particular size of a slice to another particular size of the same slice.

 

Totally agree, this entire function is not in any way user-friendly or intuitive and the lack of documentation/examples makes it a function most users would never use. Which is a shame as it can be useful/powerful in some situations, it just has a steep learning curve in its current implementation.

I also totally agree with you on this Carl.
Hopefully someone at Serif will take the time to overhaul this potentially powerful export tool some time and make it more user friendly.

[R C-R]

7 hours ago, carl123 said:

Once you have set up one slice with the system, user variables, names etc you want, you can create a preset and apply that to all other slices at once

What you cant do is copy the system, user variables, names etc from one particular size of a slice to another particular size of the same slice.

i was (more or less) aware of how the preset capability works, but it still seems oddly limiting that user variables, once defined in any slice instance, are not automatically available in all others. Besides, unless I am still missing something, so-called "User variables" are really just "User text constants" -- just text strings that can't be combined with any of the built-in variable tokens or math operators to create something like "[Width]*[Height] total pixels" or anything else that actually varies from slice to slice.

If nothing else, better documentation of this feature would be nice.