"Align to bleed" option in Align panel

[MarcT]

Hi everybody !

In Align panel... why not also offer "Align to bleed" ?

It would be very helpful.

No ? Thanks.

Mac OS : 10.15.4

Affinity Publisher : 1.8.2 (french version)

Bye.

Edited April 1, 2020 by MarcT

[Pšenda]

26 minutes ago, MarcT said:

It would be very helpful.

No ?

For me no.

I find it strange to visually align objects to something that is not visible.

[MarcT]

I understand what you mean.

Why I think this option is a good idea ?

If I have a colored block which must touch the bleeds, I'm currently obliged to align the block on the page or on the board, to then resize or move the block manually. It's a waste of time.

You know what I mean ? 

Edited April 1, 2020 by MarcT

[Pšenda]

18 minutes ago, MarcT said:

which must touch the bleeds

This is what I do not understand, why something should touch "exactly" bleeding :-)

[thomaso]

5 hours ago, MarcT said:

It's a waste of time.

Instead of 1.) opening the dialog window + 2.) choosing an align direction + 3.) opening the pull-down menu + 4.) selecting an option (page, bleed etc.) ...

... you alternatively can shorter just 1.) align the objects with a single click on the wanted toolbar icon and 2.) move them manually with the snapping option activated.

I can't imagine a waste of time in a workflow with less mouse clicks.

[MEB]

Or enable the Show Alignment Handles in the context toolbar (Move Tool selected) and use them to align all objects to the Bleed.

[MarcT]

15 hours ago, Pšenda said:

This is what I do not understand, why something should touch "exactly" bleeding 🙂

I always stuck the elements on the bleeds to avoid unpleasant surprises. Bad idea ? You will probably say that I'm a little maniac ! 🤣

12 hours ago, thomaso said:

Instead of 1.) opening the dialog window + 2.) choosing an align direction + 3.) opening the pull-down menu + 4.) selecting an option (page, bleed etc.) ...

... you alternatively can shorter just 1.) align the objects with a single click on the wanted toolbar icon and 2.) move them manually with the snapping option activated.

It's indeed an alternative solution that I use. But I often find errors in alignment on the bleeds since the positioning is done by hand (even with the magnetism activated). For me, having an option "Align on bleeds" in Align panel would be the best solution. That would be a kind of guarantee that everything is OK ... everything is perfectly positioned.

Note that the Align panel should also be a floating panel (I didn't find this panel in View > Studio) and that the type of alignment (on the page, on the board, on the margin page, ...) be kept in memory to save even more time (what Adobe Indesign offers).

12 hours ago, thomaso said:

I can't imagine a waste of time in a workflow with less mouse clicks.

Managing everything manually is a waste of time when there are a lot of elements to position on more 150 pages. Even if I try to optimize everything by using the models as much as possible.

The last option I use is to modify X and Y coordinates positioning (and the transformation origin) of the elements to be sure that they are correctly positioned. I thus have negative values (X: -5mm / Y: - 5mm). But here too it takes a long time to check these parameters.

12 hours ago, MEB said:

Or enable the Show Alignment Handles in the context toolbar (Move Tool selected) and use them to align all objects to the Bleed.

Thank you for this option which I didn't know. But the concern is more or less the same as with magnetism (solution proposed by @thomaso). Even if it's a really interesting option.

Edited April 2, 2020 by MarcT

[thomaso]

2 hours ago, MarcT said:

14 hours ago, thomaso said:

I can't imagine a waste of time in a workflow with less mouse clicks.

Managing everything manually is a waste of time when there are a lot of elements to position on more 150 pages. 

Again, also your appreciated workflow of 4 steps is done manually – wheras a shorter workflow is not influencing its efficiency even if you do it 150 times. But then I personally would prefer even more a way with less mouse clicks. Maybe you mentally (and therefore manually) just still stick in a workflow you are used from InDesign, regardless of this way's efficiency. The way mentioned by MEB appears very elegant and efficient to me.

Converning object moves without dragging but numerically in the Transform Panel: If you set the zero position of your document ruler at the bleed than clicking on X and typing 0 (not "– 5") will move the objects to the bleed. Unfortunately in Affinity the ruler doesn't start on the right of facing pages with 0 but continues from left pages. To surround this issue you could first check/adjust all left, and then, with moved ruler origin, all right pages.

2 hours ago, MarcT said:

But I often find errors in alignment on the bleeds since the positioning is done by hand (even with the magnetism activated)

Errors? Do you mean it often doesn't snap at all – or do you mean you release the mouse in an unwanted moment? Possibly you might increase the default snapping distance.

However, it appears you haven't worked a lot in APub yet and therefore automatically miss your familiar behavior. It reminds me to my switch from Quark to ID many years ago: I was used to the context related dialog window (only 1 at a time) and therefore ID's large number of panels disturbed me ("why did people develope this?"). I worked for years in ID only and soon I felt its UI as perfect. Nowadays, if I open ID occasionally, it appears a little strange to me. – Maniac? It is quite much a matter of habits.

If Affinity will have the option for scripting implemented then you might find a way to place your objects at bleed with 1 click only, or even automatically. With the years in ID I used about a dozen scripts, some of them daily.

[Move Along People]

-

[GRAFKOM]

Why argue?
It's enough for Serif to put the option Align to Bleed, and everyone who wants to use it - will benefit.
Others may never need it.
I personally in my company creating business card designs, leaflets etc. for the printing house, I would gladly use this option.
And I'm still struggling to make the alignment panel also a dock window.

[thomaso]

20 minutes ago, GRAFKOM said:

Why argue?
It's enough for Serif to put the option

Because the number of feature requests exceeds the available workforce/hours at Serif, so improvements happen selective?
Because there exist workflows to achieve the same result?
Because bugs are preferred over feature requests?
Because their is no plan to copy a known UI?

[GRAFKOM]

3 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Because the number of feature requests exceeds the available workforce/hours at Serif, so improvements happen selective?
Because there exist workflows to achieve the same result?
Because bugs are preferred over feature requests?
Because their is no plan to copy a known UI?

Do you write on behalf of Serif?

[Patrick Connor]

I will bring this sensible suggestion to the attention of the developers, thank you @MarcT

[MarcT]

20 hours ago, thomaso said:

Again, also your appreciated workflow of 4 steps is done manually – wheras a shorter workflow is not influencing its efficiency even if you do it 150 times. But then I personally would prefer even more a way with less mouse clicks.

In this kind of professional application, there are always several ways to do a single action. If I follow your logic, the option of alignment on the page / board should not exist ... after all we could align the objects between them and move them manually on the page / board ... because according to you that is faster. In my workflow "Align to bleeds" option would help me a lot.

20 hours ago, thomaso said:

Maybe you mentally (and therefore manually) just still stick in a workflow you are used from InDesign, regardless of this way's efficiency.

Adobe Indesign doesn't offer the "Align to bleeds" option. On the other hand, in Adobe Indesign it's possible to detach the "Align" panel. I think this is a good idea. It's not about copying Adobe Indesign 100%, but only adapting good ideas.

20 hours ago, thomaso said:

Converning object moves without dragging but numerically in the Transform Panel: If you set the zero position of your document ruler at the bleed than clicking on X and typing 0 (not "– 5") will move the objects to the bleed.

I know this possibility. But for personal reasons, I prefer to have negative information.

By leaving the rule in its default position, I'm sure that the elements in negative position (X : -5mm / Y : -5mm) are in the requested position. If I put the point 0 in the wrong place (for lack of attention, for example), the positioning of my elements may be distorted ... because it's impossible to put the point 0 precisely : it's not possible to put the point 0 according to precise coordinates according to its previous position ... which would be useful. The only solution would be by using magnetism on landmarks / objects positioned before modifying point 0. Even if in my case there would still be a magnetism because I move the point only to the edge of the document. My explanation is rather valid if we wanted to put the point 0 in a more precise place where there would be - by default - no landmark / object to help positioning.

Finally, last very important point: moving point 0 in a model (master page) will not be repeated on the pages that apply this model ! Which makes moving almost useless.

20 hours ago, haakoo said:

Set the shape object(colored block) on a masterpage and adjust it to fill/touch the bleed area
Apply to all pages without overwriting the other masterpages.
This way it always touches the bleed on every page.
Edit linked to have it adjust color or whatever on all pages
Edit detached to have a single page edit 

I know all of these possibilities. It works very well in a rigid page structure, where all the pages look the same. There it's necessary to modify that a few details to arrive at an interesting result. It's not my case. Almost no page is alike. In my case, I make a product catalog of more than 150 pages where no image has the same size / positioning from one page to another. Even if there is a certain structure (grid, baseline, paragraph / character styles, ...) to unify the entire catalog.

20 hours ago, GRAFKOM said:

Why argue?
It's enough for Serif to put the option Align to Bleed, and everyone who wants to use it - will benefit.
Others may never need it.
I personally in my company creating business card designs, leaflets etc. for the printing house, I would gladly use this option.
And I'm still struggling to make the alignment panel also a dock window.

Like what I'm not the only one ! 😉

18 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

I will bring this sensible suggestion to the attention of the developers, thank you @MarcT

Great, good news! Thank you ! @Patrick Connor

Edited April 3, 2020 by MarcT

[thomaso]

16 hours ago, MarcT said:

If I follow your logic,

Marc, my replies were based on your thought ...

On 4/1/2020 at 10:05 PM, thomaso said:

  On 4/1/2020 at 6:57 PM, MarcT said:

It's a waste of time.

Time efficiency is of course not the only relevant aspect to prefer one workflow to another. Also, my suggestions and thoughts were meant as help to understand the existing workflow options and possible, reasonable reasons in the developer view that may have prevented specific improvements so far - not to avoid a feature request.

 

16 hours ago, MarcT said:

Finally, last very important point: moving point 0 in a model (master page) will not be repeated on the pages that apply this model ! Which makes moving almost useless.

Note that in APub you can apply more than 1 master to both master and document pages. Therefore a custom ruler origin of a master shouldn't appear on a document page.*  Furthermore you can have different page sizes within one document, even different for master and document pages, therefore a custom ruler position on one document page isn't transferred to other pages. This way moving the ruler origin rather isn't "almost useless" but a sensible adjustment which needs sensitive attention and the users memory.
EDIT: * as long the ruler origin cannot be set relative to a spreads dimension (e.g. bleed, spine, ...) but absolute only

No question here, at the ruler only, still is room for improvement, too, e.g. an UI to set the ruler origin numerically or to set it for a bunch of selected page icons in pages panel, or an UI to reset the origin back to default for the entire document with 1 click. Not to forget the fix of the varying subdivision units within the ruler, which currently changes with zoom levels and can make it hard to check a position without additional calculation. ... – However, there are already so many inquiries, suggestions and complaints that it may be more successful ('sensible') to ask for the nice-to-have but not essential ones, only after a few later versions of the app.
 

Edited April 4, 2020 by thomaso