Proper artboard support on Affinity Photo + "save to camera roll"

[heartstonks]

Hello,

Affinity photo doesn't support artboard creation, even though it very much supports artboards. I can create artboards in affinity designer and import the file into affinity photo and will then have access to duplicate/resize/move artboards, but I'd very much appreciate if Affinity Photo could do this natively!

It would be fine if this was on desktop with StudioLink to quickly open the file with the system I need, but it's a tedious and clumsy task to switch between programs... clicking save > it being saved as, for example, untitled_1  even though I've named the document > attempting to import from the companion app...

Background for why this is so important: I'm hobbyist comic artist and was previously using Procreate to make my artwork – I switched to Affinity Designer due to enjoying the brushing experience more, not having layer limits, and most importantly, having the ability to use artboards (and export in slices). Making comics for instagram means that each panel is a separate image, which is a truly useful tool to have with Artboards. Artboards act as multiple pages of my workflow, which is invaluable! Recently, however, I discovered that Affinity Designer doesn't support gaussian/perspective blur, so I switched to Affinity Photo to get that "out-of-focus" look for my art. That's when, much to my dismay, I realised that Affinity Photo doesn't support artboard creation!

I would also appreciate it if affinity photo had an option to save to camera roll... rather than some location on my files app. (Also, can we change the default name of "background" to being the name of the document???)

[walt.farrell]

A suggestion for you: Get Publisher, which would (as you own Designer and Photo) provide you with the Designer Persona from the Designer application, and the Photo Persona from the Photo application. This would let you do everything you've mentioned except exporting slices. For that, you would need to use File > Edit in Designer or File > Edit in Photo to get to one of the standalone applications that has the Export Persona. But that should be a relatively rare occurrence with any document, for your purposes, I think.

Now would be an ideal time to experiment with that, as until April 20 you can get Publisher at a 50% discount. You can also get a 90-day free trial.

Note that if you want to start a project in Publisher, and have Artboards, you should switch to the Designer Persona and use FIle > New from there. That will give you the options to create an artboard, rather than creating Pages.

Another hint: You do not need to Save before using File > Edit in Designer/Photo. Affinity will transfer your document, as it exists, to the other application even if you haven't saved. (It may be safer to Save, but it is not required, and in my experience usually not necessary.)

[heartstonks]

12 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

A suggestion for you: Get Publisher, which would (as you own Designer and Photo) provide you with the Designer Persona from the Designer application, and the Photo Persona from the Photo application. This would let you do everything you've mentioned except exporting slices. For that, you would need to use File > Edit in Designer or File > Edit in Photo to get to one of the standalone applications that has the Export Persona. But that should be a relatively rare occurrence with any document, for your purposes, I think.

Now would be an ideal time to experiment with that, as until April 20 you can get Publisher at a 50% discount. You can also get a 90-day free trial.

Note that if you want to start a project in Publisher, and have Artboards, you should switch to the Designer Persona and use FIle > New from there. That will give you the options to create an artboard, rather than creating Pages.

Another hint: You do not need to Save before using File > Edit in Designer/Photo. Affinity will transfer your document, as it exists, to the other application even if you haven't saved. (It may be safer to Save, but it is not required, and in my experience usually not necessary.)

Thank you for the reply - as I mentioned in the second paragraph of my post, I realise that this would be fine with studiolink (the feature of publisher that lets you quickly switch between personas): but Publisher doesn't exist on iPad. I also know of the File → edit in Designer/Photo trick, but that doesn't seem to be a thing in the iPad versions. 

 

I also just found out that Affinity Designer has a "gaussian blur" FX tool, so I think I'll be going back to Affinity Designer if I need artboards for my current piece. (More annoying than anything, though)

[walt.farrell]

Sorry; I didn't notice you were talking about iPad.

 

[heartstonks]

On 4/8/2020 at 12:59 PM, walt.farrell said:

Sorry; I didn't notice you were talking about iPad.

 

That's okay! The forum categories (i.e. this being filed under iPad) are not very prominent if you're sorting by new posts.