What is the best way to create thumbnail images of your content?

[Kris123456]

I have affinity publisher and affinity photo (desktop, windows 10).  In publisher, I am putting together a book/journal.  I would like to make "thumbnails" of some of the internal pages, to put on the last page in order to display what the internal pages look like.  Is there a way to generate thumbnail version of your pages, other than actually changing the size of your pages?

[Old Bruce]

You could try using screen shots. Or you could open the document in Photo and get the page you want then go to the export persona and export that spread and resize it to what you want.

[GarryP]

You should also be able to Place your document inside itself (linked or embedded).
I’ve never done this myself with a real publication so I don’t know how well it works in practice, but a quick test (see attached image) allowed me to do it so it might be worth experimenting with.

[Move Along People]

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[thomaso]

6 hours ago, GarryP said:

You should also be able to Place your document inside itself (linked or embedded).
I’ve never done this myself with a real publication so I don’t know how well it works in practice,

I work with a placed .afpub as linked inside itself for quite a while and continue working in it, altering the linked spread included. – It works like a charm without any harm.
(Although I'd expect problems, similar to an endless mirror, e.g. if you take a video of a screen showing its recording simultaneously)

Just two things:
– The linked .afpub will not get updated unless you save. After save you get the update-info in the upper right corner.
– APub may ask twice to save the .afpub when you close it, because "the document has been modified" even if just saved. I guess because after the first save the placed version gets updated and therefore requires another save because of the .afpub being changed by the update. Quite conscious and normal this way.

 

Another approach is to export all pages as JPGs + place them linked as thumbnails.
Advantages: placing a bunch of page-thumbnails is much easier/faster as single image files – than the 1 linked .afpub, which requires to select the displayed pages from the toolbar menu again and again for every single thumbnail.
Disadvantage: you might need to export pages again to get a change on them become visible in the thumbnails. (whereas hardly every change is visible in small thumbnail size).

• In case you export as JPG (or PNG) again for layout updates just replace the previously exported images to get them updated as thumbnail resources automatically.
• Therefore export them initially with the .afpub's filename. (they become auto-numbers added before the suffix)

[Kris123456]

Exporting and placing them works really well for me.  I can get all the images the same size, easily decide on the layout (how many per row), etc.  I can just make that page after the entire document is done.  

Thank you all.  What a wonderful and supportive community this is.  Maybe some day I will be able to contribute some ideas on how to get things done.  For now, I will let my newbiness show :)