Export Layer to PDF : not one by page

[Nicolas "Gulix" Ronvel]

I've got a PDF with multiple pages. I want to allow the user to get switch on/off on the background illustrations, in order to provide a printer-friendly PDF.

I've put my Illustrations in a Layer in each page, and right now it works : in my final PDF, I've got one layer by page on which I've got my illustrations.

But what could be great would be to have one Layer only for the document. All my layers are named the same (Illustrations) and it's not really user-friendly in the pdf to unchech all the layers.

[thomaso]

On 5/29/2020 at 5:55 PM, Nicolas "Gulix" Ronvel said:

But what could be great would be to have one Layer only for the document.

Do I understand right that you want a kind of master page inside a PDF, containing 1 item only once, but appearing on every single page in the PDF?

If yes, I am afraid Serif would not have influence to the PDF structure, which by its technical specification currently doesn't know master pages.
If no, I misunderstood you, sorry.

Maybe you can support the users of your PDF in advance: You can set the print property for each layer, e.g. to not-printing, and save the PDF with this setting. This way a user does see the illustrations but won't get it printed – entirely without the user's need to hide layers before.

EDIT: note that quite a few Affinity users request already the ability to set layers to not-printing, e.g. for comments or guide objects of the layout process only. This feature would not help you in this case because then these layers would not get exported, too.

[Joachim_L]

Do you want to switch off / on ALL background illustrations in one go and preserve the other elements and you have Acrobat Pro? If yes, then ...

1. Move all your illustrations into layer of its own e.g. called "background", do this for all your pages.

2. Export as PDF e.g. Digital High quality, because this preserves the layers in the PDF.

3. Create two buttons (visible, but not printable) in the PDF.

4. Follow the instructions described here https://indesignsecrets.com/changing-layer-visibility-in-an-interactive-pdf.php

Now you can turn off / on the background illustrations PDF wide in one go.

HTH

P.S.: I attached a small demo.

layers-on-off.pdf

P.S. 2: I tried to implement a javascript toggle for switching on / off with just one button, but it seems to fail because we have no global layers in Affinity. Or perhaps I am too stupid to implement it?

[Nicolas "Gulix" Ronvel]

Thanks for the advice, I will try them out.

My goal is to get one layer for my entire document with all the illustrations, that the users can switch on/off. I already get one layer per page, which is fine. But what would be great is to get only one.

[garrettm30]

1 hour ago, Nicolas "Gulix" Ronvel said:

My goal is to get one layer for my entire document with all the illustrations, that the users can switch on/off. I already get one layer per page, which is fine. But what would be great is to get only one.

It sounds like what you are wanting is the concept of "global layers" as others have been asking for. This would be a valid use-case for such a feature.