Distorted photo in Publisher when I try to place it while maintaining aspect ratio

[AntiqueFlaneur]

I'm trying to place the attached photo into a Publisher document. I click on the place image tool menu bar item, select this photo, hold down shift and attempt to drag it to the right size while maintaining the aspect ratio. 

The end result looks like the screenshot I've attached. It doesn't maintains its aspect ratio, and also adds in weird bits of the original unedited photo. 

What can I do about this?

 

Fig2.afphoto

[walt.farrell]

By default, if you hold Shift while dragging an image to size it while Placing it, you override the aspect ratio and allow it to distort.

Just drag, without holding Shift.

This is a consequence of Affinity maintaining the aspect ratio automatically for objects (such as images) that have a defined aspect ratio. For such an object, you use Shift if you want to be able to distort the object, but it can be confusing until you get used to the changing behavior of Shift. For objects without a defined aspect ratio, holding Shift will maintain the current aspect ratio.

You can force consistent handling if you want:

 

[AntiqueFlaneur]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

Quote

 

By default, if you hold Shift while dragging an image to size it while Placing it, you override the aspect ratio and allow it to distort.

Just drag, without holding Shift.

 

 

@walt.farrell When I do this without shift I still get a distorded image that seems to have elements of the original unedited photo.  The page fold you see is part of the original scan that I edited out of the photo previously.  

 

[walt.farrell]

40 minutes ago, AntiqueFlaneur said:

When I do this without shift I still get a distorded image that seems to have elements of the original unedited photo.  The page fold you see is part of the original scan that I edited out of the photo previously

That's not distorted. The usable part of the image has the correct aspect ratio. Previously, when you used Shift, it did not have the correct aspect ratio.

What appears to be happening is that you did not successfully crop out the parts you didn't want when you edited the original photo. Did you remember to Rasterize & Trim after you performed the Crop, to make the Crop destructive?

What kind of file are you Placing?

[v_kyr]

Usually you do it for placing in it's original size as Walt suggested, just point and perform one click into the APub document. - However, in your case the intial scanned image file doesn't look to have been previously (after scanning in) be cropped to it's square shape and thus to only the image boundaries accordingly, since it shows other initial book portions too from the book it has been scanned from. - You may either first crop that image accordingly before placing it in, so it gets just it's square shape, or you crop/hide the unwanted portions of that image inside of APub.

[AntiqueFlaneur]

53 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

That's not distorted. The usable part of the image has the correct aspect ratio. Previously, when you used Shift, it did not have the correct aspect ratio.

What appears to be happening is that you did not successfully crop out the parts you didn't want when you edited the original photo. Did you remember to Rasterize & Trim after you performed the Crop, to make the Crop destructive?

What kind of file are you Placing?

 

42 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Usually you do it for placing in it's original size as Walt suggested, just point and perform one click into the APub document. - However, in your case the intial scanned image file doesn't look to have been previously (after scanning in) be cropped to it's square shape and thus to only the image boundaries accordingly, since it shows other initial book portions too from the book it has been scanned from. - You may either first crop that image accordingly before placing it in, so it gets just it's square shape, or you crop/hide the unwanted portions of that image inside of APub.

 

You guys were correct in that I had not rasterized and trimmed, so that was part of the issue. Once I did that the excess parts of the photos were gone. I also found that once I did that I could export the photo as a .jpg and place it in publisher without any problems. But the photo is still not displaying properly when placed as a .afphoto file. 

See screenshot. It's weirdly placed in the frame and will not stay proportional. 

 

 

[v_kyr]

3 minutes ago, AntiqueFlaneur said:

...I had not rasterized and trimmed, so that was part of the issue. Once I did that the excess parts of the photos were gone. I also found that once I did that I could export the photo as a .jpg and place it in publisher without any problems. But the photo is still not displaying properly when placed as a .afphoto file.

If you want upload your APhoto file here and we (I believe that at least Walt has a running APublisher version) can then take a closer look why it behaves like you said. I for my part don't have Publisher and thus can only check this then for APhoto/ADesigner.

[AntiqueFlaneur]

1 hour ago, v_kyr said:

If you want upload your APhoto file here and we (I believe that at least Walt has a running APublisher version) can then take a closer look why it behaves like you said. I for my part don't have Publisher and thus can only check this then for APhoto/ADesigner.

Thanks!

Fig2.afphoto

[v_kyr]

Yes your .aphoto file behaves as you said here too, I've embedded/placed into AD. - But when I create a new doc of that image size, then take your layers merged together over (so one layer) and save the whole then as a new .aphoto file, it afterwards behaves as probably expected.

Here is a slighly new created/modified version of your file, you can give that a try for APub ...

• fig2-1.afphoto

It should now behave hopefully like this in APub too...

[AntiqueFlaneur]

25 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Yes your .aphoto file behaves as you said here too, I've embedded/placed into AD. - But when I create a new doc of that image size, then take your layers merged together over (so one layer) and save the whole then as a new .aphoto file, it afterwards behaves as probably expected.

Here is a slighly new created/modified version of your file, you can give that a try for APub ...

• fig2-1.afphoto

It should now behave hopefully like this in APub too...

 

Thank you. So is this just a bug, then? 

[v_kyr]

28 minutes ago, AntiqueFlaneur said:

Thank you. So is this just a bug, then?

You have to try first if it now works, but I believe something unobvious in your APhoto file might have caused that strange puzzling orientation layout behavior. I checked the doc and image/layer sizes of your initial APhoto file which looked pretty Ok, so no indication for something wrong there. But when I placed it into AD, I realized that the files orientation got horizontal instead of vertical when embedded, same as in your second thread postings screenshot here shown above. So it might be that the APhoto orientation was somehow mixed up during save and then when embedding the aphoto file into APub/AD. Thus I've recreated your APhoto file newly, in order to see if the horizontal orientation (layout) is now handled instead correctly.

Did you initially had to rotate that image 90° after loading it into APhoto? - Maybe some 90° orientation setting was mixed up during save or the like.

[AntiqueFlaneur]

59 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

 

Did you initially had to rotate that image 90° after loading it into APhoto? - Maybe some 90° orientation setting was mixed up during save or the like.

Yes, I had to rotate it when I first opened it. 

Thanks for your feedback. Much appreciated.