pdfs are rendering as different sizes. Can't work out why.

[james948]

Hey. I'm befuddled and frustrated. 

All my artboards are the same size. The pdfs render at the same resolution. Yet when I scroll through them in quick view they appear to be different sizes and the icons I have in the top left move around. What's going on? 

I don't really want to upload the whole thing to a public forum though. 

[MEB]

Hi james948,
The most likely reason is that the artboards are not correctly pixel aligned. Check their x, Y coordinates in the Transform panel.

[james948]

Yes I remembered this from last time. I have it set to points but I guess I have to set it to pixels to get it right? 

[MEB]

Yes, change the units to pixels temporarily, enable Force Pixel Alignment in the main toolbar and select (in the Layers panel) and move the artboard layers on canvas a bit to quickly force them to snap to integer pixel values (check the X,Y coordinates in the Transform panel while you move them a bit to ensure they are being snapped correctly). You may need to go to Affinity Preferences, User Interface tab, Decimal Places for Unit Types section and change the Pixels value to 3 or more so you can see more decimal places in the Transform panel (and elsewhere).

[james948]

Yeah. Thanks. 

That worked. 

I think it's awful that I have to worry about pixel placement when working in something that is solely vector. Especially when it's about the pixel placement of the artboard itself inside- what?- a vector matrix?

Do I need to worry about the stuff inside of the artboard too? Where that is placed in terms of pixels? 

Should I increase the artboard "size" to accommodate for this? 

Thanks. 

 

[Joachim_L]

16 hours ago, james948 said:

I think it's awful that I have to worry about pixel placement when working in something that is solely vector. Especially when it's about the pixel placement of the artboard itself inside- what?- a vector matrix?

I have to agree. Why do we have to perfect pixel align an Artboard? Serif could avoid a lot of questions if Artboards would be automatically pixel aligned or at least a preference for it. Does anyone know a valid use case where non-pixel-aligned Artboards are needed?

[kaffeeundsalz]

Affinity Designer does have a very prominent Force Pixel Alignment feature in the toolbar. If that is turned on, newly created artboards are automatically pixel aligned, even when the documents units are not set to pixels. It just doesn't affect artboards that already are in the document, and to be honest, I'd find it quite irritating if activating Force Pixel Alignment would alter the size and/or aspect ratio of existing artboards.

The problem comes from the fact that depending on the document's resolution, dimensions in real-world units like millimeters or points can be quite close to the next whole pixel but also quite far away from it (a problem that intensifies with low resolutions). And what about maintaining the aspect ratio of an artboard or object? Even with the original dimensions of an object being perfectly represented by whole pixels, scaling it proportionally can easily result in a size where the pixel alignment is only possible for one dimension. That's why Affinity Designer does introduce decimal places when scaling objects even with Forced Pixel Alignment turned on: because it weights maintaining aspect ratio higher than forcing pixel alignment.

The valid use cases where non-pixel-aligned Artboards are needed are all those where perfect pixel alignment isn't possible because the size and/or ratio of an artboard or object cannot be repesented by whole pixels. If you want to avoid this, click Force Pixel Alignment and refrain from proportional scaling.

[james948]

I get that but nothing in my project uses pixels and I’m exporting without rasterising. The only time pixels come into the picture is where my artboard is in relation to the project. That, to me, makes no sense. 

[kaffeeundsalz]

That's right, @james948 . Affinity Designer should ignore pixel aligment entirely when no rasterising is involved.

[MEB]

5 hours ago, Joachim_L said:

I have to agree. Why do we have to perfect pixel align an Artboard? Serif could avoid a lot of questions if Artboards would be automatically pixel aligned or at least a preference for it. Does anyone know a valid use case where non-pixel-aligned Artboards are needed?

Contrary to other apps where artboards are independent from the layer stack, in Affinity they are just a special type of object which can be manipulated in various ways like regular objects and as such are subject to the same rules, alignments included. For example you can use Power Duplicate to create a grid of artboards as you can with regular objects, or convert objects (which may or may be not pixel aligned) to artboards and vice-versa (check menu Layer almost on bottom). This allows some workflows/flexibility you don't have in other apps. Force Pixel Alignment should help to keep them pixel aligned when required. For documents which do not use pixels as units this can pose some issues if you have to comply with strict dimensions but these are very specific cases. The dev team is aware of these issues nonetheless.

 

21 hours ago, james948 said:

Yeah. Thanks. 

That worked. 

1. I think it's awful that I have to worry about pixel placement when working in something that is solely vector. Especially when it's about the pixel placement of the artboard itself inside- what?- a vector matrix?

2. Do I need to worry about the stuff inside of the artboard too? Where that is placed in terms of pixels? 

3. Should I increase the artboard "size" to accommodate for this? 

Thanks. 

 

Hi james948,
1. See my replies above. Turn on Force Pixel Alignment to help with artboard's alignment. If you duplicate artboards using shortcut make sure you use command+click drag rather than alt+click drag as this last one overrides snapping.

2. It depends on what you are creating. If you are drawing icons for example, then yes, you should care about the content inside if you want them to look as sharp as possible. If you are creating a large illustration you won't need to care about it.

3. No, just make sure the artboard layer is pixel aligned. See previous replies.

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, MEB said:

Contrary to other apps where artboards are independent from the layer stack, in Affinity they are just a special type of object which can be manipulated in various ways like regular objects and as such are subject to the same rules, alignments included.

That’s fair enough, but the argument here isn’t that artboards should be subject to different rules. What’s being called into question is why the alignment of an artboard or the objects on it should affect the export of those objects: as long as the objects have whole pixel dimensions, it’s reasonable to expect that the exported versions won’t have any extra pixels.