Why can't I set inches a default

[LitlBear]

Both the photographic industry and the printing industry in the USA use Inches as the only way to express measurements.

You can do this in Photoshop, and it keeps me going back for that feature alone.

I really like the Affinity suite, and would like to use it exclusively. But, when I sit down to edit  a few hundred photos, and have to individually set every one to inches, it is just too involved and too likely to be missed only to be discovered at the press proof. (after spending a LOT of money and time)

How many other Photographers are in my place - wishing for that one modification?

Affinity allows customizing almost everything, even to make it look and work like Photoshop, but not this!

WHY?

[Fritz_H]

Perhaps it´s about time to go metric? :-)

[fde101]

If you are importing actual photos from a camera, how is a real-world unit even relevant?

The measurements will change at random depending on how they are viewed or printed - sure the document can specify a DPI setting, but is it ever actually "correct" when a photo is imported from a camera?  If not, then the unit of measurement will be meaningless until that is updated also, so you will have multiple steps to take before it means anything, plus the measurement will only be valid for one print size.

[LitlBear]

There are more than 35,000 print shops in the USA. I only do what they expect. (300dpi with all measurement in INCHES.) If I don't get it right, they WILL find someone who will. I would just like to do it in AF.

[Joachim_L]

6 hours ago, LitlBear said:

There are more than 35,000 print shops in the USA. I only do what they expect. (300dpi with all measurement in INCHES.)

I don't get the point here. Whenever I sent something to a print shop I told them the size to print (with 300 dpi). IMO the internal units are irrelevant. 25,4 cm in a document will be printed with 25,4 cm, even if I sent the document with 10 inches.

[fde101]

11 hours ago, LitlBear said:

There are more than 35,000 print shops in the USA. I only do what they expect. (300dpi with all measurement in INCHES.) If I don't get it right, they WILL find someone who will. I would just like to do it in AF.

Affinity Photo also defaults the images to 72 dpi so the rulers won't be accurate unless you change that too.

An image straight off the camera is unlikely to be the desired print size when at 300 dpi, so you will also need to scale the image to the desired print size, and you would need to do it for each size you are going to print the image at.  It is common if setting up an image for print to print it at multiple sizes, meaning the rulers will only be accurate for one of them.

[debtrunko]

I just purchased the Affinity suite of products and would also like the ability to change the default measurement to inches.  I would think that would be a simple thing for the great minds that developed these programs. It may not be everyone's choice, but there are many people (US) that use the Imperial system. Even though someone thinks I should switch to metric, I think it is rude to ignore so many people that want to use your program and would like this very minor change to allow inches as preference. 

[fde101]

To be clear, this is not an imperial vs. metric thing - documents created from imported images are defaulting to pixels (not to a metric unit), which is the most sensible measurement due to the fact that an image which has no inherent physical size of its own is being imported and there is nothing within it to suggest what the physical size or unit of dimension should be.

If you have the ruler displayed, you can very quickly switch to inches or any other unit by right-clicking on the corner of the ruler and selecting the unit you are interested in:

 

The DPI setting can be adjusted by going to Document -> Resize Document and making sure Resample is unchecked.  You can also change the units from there if you don't have the rulers displayed (or even if you do and need to access this to adjust the DPI anyway).

Again, this will be accurate for at most one print size at a time.  As an image is likely to be printed in multiple sizes for multiple purposes, this is of questionable value to begin with.

[fde101]

On 10/26/2020 at 4:44 PM, Fritz_H said:

Perhaps it´s about time to go metric? 🙂

We can't even seem to count our votes accurately right now so I don't think the country as a whole is quite ready for this stage of enlightenment yet.  Sad in some ways, as the Metric system makes a lot more sense mathematically and technically, but for now I think we are stuck with Imperial - and even if we did decide to make that change, it would likely be a slow process.  Imperial measurement is quite entrenched here and people won't change this quickly.