Ad set workflow

[bnorth]

Howdy! I currently use Photoshop at work to create web ad sets and I'm wondering if my Photoshop workflow exists in some approximation in Affinity Photo or Designer (My main issue with Photoshop at the moment is the ad sets I create end up being very large files which makes Photoshop crawl).

Photoshop Ad set process

- Create new document with 1080x1080 artboard 

- Place linked .PSD image into document (this keeps the overall doc size down as opposed to embedding images allows me to edit the linked image at any time with said edits being made to every single artboard that contains that linked image)

- After adding desired text, shapes, etc. I will then name my artboard something like Ad-V1-1080x1080.jpg10 (appending the .jpg10 will allow me to use the "generate assets" function in PS which makes saving out images very easy).

-  I'll then duplicate the artboard so I can make an ad variant with different copy or imagery layout. At the end of the process I may end up with 30 artboards with differing dimensions for various social platforms (1080x1080, 1200x628, 1024x512, etc)

At the end of the process I'll go to File> Generate> Image Assets and PS will save all of my individual artboards as jpegs and place them into a single asset folder.

Questions

- It looks like Affinity Photo doesn't have artboards so I'm guessing I'll need to primarily work in Affinity Designer for this process but is there a "linked" function so that I can place an Affinity Photo doc into Designer? Would this function allow me to edit the original photo file in Affinity Photo still and would those edits are saved would they be reflected in all of my artboards within Affinity Designer?

- Is there any automated process like PS generate assets? This really just allows me to skip multiple export windows and when I save my doc only new changes to artboards will be rendered to the assets folder meaning I don't have to re-render every single artboard...only the ones that I've made new edits to. 

- If this process (or something close to it) doesn't exist does anyone have any ad creation workflow suggestions or tutorials that I could check out? The Affinity programs are so much faster and I would love to spend more time in them as opposed to ole Photoshop. 

Thank you for taking a look at this!

 

 

 

[v_kyr]

Hi,

1 hour ago, bnorth said:

- It looks like Affinity Photo doesn't have artboards so I'm guessing I'll need to primarily work in Affinity Designer for this process but is there a "linked" function so that I can place an Affinity Photo doc into Designer? Would this function allow me to edit the original photo file in Affinity Photo still and would those edits are saved would they be reflected in all of my artboards within Affinity Designer?

The Affinity products (APhoto, ADesigner...) do share their Affinity file format, meaning here, every Affinity app can open and showup the contents created in another Affinity app. - AFAIK the next v1.9 range of Affinity Photo will support artboards too in contrast to Affinity Designer. However, actually (in the v1.8.4/6 apps range) embedding and opening an APhoto file in ADesigner and vice versa is possible though not yet in a "real linked" file fashion (see also here this thread). The later (file linking) is something the v1.9 apps range might offer. - So the answer here would be YES.

1 hour ago, bnorth said:

- Is there any automated process like PS generate assets? This really just allows me to skip multiple export windows and when I save my doc only new changes to artboards will be rendered to the assets folder meaning I don't have to re-render every single artboard...only the ones that I've made new edits to.

Affinity Photo & Affinity Designer do have an export persona, which can be used to generate different output file formats and doc or selected region etc. sizes from artboards via slices & layers. So the Export Persona can be used to generate a bunch of different output formats and file sizes with one run when setup accordingly. Automatic rerendering of contents among artboards can be done via the use of shared Symbols, the file generation process (export via the Export Persona) always writes out everything again then, when setup right and accordingly.

1 hour ago, bnorth said:

- If this process (or something close to it) doesn't exist does anyone have any ad creation workflow suggestions or tutorials that I could check out? The Affinity programs are so much faster and I would love to spend more time in them as opposed to ole Photoshop.

I would suggest that you might want to look through some related Affinity Photo & Designer video tutorials for certain above mentiones Affinity functionality then, so you get an idea how things work here. Further the is also the online help for all products, so you can also read through topics of your interest there.

• Affinity Photo tutorials (newer)
• Affinity Photo tutorials (older)
• Affinity Designer tutorials
• Affinity Designer tutorials (older)
• Affinity Spotlight (website with learning, inspiration, behind the scenes etc. articles)

For Affinity Designer specifics mentioned above see:

Common stuff

• Artboards
• Symbols
• Assets panel
• Placing images
• Quick export

Export Persona

• Slice tool
• Layers panel
• Export options panel
• Slices panel

 

For Affinity Photo specifics mentioned above see:

Common stuff

• Placing images

Export Persona

• Exporting slices

Workflows & Techniques

• PSD write-back and PSB import
• PSD smart object import