Export arboards to a PDF file with their names

[maciej.pikula]

Hey

I was wondering if there is a possibility to export all artboards to one PDF file and also with arboards names in this file? I've got something like 50 arboards and I want to export it as a plan/map keeping their names above dartboards.

[Alfred]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity Forums, @maciej.pikula.

If you have an Affinity Designer file consisting of artboards, exporting to PDF will give you one artboard per page. The lowest artboard in the layer stack will be the first page and the highest one will be the last page, but you would need to add the artboard names manually before export.

[maciej.pikula]

I would like to export all artboards as a single page pdf/png file, not an artboard per page. I just want to have them all grouped on one page and also with captions. Something like Photoshop's Contact Sheet II.

 

What I get (untitled.jpg) and what I want to get (untitled2.jpg). Before you would suggest me taking a screenshot - it's impossible when you have about 100 artboards in one doc.

 

[prophet]

Like a "proof" or "contact" sheet. Could be a handy feature.

Best I can do is print to PDF using the OS print dialog and select "entire document" scaled to fit the page.

[maciej.pikula]

1 minute ago, prophet said:

Like a "proof" or "contact" sheet. Could be a handy feature.

Best I can do is print to PDF using the OS print dialog and select "entire document" scaled to fit the page.

Still there are no captions  I want to preserve arboards names

[v_kyr]

Well you can export all in a one page PDF with the help of the Export Persona, there just export the background layer slice and hide all others ...

... this will export all on one page. Though the captions (artboard names) would not be taken over (into account) here, they are generally omitted!

 

 

[maciej.pikula]

I know I can export all arboards in one page and I'm telling about it from the start  The point is to export them with their names/captions...

[walt.farrell]

4 hours ago, maciej.pikula said:

The point is to export them with their names/captions...

It's unclear if you're asking whether Designer can do it today (no), or asking for a Designer enhancement.

If you're asking for an enhancement, you need to post a Feature Request or concur with an existing one.

[lacerto]

(...)

[v_kyr]

I have a custom Java based program, which creates contact-sheets but can easily be adapted to create a "sheet of artboard" images instead. It operates on a given (as an argument passed over) folder where JPG/PNG/GIF images reside in and then creates a JPG sheet file out of those images found in that given folder.

An example run looks like this (via an "artboards2jpg" shell script which in turn calls the main Java program via a Java runtime environment) ...

> ./artboards2jpg
ArtboardSheets v1.0a
ArtboardSheets: starting scan from './test' at Thu Dec 31 22:05:56 CET 2020
Creating thumbnail for './test/artboard1.jpg' .... Done. (35K in 899ms)
Creating thumbnail for './test/artboard2.jpg' .... Done. (35K in 28ms)
Creating thumbnail for './test/artboard3.jpg' .... Done. (35K in 18ms)
Creating thumbnail for './test/artboard4.jpg' .... Done. (35K in 29ms)
Creating thumbnail for './test/artboard5.jpg' .... Done. (35K in 18ms)
Creating thumbnail for './test/artboard6.jpg' .... Done. (35K in 23ms)
Creating artboard sheet of 6 thumbnails: ./test/_artboard_sheet.jpg
Artboard sheet written.
ArtboardSheets: completed scan at Thu Dec 31 22:06:01 CET 2020

... the generated "_artboard_sheet.jpg" file result will look like this then (I've used 6 times the same image as artboarda here for testing) ...

Of course the Java program can be changed in certain things, like sheet and text color output or the ordering of images placed on a sheet etc. - If there is a urgend demand I can provide it, though it scans bitmap images (so artboards would have to be exported as bitmaps) and it also creates an JPG bitmap image as output and no PDF.