Export dimensions glitch II

[abra100pro]

Hi

When I export Artboards via File > Export they have the proper dimensions as intended (was not like that before) but in the export persona it is stil faulty: when I export an artboard of - for instance -  160x600px I end up with a file that is 160x597 (when I set the width to 160w) or 161x601 (when I leave the width to 1x)

See movie.

[Sean P]

Hi abra100pro,

Could you attach some offending files so we can look into this please?

[abra100pro]

On 2/5/2021 at 1:56 PM, Sean P said:

Hi abra100pro,

Could you attach some offending files so we can look into this please?

Hi Sean

Sorry, I never saw this reply of yours... (somehow I don't always get the notifications as E-Mail, though checked "follow topic").

It is in every single document I make - see this movie of some cards I made today (AD-File is attached):

Namenschilder.afdesign

[Sean P]

Thanks for the video - despite them being aligned without decimals using millimetres as units, it is still the pixel values that are important to ensure they're integers, as that is ultimately what decides the size they go out as in the export persona.

See the attached video - As you can see after changing those values, they're now the same size in the slice. With that said we do have improvements logged with development to aid with this.

[abra100pro]

41 minutes ago, Sean P said:

Thanks for the video - despite them being aligned without decimals using millimetres as units, it is still the pixel values that are important to ensure they're integers, as that is ultimately what decides the size they go out as in the export persona.

See the attached video - As you can see after changing those values, they're now the same size in the slice. With that said we do have improvements logged with development to aid with this.

Thanks for making this clear. Although this seems to work somehow it makes no sense: Using pixels to define the output dimensions in a milimeter based document may cause only problems IMHO. I consider this a bug and my idea of the solution would be:

1. The position of artboards on the canvas has absolutely no influence on the dimensions of them. This correlation (position <> dimension) makes no sense in any situation, no?
2. Dimensions are absolute. 12.43mm are 12.43mm, not 133px nor anything else. Same with any other unit, of course. I really expect an illustration app to be precise, here.

This bug consists quite for a while. I consider it essential and I would applaud on my balcony, if it was fixed ;-).

[Sean P]

40 minutes ago, BofG said:

 

@Sean P In the attached file, export "non-aligned" artboard to png, manually set it to 100x100px. Now export the slices (set to 100w to give 100x100px). Compare the results - that is a bug surely?

slice-error.afdesign

Your artboard 0,0 position is not pixel aligned which is causing the extra pixel to get added in both X/Y, you're then manually forcing it to be rescaled to 100x100 causing the pixels to become transparent as it tries to rescale it by removing half a pixel from each side.

As I said in my original post "With that said we do have improvements logged with development to aid with this." - This is one of those improvements - I agree that the art boards position shouldn't matter, but unfortunately it currently does due the way its implemented, which is unfortunately not a small change to make from what I understand.

[abra100pro]

4 hours ago, BofG said:

 

@abra100pro you can of course avoid this issue by simply working with "force pixel alignment" always enabled.

slice-error.afdesign

force pixel alignment does not help here.

[abra100pro]

4 hours ago, BofG said:

I don't follow what you mean by this, you can have your precise sizes in your document, but there has to be a conversion and loss of precision when going to pixels.

slice-error.afdesign

This is what I meant: You cannot design in one unit then turn it into pixels and adjust these only to have it exported properly and then turn it back into the original unit (milimeters in this case) - but as Sean mentioned: Serif seems to have it on the radar.

@sean p - this is a really tough bug when working a lot with multiple artboards as I do. I really hope Serif gets that fixed soon - it was reported quite a while ago. 

[abra100pro]

6 minutes ago, BofG said:

It does if you are manually dragging the artboards to position and size them (the px snaps, the mm will be fractional). I guess you are typing in the values.

I see what you mean. I suppose a workaround is to "save as.." for the pixel version. I am curious to know the use case for what you are doing - why do you need exact millimetre dimensions? Could you not put up with +/- 0.5mm and simply work to the nearest whole pixel?

I do agree though that this is quite a bad flaw, the fact that it produces two differently flawed output files depending on the export approach just makes it worse.

I often design for a series of ads (mm) or banners (px). A typical document looks like this:

 

Our customers provide us with the dimensions they want the ads in. They are binding and absolute, I cannot send them an ad having 116.2mm instead of 116mm.

So, if (just a sample with fictional numbers) 116.000mm are 1233.54px then 116.000mm are not 1233px - AD has been (rightly) advertised for its precision.

Same goes with banners, except I am not supposed to switch units. But when you have to exactly position 30+ artboards it's a drag and the error rate is too high.

 

And for the force pixel alignment - see movie: it does not work. As soon as you move them (and you have to move artboards around when you have multiple of them). 

[Old Bruce]

You also have "Move by whole pixels" set, so if you have something at 20.5 pixels then move it a pixel it will move to 21.5 pixels. And I think you have Snap to midpoints turned on too, this is a problem with objects/artboards which are odd numbered in size in that the midpoint will be x.5 pixels.

To have the Artboards be integer sized and placed you need to have Snap to Pixels on Move by Whole Pixels off. And for safety turn off Snap to midpoints unless you are only going to make things that are an even number of pixels in their x y dimensions. I would also turn off the other snap to items like bleed, margins etc.

[abra100pro]

Thanks @Old Bruce, Tried this fist w/o success (I moved it around to get this Y-Pos value):

 

 

I then unchecked the last snapping option (right one) and after that it seems to work:

 

 

However: While I can work now much better with future documents I still consider this a bug:

Artboards should not be affected in any of their attributes by their location on the canvas - this (influence) would never make any sense.

 

[abra100pro]

@BofG - Yes, I'm doing that - no, I'm not aware of rounding errors. Is this a PDF- or an AD-error?

[Hangman]

This thread highlights the PDF rounding error...

 

[abra100pro]

Wow, incredible. Thanks for the info.

[Hangman]

@BofG I'm not really sure you can rely on the size shown in Acrobat since Adobe rounds to two decimal places...

90mm = 3.543307086614173 inches

54mm = 2.125984251968504 inches

So I would expect it to show 3.54 x 2.13 inches