affinity designer Artwork for greetings cards

[William Overington]

On 5/8/2021 at 7:25 PM, William Overington said:

..., I am now trying to have a go at trying to gain experience of using acrylic brushes with the pen tool 

William

 

Something interesting that I have just found out by experimenting, though maybe it is well-known to others already.

If one wants to make a curve produced with the pen tool have a finish with an acrylic brush such as when trying to make a full field image for a greetings card, say for doing sky or grass in the background, yet one does not want the end bits of the brush stroke as that would leave white canvas showing, then if one makes the pen tool curve start and finish off the canvas, then when one exports the jpg file, Affinity Designer clips the end bits off - it does not alter the drawing that is on the canvas.

A useful technique.

William

 

[Alfred]

28 minutes ago, William Overington said:

Something interesting that I have just found out by experimenting, though maybe it is well-known to others already.

Experimenting is a great way to find out all kinds of things!

28 minutes ago, William Overington said:

if one makes the pen tool curve start and finish off the canvas, then when one exports the jpg file, Affinity Designer clips the end bits off

Exports are always clipped to the canvas unless you’ve specified a bleed area. This is very useful if you want to isolate part of an image at predetermined dimensions: create a canvas of the desired size, place the image on the canvas and adjust the size and position of the placed image (while retaining the original aspect ratio) so that the canvas contains the portion you want to keep.

You might like to experiment with the Crop Tool. In Affinity Photo the Crop Tool crops the entire canvas but in Affinity Designer it’s object-based.

[William Overington]

1 hour ago, Alfred said:

.... In Affinity Photo the Crop Tool crops the entire canvas but in Affinity Designer it’s object-based.

Can you clarify that please? At present I do not understand what you mean, due to my lack of experience with the programs.

William

[Alfred]

2 hours ago, Alfred said:

... In Affinity Photo the Crop Tool crops the entire canvas but in Affinity Designer it’s object-based.

 

18 minutes ago, William Overington said:

Can you clarify that please? At present I do not understand what you mean, due to my lack of experience with the programs.

William

Draw a few shapes or brush strokes on the canvas in Affinity Designer and then select one or two of them and choose the Crop Tool. The cropping area will only encompass the selected object/s, allowing you to hide part of a shape or crop the ends off individual brush strokes.

[William Overington]

I have now managed to get eight of these frames delivered.

Four grocery orders, four ordered each time, twice not available, twice delivered.

https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/303403803

I have also bought a packet of these labels, which I am hoping to use as labels to stick on the back, one for each frame, after I have added details of the image including the title, my name and the date of framing the image.

https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/285221953

One of the reviews describes the contents.

On television programmes about old paintings, there is often a framer's ticket (I think that that is the correct term), with a date, so I thought that I would do that, though framer's tickets do not usually have any details about the picture, just details of the business that did the framing and possibly the date.

William

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[William Overington]

The discussion about clocks in the thread

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/142050-my-first-image-using-affinity-designer/

has inspired me to wonder if I can design a clock that uses some of the glyphs that I have designed for localizable sentences.

Maybe get a landscape greeting card from Papier, get a clock mechanism and get them put together by someone skilled in the art for a fee.

So, applying the resistor colour code, and using zero rather than 12, and adding cyan for 10 and pink for 11, there is the basic design specification.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_color_code#Color_band_system

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/localizable_sentences_the_novel_chapter_005.pdf The glyphs are displayed on page 4

I am thinking that I need to calculate twelve points on a circle, then, in Affinity Designer, have a text box with a glyph centred in it, then copy the text box eleven times and edit each of the eleven copies, so as to have twelve text boxes each with a single glyph, one for each colour.

Then use the transform panel with measurements on the centre of the text box and place each text box such that its centre is on the appropriate point on the circle.

Care needs to be taken to have the point size of the glyphs to be such that the overall design effect is aesthetically pleasing.

I have found this.

https://www.hobbies.co.uk/german-quartz-clock-movements

William

 

[William Overington]

https://www.hobbies.co.uk/double-spade-pair-of-hands

So it looks possible.

Though it might need a panel to mount the card upon and maybe a box to contain it all.

William

 

[William Overington]

Here is a link to the font.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/LOCSE977.TTF

I made the font myself with the High-Logic FontCreator program.

The glyphs for this design are at U+E100 through to U+E10B in the Private Use Area of the font, in the required order, as I used the resistor colour code as the basis for the order in which to place the glyphs when I made the font. Please note that the Private Use Area mapping is just for convenience of using the TrueType font, they are not intended for use in interchange of document, though at a push could be in some circumstances for research.

As a side issue, not to do with this design, the codes that I am using for experimental interchange in my research are in the following document.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/A_List_of_Code_Numbers_and_English_Localizations_for_use_in_Research_on_Communication_through_the_Language_Barrier_using_encoded_Localizable_Sentences.pdf The codes for colours are displayed on page 3 of the document.

The codes can be used in a glyph substitution liga table as used for ligature in an OpenType font.

William

 

[William Overington]

There is also the following slide show.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/slide_show_about_localizable_sentences.pdf

The slides can be read using a browser, but best results are a full screen display by downloading a copy to local storage and then displaying it using Adobe Reader.

There are notes about that on the following page.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/localizable_sentences_research.htm

William

 

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, William Overington said:

I am thinking that I need to calculate twelve points on a circle, then, in Affinity Designer, have a text box with a glyph centred in it, then copy the text box eleven times and edit each of the eleven copies, so as to have twelve text boxes each with a single glyph, one for each colour.

Instead of calculating twelve points, let Affinity Designer do the calculation for you! And instead of making eleven copies of one text box, make five copies of a pair of text boxes:

1. Create the first text box and duplicate it

2. Align the duplicate vertically with the original

3. Adjust the vertical distance between the two boxes

4. Group the pair of boxes and duplicate the group

5. Rotate the duplicate group by 30° (or -30°)

6. ‘Power duplicate’ four times

29 minutes ago, William Overington said:

The slides can be read using a browser, but best results are a full screen display by downloading a copy to local storage and then displaying it using Adobe Reader.

Other PDF viewers are available.

[William Overington]

Thank you.

I have not heard of 'Power duplicate' before reading your post.

Does your solution rotate some of the glyphs?

Would the glyphs for 9 and 3 both need to be viewed from the left? Or from the right?

I was thinking of having a design where the glyphs are not rotated, as in the pharmacy wall clocks where the glyphs all seem to be upright, as I think were the ones that I saw on a clock in a pharmacy years ago.

If the glyphs were on the plate of a horizontal plate sundial, then that would be different than for a clock placed on a vertical wall.

William

 

 

 

[Alfred]

26 minutes ago, William Overington said:

I have not heard of 'Power duplicate' before reading your post.

If you select an object and press Ctrl+J you’ll get a duplicate object directly on top of the original. Transforming the copy (i.e. moving, rotating or resizing it) and then pressing Ctrl+J again will give you another copy with the same transformations applied: this is what’s known as ‘Power duplicate’.

31 minutes ago, William Overington said:

Does your solution rotate some of the glyphs?

 Yes, it does.

[William Overington]

Recently I made another card. It is quite interesting technically.

The starting image was this one, from 1998.

It is from the following web page.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/euto2001.htm

However, my usual technique of enlarging to exactly three times the size both horizontally and vertically produced an image larger than the 2171 pixels by 1571 pixels needed.

So I had to decide whether to enlarge by three times and lose a bit at at least two of the edges, or enlarge by 2 point something times.

In the event I chose  enlarging by three times and losing a bit at the edge. This was because I was unsure as to what effect a non-integer enlargement would have on a bit map image.

Of the cards that I have produced thus far, this is only the second one where I have planned that the colour goes right to the edge.

The print has come out well with a superb quality of printing.

The black at the top goes over the fold of the card and slightly onto the back, which is good. I suppose that it is effectively the bleed area at the top which has not been cut off.

The card is now framed in an A4 landscape frame.

The graphic of a hedgehog is similarly framed too.

I have also got a second copy of Software Unicorns reflected in a Lake, as I already had one copy framed landscape style in an A4 frame, but I managed to get some more of the oak effect frames with mount for a 7 inch by 5 inch image, and there was a spare picture hook where in 2018 I needed to move a larger picture so that some surface mounted electrical ducting (only about 12 mm square in section) was to be installed - that picture is now displayed elsewhere. Yet there was good room to place the much smaller oak effect frame there. So rather than unframe the original card I got another copy, though redated as May 2021 so that the two copies are not identical.

Getting it onto the wall was quite tricky, as the hook was a larger brass plated fitting and the hook on the frame was not big enough to go over it.

Fortunately, however, I had bought a picture framing kit and a multi-purpose tool set from Tesco some time ago, just in case I needed either or both some time, so with some picture wire from the picture framing kit and the cutters and the pointed nose pliers from the tool kit I was able to make a loop of picture wire to go through the Tesco fitting of the frame and then over the hook of the fitting on the wall.

https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/298571282

https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/293099221

Both are flagged as not available. The picture hanging kit went to half price for clearance, so I bought another two. I do not know if the toolkit will become available again.

The images are just to give an idea, such things are also available elsewhere at other suppliers.

I do not have enough hooks to display every picture on the wall. It is not just a matter of hammering in a nail as it needs someone with an electronic gadget to detect if there are electrical cables there.

William

 

[William Overington]

I am now preparing the artwork for a card based on the following gif file that I produced in 1998.

Recovered from the following web page.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/euto0008.htm

Start by saving a copy of unicorn2.afdesign as unicorns3.afdesign. Only one unicorn in this image, but I have opted for file name consistency for the series of designs.

Replace the image by the new image.

So the afdesign file is already using pixels for measurement and is 2171 pixels wide by 1571 pixels high with 300 dots per inch.

Though I have just noticed that Color [sic] is set as RGB/8.

Though checking back, so are unicorns2.afdesign and unicorns1.afdesign but Papier specifies CMYK. However the two previous prints came out great, so maybe something gets done along the line somewhere.

However, change it to CMYK in this document. Select the ISO Uncoated profile, but when exporting export without a colour profile.

So delete  the image and place a new copy.

Ah, the blue surround looks duller.

So I think the best thing to do is to post this as it is and hope that one or more other forum participants will offer advice please.

William

 

 

[William Overington]

Thinking about this, it occurs to me that as the cards are intended as photo cards and quite probably some (many?) people are uploading photos taken on mobile phones and are not using editing software, that it is quite possible that RGB colour files are arriving at the Papier system quite often.

So it seems that for the system to be of general usefulness for photo cards that there may well be automated conversion.

As I got good results from earlier cards that appear to have gone as RGB, I am going to start this artwork again and use the same process as before and hopefully I will get a good print, perhaps better than if I start altering the colour format myself.

So delete the unicorns3.afdesign file that I produced earlier.

Start by saving a copy of unicorn2.afdesign as unicorns3.afdesign. Only one unicorn in this image, but I have opted for file name consistency for the series of designs.

Replace the image by the new image.

So the afdesign file is already using pixels for measurement and is 2171 pixels wide by 1571 pixels high with 300 dots per inch.

Locate the upper left corner of the image at (100, 100).

The image in 536 pixels wide by 402 pixels high.

Change this to 1608 pixels wide (=3 * 536) by 1206 pixels high (=3 * 402).

Centre the image on the page, both horizontally and vertically.

Save the design.

Export as 300dpi_unicorns3.jpg best quality (100) with no colour profile and no bleeds. The no bleeds choice is because the whole document already has bleed areas built into it.

William

 

[William Overington]

I have now placed an order for the card.

William

 

[Alfred]

3 hours ago, William Overington said:

I have just noticed that Color [sic] is set as RGB/8

Where do you see this, William? It shouldn’t say ‘Color’ within the Affinity apps unless your interface language is set to US English.

[William Overington]

I have just started a thread.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/142416-industrial-quality-colour-printing-technology/

William

 

[William Overington]

7 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Where do you see this, William? It shouldn’t say ‘Color’ within the Affinity apps unless your interface language is set to US English.

File

Document Setup...

Second button from the left on the bar that is just a bit above the middle of the dialogue panel.

William

 

[Alfred]

5 minutes ago, William Overington said:

a bit above the middle of the dialogue panel

*dialog 

[William Overington]

16 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Where do you see this, William? It shouldn’t say ‘Color’ within the Affinity apps unless your interface language is set to US English.

How do I check the interface language setting please? Is it in the Affinity software or in the computer more generally?

William

 

[Alfred]

2 hours ago, William Overington said:

How do I check the interface language setting please?

Go to the Edit menu and choose ‘Preferences > Language’.

[William Overington]

8 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Go to the Edit menu and choose ‘Preferences > Language’.

Thank you.

It was set to English (United States).

So I have changed it to English (United Kingdom).

William

 

[William Overington]

A poem about what happened here yesterday. This is a png file as a detail from a design for a card similar to the first one in this thread. The rest of the card artwork is blank at present.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The following may be of interest if you want to localize the poem into a natural language, as it includes localizations into English for each of the language-independent glyphs in the poem.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/locse027.pdf

William

 

 

[William Overington]

I have this morning designed, using the FontCreator 8 program, some language-independent glyphs for some sentences that involve metallic colours. I produced a font and installed it in Windows 10.

This image was produced using the font in Affinity Designer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The language-independent glyphs have meanings defined which, when localized into English, produce the following, respectively from the top downwards.

The colour is gold.

The colour is silver.

The colour is bronze.

The colour is copper.

 

William