Artboard size is different than output size

[happy.burrito]

Hello everyone 🙂 I am on a Mac and having this problem for the first time: I'm trying to export and art board that is clearly 1080 by 1350 but when I try to export, it becomes 1081 by 1351.

I've tried changing the size in the export window and for some reason the output still is off (1081 by 1350) !
 

Anybody has an idea why this is happening?

 

Thank you!

 

[Old Bruce]

17 minutes ago, happy.burrito said:

for some reason the output still is off

Location is fractional.

 

[MEB]

Hi @happy.burrito,
If you follow Old Bruce advice you should be able to fix the issue. 

[Andy05]

13 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Location is fractional.

True, but in that case it should rather crop the image than changing its dimensions.

[happy.burrito]

I never ever paid attention to location.

How does that have an impact on an artboard's size?

And... how do I make sure it's never fractional?

 

Thank you in advance :)

[R C-R]

5 hours ago, Andy05 said:

True, but in that case it should rather crop the image than changing its dimensions.

Why should it arbitrarily decide that the fractional pixel info should be discarded? That's what cropping would do.

[Andy05]

7 hours ago, R C-R said:

Why should it arbitrarily decide that the fractional pixel info should be discarded? That's what cropping would do.

Simple. Really. Because exact size of an image is something which is set on purpose in most cases. Whereas images not fully within those dimensions happen quite often. 

[happy.burrito]

Hi guys :) I'm glad I started a dialogue - but please remember that I need help :)

[Andy05]

6 minutes ago, happy.burrito said:

Hi guys :) I'm glad I started a dialogue - but please remember that I need help :)

More help? You got the answer already, you need to position your object(s) and/or artboard(s) to full pixels instead of fractions of them.

[happy.burrito]

11 minutes ago, Andy05 said:

More help? You got the answer already, you need to position your object(s) and/or artboard(s) to full pixels instead of fractions of them.

As I wrote earlier, I don't know how to do this :(

How does that have an impact on an artboard's size?

And... how do I make sure it's never fractional?

I'm in my file right now trying to figure out how to position my art boards to full pixels. I went into preferences and noticed that the nudge distance was a fraction of a pixel before and I change that but it doesn't solve my problem. I have tried to copy and paste all my old board to a new document without success.

So yes I'm sorry if it seems clear to you but I just can't manage to find a solution. Thank you again for your help ;)

[Andy05]

1 hour ago, happy.burrito said:

How does that have an impact on an artboard's size?

That's what I meant earlier and why I disagreed with @R C-R in this point. I deem this behaviour a bug rather than a feature.

As for moving the objects to full pixels, you can type the numbers into the transformation window (where you can see the odd numbers, just enter the correct number in there. And—this additional step makes it even clearer to me that this is a bug—you might also have to make sure, the dimensions of the objects and/or artboards are full pixels as well. So, basically not only playing their origin at full pixel coordinates, but also the dimensions should be full pixel and no fractions.

In order to prevent such things, you can enforce alignments to full pixels when creating and placing objects in designer.

 

 

[happy.burrito]

1 hour ago, Andy05 said:

That's what I meant earlier and why I disagreed with @R C-R in this point. I deem this behaviour a bug rather than a feature.

 

 

I would tend to agree with you. I can't think of an instance when I would want affinity to change the size of my file!

Thank you

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Andy05 said:

That's what I meant earlier and why I disagreed with @R C-R in this point. I deem this behaviour a bug rather than a feature.

And Serif deems it "by design". Though they made some kind of change in 1.9 to alleviate the issue. I haven't figured out yet what they really changed.

2 hours ago, happy.burrito said:

And... how do I make sure it's never fractional?

You start with Snapping enabled, and with the snapping option "Force Pixel Alignment" enabled, and the snapping option "Move by Whole Pixels" disabled.

You then make sure that you never duplicate/move an artboard by using the Alt/Option key, as that key disables snapping.

 

[Andy05]

37 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

And Serif deems it "by design".

Doesn't make it any better at all. If a designer decides over an image's size, the software should not, never, in no way edit that by itself. Image size is one of the most important details when designing.

[Old Bruce]

6 hours ago, happy.burrito said:

s I wrote earlier, I don't know how to do this :(

How does that have an impact on an artboard's size?

And... how do I make sure it's never fractional?

I'm in my file right now trying to figure out how to position my art boards to full pixels. I went into preferences and noticed that the nudge distance was a fraction of a pixel before and I change that but it doesn't solve my problem. I have tried to copy and paste all my old board to a new document without success.

So yes I'm sorry if it seems clear to you but I just can't manage to find a solution. Thank you again for your help ;)

Set your Snapping candidates to Snap to Pixels by choosing Force pixel alignment and deselecting Move by whole pixels.

[R C-R]

10 hours ago, Andy05 said:

Simple. Really. Because exact size of an image is something which is set on purpose in most cases. Whereas images not fully within those dimensions happen quite often. 

If any of the Affinity apps only worked with raster images, I might agree with your 'most cases' premise, but since they also work with text & vector objects, & any object of any type can be aligned anywhere in the workspace and/or set to fractional pixel (or any other unit) width or height, I cannot agree that this is even in most cases true.

[R C-R]

8 hours ago, happy.burrito said:

I'm in my file right now trying to figure out how to position my art boards to full pixels.

If it is still unclear about how to do this, begin by selecting an artboard. The easiest way to do that is by clicking on it in the Layers panel but you can also do that by clicking on its name in the workspace window if you are zoomed far enough out to see it above the outline of the artboard.

Once selected, check & if necessary adjust the dimensions & position of the artboard in the Transform panel ( the X, Y, W, & H values).

Note that in Preferences > User Interface you can set Decimal Places for Unit Types to anything from 0 to 6 places, so if you are concerned about setting artboards (or anything else) to exact whole number unit values, you should set these options to anything greater than zero decimal places so the display of numeric values in the UI is not rounded off to the nearest whole pixel (or mm or whatever). Also note that this preference only affects displayed values -- internally the Affinity apps always use the binary equivalent of around 8 decimal places for everything.

Personally, I think this preference should default to at least 2 decimal places because with a default of zero it is much too easy to think something is pixel aligned when it is not.

[Andy05]

12 hours ago, R C-R said:

If any of the Affinity apps only worked with raster images, I might agree with your 'most cases' premise, but since they also work with text & vector objects, & any object of any type can be aligned anywhere in the workspace and/or set to fractional pixel (or any other unit) width or height, I cannot agree that this is even in most cases true.

That's complete nonsense, sorry. Because you basically stated that Affinity apps are not meant to be used for designing UI or Webdesign? As 1 pixel (or fractions of it) matter in both. Both are huge scopes of applications in design nowadays. An object, oddly placed in Affinity apps might cause some ragged or blurried output or other strange things, but a resized exported image can destroy a layout or—even worse—the issue will go unnoticed and later on, those objects are resized when displayed on a device not meant to rescale objects properly. Latter case might make it even harder to see what's causing the problems.

Sometimes one has to see beyond one's own nose, there might be other sectors of design than the ones one is home in.

12 hours ago, R C-R said:

Personally, I think this preference should default to at least 2 decimal places because with a default of zero it is much too easy to think something is pixel aligned when it is not.

100% agreed on this at least on Windows systems and surely the same applies to Macs. (I don't have an iPad, so I don't know if their input fields are also big enough for displaying 2 decimal places as per standard.)

[MEB]

Hi @happy.burrito,
The artboard marked on your screenshot is the only instance where this happens for you? If so, to fix it, click the X coordinate input field in the Transform panel and delete the fractional part ",2" so it becomes an integer value (2355). This should fix the issue.

If the export dimensions are still not correct there may be other values with a fractional part. For example the Y coordinate could be 8232,005 but it displays as an integer value in the Transform panel because the software is set up to display a single fractional digit by default. To confirm it, go to Affinity Preferences, User Interface section, Decimal Places for Units Types area, and increase the Pixels value to 3 or 4, so you can see more fractional places in the Transform panel and elsewhere in the app. If there's fractional values fix them as i explained above (delete the fractional part).

To prevent this from happening enable Force Pixel Alignment in the main toolbar. Keep Move By Whole Pixels (the button on the right of the previous one) disabled.
Let me know if you still have issues.
Thank you.

[R C-R]

10 hours ago, Andy05 said:

That's complete nonsense, sorry. Because you basically stated that Affinity apps are not meant to be used for designing UI or Webdesign?

Nope. I am simply saying that these apps are not meant to be used only to create UI, web, or anything else where it makes sense to arbitrarily lop off fractional pixel elements from the exported design (even assuming it ever does).

For this reason, the user has complete control of where to place any element in the design, a variety of snapping & alignment options that can be used to maintain pixel alignment when that is desired, as well as visual indicators that make it clear when pixel misalignment will cause problems.

[Andy05]

19 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Nope. I am simply saying that these apps are not meant to be used only to create UI, web, or anything else where it makes sense to arbitrarily lop off fractional pixel elements from the exported design (even assuming it ever does).

For this reason, the user has complete control of where to place any element in the design, a variety of snapping & alignment options that can be used to maintain pixel alignment when that is desired, as well as visual indicators that make it clear when pixel misalignment will cause problems.

No, that's not what you said. You mocked about my statement that exact dimensions is one of the most important details in design. You disagreed and that's where you were wrong, not me.

I said, a software should never override the dimensions, which you claimed as not important. Actually, 1 pixel can matter even in print. B/W highres art prints can cause unwanted ragged edges, if not printed at 100% of their size. 

Further, you claimed it would be "by design". Reading MEB's comments sound different, don't they? If it would be "by design" and hence, a wanted feature - why would he ask for OS and app version in use to investigate? If nothing would be off, there wouldn't be anything to investigate at all.

And exactly because the user has control over where to put what object, the resizing issue is a bug, not a feature. What, if that object was meant to be a fraction of pixels off? Why should the app override my settings rather than croping the out-of-bounds objects?

Get over it, the community will still love you, even if you're wrong for the first time in this forum. 😉

 

[R C-R]

3 minutes ago, Andy05 said:

You mocked about my statement that exact dimensions is one of the most important details in design.

Please do not misrepresent what I said. I was not mocking yours or anyone else's comments.

Exact dimensions are fully supported (up to & including tiny fractions of a pixel) in all the Affinity apps. Neither do they arbitrarily restrict placement of any object to whole pixel values, although they provide tools to do that when desired.

28 minutes ago, Andy05 said:

And exactly because the user has control over where to put what object, the resizing issue is a bug, not a feature. What, if that object was meant to be a fraction of pixels off? Why should the app override my settings rather than croping the out-of-bounds objects?

If it is meant to be a fractional pixel off, one way or another it must override your settings, either by increasing the document dimensions to include the fractional pixel part(s) or by cropping to eliminate them. 

[Andy05]

15 hours ago, R C-R said:

by cropping to eliminate them. 

... this. Changing the dimensions is a no-go.

Out-of-border artboards or objects could be done on purpose. An (automatic?) resize of the output can't be wanted.

[R C-R]

6 hours ago, Andy05 said:

... this. Changing the dimensions is a no-go.

I don't know what you mean by "this." As the OP's example in the first post shows, the artboard is not being cropped. Instead, it is being enlarged to include what would otherwise be lost if it was cropped to eliminate the 0.2 px X position offset.

So wanted or not, it must do one or the other (crop or enlarge) during export. Either one of necessity changes the dimensions. There is no way to avoid this when fractional pixels are involved. The only way to avoid that is -- as both @MEB & @Old Bruce have mentioned -- is to eliminate all the fractional pixel parts (in X, Y, W, & H), either by rounding up or down to the nearest whole pixel value.

[MEB]

Hi @happy.burrito,
What Affinity Photo version are you running (menu Affinity Photo > About)? The info is on the right side of the dialog below the picture.