Linking Affinity Designer objects in Publisher, instead of the WHOLE board.

[kaykaykim]

Hi there, 

I've been trying to google a solution for ages but it isn't happening so I'm turning to the wisdom of the masses haha. 

I've recently opened some .idml files in Publisher, trying to convert everything to Affinity. The original .idml file had linked .ai files. I've converted all the .ai files to Affinity Designer.

My problem: when I open .idml file in Publisher and relink all the links, it 'resets' the links. And the links appear within the frame but the whole board from Designer is linked into the frame (see attached image - the illustration is severely minimised becaus ethe whole board is scaled into the frame), instead of just the objects. In Illustrator, only objects get linked so when I click 'scale to maximum fit', the illustration automatically fills the whole frame. But there's no such thing in Publisher. 

My current solution is to export the Designer files to .png formats and link the png file. But that's incredibly cumbersome. Does anyone else have any ideas?

Thank you!!!

[loukash]

You may want to upload some example IDML and AI files that illustrate the issue, so that we can "play" with them.

[Dan C]

Hi @kaykaykim,

Welcome to the forums!

On 5/11/2021 at 3:05 AM, kaykaykim said:

so when I click 'scale to maximum fit', the illustration automatically fills the whole frame. But there's no such thing in Publisher. 

When using Picture Frames, you should see a Properties option on the Context Toolbar, selecting this will open your scale settings for the document within the frame, one of these options is 'Scale to max fit'.

Does selecting one of these options correctly size the placed file?

If not, providing sample .afpub & .idml documents as loukash has recommended above would certainly help us to look into this further

[kaykaykim]

Thanks for the welcome @Dan C. And for your suggestion @loukash

None of those scaling options work for me unfortunately. I've added some example files of my issue in .afpub and their .afdesign links. Hope this illustrates things better. Thanks so much! 

Frame 2.afdesign Test.afpub Frame 1.afdesign

[loukash]

Why not simply open the afdesign files in Publisher's Designer persona and then copy/paste the curves as native objects directly into the afpub layout?

Keep in mind that the InDesign/Illustrator workflow required many objects to be linked because InDesign cannot handle them natively.
Not so Publisher: Anything you create in Designer/Photo can be copied into Publisher as is.

And vice versa, you can edit elements of a Publisher document natively in Designer/Photo.

There are reasons when you may want to link objects externally, but it's not a requirement in an Affinity workflow.

[kaykaykim]

Thanks for the idea @loukash . I do need to link them externally as the same .afdesign file is used across a few .afpub documents, so that if I change the .afdesign file, the change is automatically applied across all the various .afpub documents. If there is a way to link just the objects and not the entire .afdesign artboard, then it would fix the issue. I've tried enlarging the objects to fill the whole artboard, but this mucks things up with text especially (the text doesn't enlarge the same way)

[loukash]

There  is a new Publisher beta available which supposedly fixes – among others – "Artboards could be resized when replacing placed documents". You may want to try that. forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/forum/62-affinity-publisher-beta-forums

[loukash]

That aside…

On 5/11/2021 at 4:05 AM, kaykaykim said:

I've converted all the .ai files to Affinity Designer.

When converting, crop the artwork using the Artboard tool. There's no point in keeping a 260×110 px object on a whopping 8000×6000 px canvas!

[loukash]

With the new beta, this seems to work:

[kaykaykim]

16 hours ago, loukash said:

That aside…

When converting, crop the artwork using the Artboard tool. There's no point in keeping a 260×110 px object on a whopping 8000×6000 px canvas!

hahahahaha that's a fair point! thank you! lol

16 hours ago, loukash said:

With the new beta, this seems to work:

ooh!! ok thank you @loukash!  I'll try that out.