Export selection without background still gives whitespaces

[ONiel]

Hi

Affinity is doing annoying again.

I have drawn a simple line and I am trying to export it without whitespaces on the side! I try making a section and then doing "Export selection without background"... Still whitespace... Annoying af.

 

section_separator.png is the output...

 

 

 

 

annoying_af.afdesign

[R C-R]

What exactly do you have you selected?

I ask because in your afdesign file I see only a curve (the line) with a rectangle nested in it. So whichever one I select, in the AD export PNG dialog the only choices for Area are "Whole Document," "Selection Area," & "Selection Only." There is no "Export selection without background" option for me.

[lacerto]

Yes, there are multiple issues:

1) Designer (or any oher Affinity app) cannot export accurately a selection that is masked or clipped, but instead, if an object is masked (as in OP's example), the object boundaries of the masked shape will determine the export size (in this case the line extends to left and right of the mask so there would be extra padding on left and right):

or if it is clipped, the clipping shape determines the export size in this case there would be extra padding at top and bottom according to the clipping rectangle's height):

This means in practice that the selection to be exported needs to be rasterized before exporting to be exported exactly to the desired effective bounding box where pixels will be rendered:

2) In addition: if the canvas is smaller than the exported selection, the parts that go beyond the canvas will not be rendered but cause transparent padding, so to fix this specific case, the canvas should first be expanded and then the selection be rasterized and exported as a selection only after that. A necessity to do that is truly annoying.

3) Last, it seems that Affinity has removed the user's possibility to choose whether selections are exported to PNG with or without a background. At least in 1.8.5 versions this option still existed but not in current release versions. So currently PNG selections will always have a transparent background, also in paletted versions. [EDIT: In current version this option is titled "Selection Area".]

[Komatös]

27 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

...

3) Last, it seems that Affinity has removed the user's possibility to choose whether selections are exported to PNG with or without a background. At least in 1.8.5 versions this option still existed but not in current release versions. So currently PNG selections will always have a transparent background, also in paletted versions.

In the "More"-option in the export dialoque you can choose the backround color. Defaul is set to 'none'.

[lacerto]

On 9/5/2021 at 11:25 AM, Komatös said:

In the "More"-option in the export dialoque you can choose the backround color. Defaul is set to 'none'.

Oh yes, there is still the matte option, and it seems the current term for including whatever is under the selection boundary box (the former "Selection with background") is now "Selection Area":

Anyway, the selection that gets exported is not what most users would expect, when using masks or clipped object. 

EDIT: What one would expect is of course subjective and determined on what one is used to: in CorelDRAW the exported (PNG) selections are defined by the actual clipping mask, not the clipped object(s), but e.g. in Illustrator both the clipping shape and the clipped object(s) together determine the export bounding box. 

EDIT2: The only way to have cropped export without rasterizing (and not including the boundary boxes of shapes used for masking) that I can think of is creating an artboard (and if necessary move the art to be exported onto the newly created artboard), and then manually size the artboard so that it accurately encloses the art. After that choosing just the specific artboard as the source of export would give a file without whitespace on edges.