Affinity Photo won't let me set the document size I need.

[AntiqueFlaneur]

KDP demands I make my front cover exactly  7.197 inches by 10.236 inches due to the page count and other book print factors. 

When I try to create this document size in Affinity Photo, it lets will let me do 7.197 x 10.234 in, or 7.198.

If I unclick the lock button, I thought I could choose any size, but though it will let me set any size, when I click "Resize," and then reopen the document resize panel again, I see that the document is still at 10.234 or 7.198.

How can I set the document size to what I need?

[RichardMH]

You on a Mac or PC? Seems OK on my PC.

[AntiqueFlaneur]

15 hours ago, RichardMH said:

You on a Mac or PC? Seems OK on my PC.

Mac

[walt.farrell]

Can you give us a screen recording of this happening?

[R C-R]

FWIW, on my Mac when I set the decimal places for unit types for inches to 4 (in Preferences > User Interface), after setting the canvas size to 7.197 X 10.236 inches, & checking the size via Document > Resize Canvas I get this:

It doesn't matter if I change it there to 7.1970 X 10.2360; each time I open the resize dialog it reverts to 7.1967 X 10.2367 in. I get similar results using Document > Resize Document.

So my guess is this is caused by the actual document/canvas size being constrained to integer pixel values.

[Pšenda]

55 minutes ago, R C-R said:

So my guess is this is caused by the actual document/canvas size being constrained to integer pixel values.

I thought so too, but I hid the post, because in the first screenshot you can see that the pixel values are not integer.

[walt.farrell]

10 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

because in the first screenshot you can see that the pixel values are not integer.

The first screenshot doesn't show px values at all. It shows inches, with decimal places that are being rounded.

Can you explain about the non-integer pixel values a bit more?

[Pšenda]

5 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

The first screenshot doesn't show px values at all.

[NotMyFault]

Affinity lets you happily create documents with fractional pixel sizes (but >= 1 px).

Only if you export to a raster format like jpg png tiff etc it MUST export to integer pixel sizes, normally leading to rounding up and causing a thin light line by partial transparency on right and/or bottom edge.

 

PS: 

UI (on iPad) is slightly  inconsistent. 

• create new insists of >= 1px
• resize and crop allows any size, below 1.0
• Crop allows 0, shows uneditable canvas (one bright pixel at any zoom level) and crashes if you try to resize again (after showing nan (not a number) for opposite axis in case of lock ratio)
• Crop rounds up to integer px (even if snapping deactivated)
• resize shows actual fractional px
• Always happy to find new edge cases allowing to crash Photo 

[R C-R]

53 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

Affinity lets you happily create documents with fractional pixel sizes (but >= 1 px).

OK, but why does this happen on my iMac?

1. I created a new AP document with the same settings as shown in the OP's screen shot (7.197 inches X 10.236 inches at 400 DPI). (For testing purposes I created a preset to do that.)

2. I opened Document > Resize Document 

3. I changed nothing & did not click Resize but it now shows this:

If I do nothing else other than change the document units popup to pixels, I get 2878 px X 4094 px for the Size: field (no fractional pixel values). Moreover, if I add a fill layer & rasterize it (not rasterize & trim), in the transform panel it shows the same 2878 px X 4094 px size.

However, if I add a rectangle snapped to the document spread, I get 2878.8 X 4094.4 px in the Transform panel.

The final result with both the rasterized fill & rectangle layer: What size canvas?.afphoto

But if after that I snap the now raster pixel layer to the document spread, it changes sizes to match the rectangle. So while the actual size of the document may include fractional pixel values, there is at least one bug in AP that 'prefers' whole pixels, so to speak.

[NotMyFault]

6 hours ago, R C-R said:

OK, but why does this happen on my iMac?

Good question. I have no answer, will need to investigate deeper. As I updated my post later:

Affinity is full of UI quirks and inconsistencies, especially when it comes to those safety nets like

• force pixel alignments (only for mouse input, not for numeric input in transform panel),
• layer lock (locks movement  only)
• or ensuring „not null“ (not checked when using crop + numeric input). 

Known issues:

• grid on iPad in inches is wrong
•  some unit conversions between inches and other units get wrong
   

So new document, resize, crop potentially all behave differently.

Maybe snapping has an impact? 

Tests to be done:

• New document
• Resize (resample on)
• resize (resample off)
• crop

To be run multiple times with variants:

1. Numeric input by keyboard
2. numeric input by mouse wheel
3. mouse input, from low to high
4. mouse input, from high to low
5. snapping off
6. snapping to whole pixels
7. other snapping options

Then you can check again what happens at export (to raster files, as this enforces whole pixel, but the size given in preview maybe wrong)

Check if the size shown in UI is the actual size of the document after clicking apply.

 

[R C-R]

10 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

Good question. I have no answer, will need to investigate deeper.

Please let me know if you get similar results for what I tried.

[NotMyFault]

20 hours ago, R C-R said:

OK, but why does this happen on my iMac?

1. I created a new AP document with the same settings as shown in the OP's screen shot (7.197 inches X 10.236 inches at 400 DPI). (For testing purposes I created a preset to do that.)

2. I opened Document > Resize Document 

3. I changed nothing & did not click Resize but it now shows this:

If I do nothing else other than change the document units popup to pixels, I get 2878 px X 4094 px for the Size: field (no fractional pixel values). Moreover, if I add a fill layer & rasterize it (not rasterize & trim), in the transform panel it shows the same 2878 px X 4094 px size.

However, if I add a rectangle snapped to the document spread, I get 2878.8 X 4094.4 px in the Transform panel.

The final result with both the rasterized fill & rectangle layer: What size canvas?.afphoto

But if after that I snap the now raster pixel layer to the document spread, it changes sizes to match the rectangle. So while the actual size of the document may include fractional pixel values, there is at least one bug in AP that 'prefers' whole pixels, so to speak.

Photo is lying, and simply cuts off any fractional digits in this UI box and all other places where the document size is displayed.

• Activate snapping with snap to margins, draw a rectangle over the canvas, and see the dimensions on canvas and in transform panel.
• When you open the same file in Designer, it shows the correct px dimensions including the fractional digits.

This leads to issues when you export, as Photo then rounds up to the next higher pixel number, and you never know why.

So in my view this is a critical UI bug and maybe the cause of multiple older bug reports.

You have no way to accurately inspect the document dimensions (with fractional digits) in Photo, all display is wrongly rounded down:

• Resize UI
• hand tool, display at window bar
• Exif Metadata

But you can proof the issue with help of rulers: zoom in to insane levels, navigate to the bottom right corner, and see that there are fractional pixels

 

bug report filed.

 

[R C-R]

Ignore. I misunderstood something about this, leading to an erroneous comment.

[NotMyFault]

Just now, R C-R said:

Does that include the EXIF size data? It looks like from your screenshots that the (real?) size of the document has no fractional pixel dimensions, which is what I would expect from a photo shot with a camera.

No, just the other way round.

• The document has the dimensions of exactly (German "," as decimal separator)
•  
• Affinity uses the rounded down value and puts it into the metadata (it is no camera photo. it as a from scratch created file).
• Open it with designer and you see the actual size correctly.
• 
• Objects like rectangles snapped to the margins show the exact size in transform panel
• 

[R C-R]

Just now, NotMyFault said:

No, just the other way round.

Please refer to my now edited post.

[NotMyFault]

On 4/4/2022 at 3:15 AM, AntiqueFlaneur said:

KDP demands I make my front cover exactly  7.197 inches by 10.236 inches due to the page count and other book print factors. 

When I try to create this document size in Affinity Photo, it lets will let me do 7.197 x 10.234 in, or 7.198.

If I unclick the lock button, I thought I could choose any size, but though it will let me set any size, when I click "Resize," and then reopen the document resize panel again, I see that the document is still at 10.234 or 7.198.

How can I set the document size to what I need?

To answer your question:

• Affinity correctly sets the file size for the internal document
• The display of the file size unfortunately is wrong. Internally in Photo, all values are rounded down to multiples of whole integer numbers (of pixels).
• It seems the inch values displayed in the UI box are calculated wrongly, too.
• The main question is in which format do you export the data. In case of a raster format like PNG JPG TIFF or PDF with rasterised content, the exported document adds 1 px for x and y axis if there are non-zero fractional digits.
• In case of vector format, you should check what happens. I assume the "round down or up to whole pixels" is a Photo only issue. Designer gives the correct dimensions including decimal digits.

[R C-R]

4 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

12 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Please refer to my now edited post.

Again, no.

What are saying "no" to? As I tried to explain, I misunderstood something you said, so as soon as I realized that I had done that (less than 5 minutes after I posted it) I replaced the entire comment with "Ignore" & a brief explanation of why I did that.

[NotMyFault]

39 minutes ago, R C-R said:

What are saying "no" to? As I tried to explain, I misunderstood something you said, so as soon as I realized that I had done that (less than 5 minutes after I posted it) I replaced the entire comment with "Ignore" & a brief explanation of why I did that.

sorry, my browser did not update. I still got a mix of your old and new post, without noticing. Please disregard / hide your post. I already removed my wrong post.