Incorrect dimensions at export

[abra100pro]

I export banner-artboards of common sizes and they end up being one pixel taller or wider than the artboard in AD - I reported that a lot and sent files and got recognized but it didn't change in over a year - this is a major bug and I cannot understand how (web-)people are using AD with it. This is the final post I'm doing about this topic. I don't want to annoy anyone and I have no will to continue nagging about it if no one else seems to be affected (enough) to care.

I'd consider this bug solved as soon as I can place my artboards anywhere on the canvas - even with decimal x/y-values and they get exported at the exact size they also have in AD.

Here's the video:

[walt.farrell]

9 minutes ago, abra100pro said:

this is a major bug

I believe it is not considered a bug, but a user responsibility to properly position and size the Artboards. It could, if course, be improved.

[abra100pro]

(Being constructive... )

Two of the artboards were positioned with decimals in their x/y-values (however that happened).
I repositioned them to integers and nothing changed.
I saved the file and quit AD, reopened it and now all the exports are correct except one (which is of cours placed with integer x/y-values on the canvas - I already have developed a serious paranoia on this).
Please take notice that I saved and reopened the file before without success.

 

[abra100pro]

2 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

I believe it is not considered a bug, but a user responsibility to properly position and size the Artboards. It could, if course, be improved.

No, no, and no! We've had this before - it is ridiculous! I invite you to work with 34 artboards and be aware of them all being placed on integer values. You will very quickly swear on this, believe me.

This is a bug and if Serif and the whole community tells me it's not I will have to quit using AD. But seriously: how can anyone think this is a proper behaviour? This is so extremely annoyingly false that I lack of words.

[walt.farrell]

Are their sizes also integer pixels?

How many decimal places do you display? I recommend at least 3.

1 minute ago, abra100pro said:

I invite you to work with 34 artboards and be aware of them all being placed on integer values

Appropriate Snapping options should relieve most or all of the worry.

Snapping on, Force Pixel Alignment on, Move By Whole Pixels off.

Don't use the Alt (Opt on Mac) key while dragging an Artboard.

[Alfred]

Just now, walt.farrell said:

Appropriate Snapping options should relieve most or all of the worry.

Snapping on, Force Pixel Alignment on, Move By Whole Pixels off.

Don't use the Alt (Opt on Mac) key while dragging an Artboard.

We really shouldn’t need to do all of that! As long as the pixel dimensions of an object are whole numbers, it should be irrelevant whether the object is itself aligned to the pixel grid or is placed on an artboard which is aligned to the pixel grid.

[abra100pro]

3 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Are their sizes also integer pixels?

How many decimal places do you display? I recommend at least 3.

Appropriate Snapping options should relieve most or all of the worry.

Snapping on, Force Pixel Alignment on, Move By Whole Pixels off.

Don't use the Alt (Opt on Mac) key while dragging an Artboard.

Please, Walt, it's not done by the settings - check my video and you will see that everthing is correct.

There is another prove: see these two images: the big one shows the position and size of the artboard; the small image shows the size of the very same artboard after switching to Export persona - it _is_ a bug, period.

 

[abra100pro]

3 minutes ago, Alfred said:

We really shouldn’t need to do all of that! As long as the pixel dimensions of an object are whole numbers, it should be irrelevant whether the object is itself aligned to the pixel grid or is placed on an artboard which is aligned to the pixel grid.

Thank you, @Alfred! This is absolutely right.

[abra100pro]

3 minutes ago, Hens said:

Please show us the settings in preferences for the decimal places

You mean these ones?:

[abra100pro]

Just now, Hens said:

Just like I and Walt said;

Change all the decimal settings for every unit and see how this influences the size of your artboards.

Wow - Thanks I did that and realized that there are decimals everywhere - but this is still a bad joke!

1. What comes after 6 Pixels? 2660.99892332? Come on!
2. As @Alfred posted: It MUST not play a role where on the canvas a integer sized artboard lies - this really must be fixed

[abra100pro]

2 minutes ago, Hens said:

There cannot be numbers after the comma to have it not round up or down.

We're talking about the size of the export, not the x/y of the canvas. The y/x are (for instance) 1080px x 1920px no matter what is set in the prefs.

[Old Bruce]

6 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

How many decimal places do you display? I recommend at least 3.

I keep saying jog the x, y coordinates and jog the W H sizes by using the arrow keys in the appropriate fields in the Transform Panel.

if there are leading zeros then you won't see the fourth place 8 and there is no indication there is a nonzero decimal in place. 

Have Force Pixels turned on and snap only to a Pixel based grid. Have the document units set to pixels and you should be good to go.

[Old Bruce]

22 minutes ago, abra100pro said:

There is another prove: see these two images: the big one shows the position and size of the artboard; the small image shows the size of the very same artboard after switching to Export persona - it _is_ a bug, period.

Do you have a stroke applied?

[abra100pro]

4 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

I keep saying jog the x, y coordinates and jog the W H sizes by using the arrow keys in the appropriate fields in the Transform Panel.

if there are leading zeros then you won't see the fourth place 8 and there is no indication there is a nonzero decimal in place. 

Have Force Pixels turned on and snap only to a Pixel based grid. Have the document units set to pixels and you should be good to go.

This doesn't work on a daily basis, because:

• You always have to check whether you have the snapping off (which is useful in other steps of the process)
• You cannot copydrag 4 artboards quickly upwards unless you follow the exact and ridiculous procedure of Alt + Shift and drag and then in the drag release the alt but keep the shift

Everyone who has not worked with dozens of artboards does not know how tedious this becomes in no time.

[abra100pro]

1 minute ago, Old Bruce said:

Do you have a stroke applied?

to the artboard? no. You can check that on my image.

[abra100pro]

Can we agree on this to be a bug?

[Alfred]

12 minutes ago, Hens said:

Af programs are not web intended programs and as such it may not be considered as a bug

Since exporting to a raster format means you can only export whole pixels, it doesn’t matter whether the output is intended for web use or not. The dimensions of an object exported at 100% scaling should always precisely match the dimensions of the object in the document, regardless of the position of the object relative to the canvas or the artboard, and regardless of the position of the artboard.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, abra100pro said:

Can we agree on this to be a bug?

Which "this" do you mean? The need for you to keep your Artboards aligned to the pixel grid? As far as I know that is not agreed by Serif to be a bug. 

14 hours ago, abra100pro said:

You cannot copydrag 4 artboards quickly upwards unless you follow the exact and ridiculous procedure of Alt + Shift and drag and then in the drag release the alt but keep the shift

Select the Artboards. Ctrl or Cmd + Drag them to duplicate and move them where to where you want. Do not use Alt/Opt.

[abra100pro]

18 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Which "this" do you mean? The need for you to keep your Artboards aligned to the pixel grid? As far as I know that is not agreed by Serif to be a bug. 

Select the Artboards. Ctrl or Cmd + Drag them to duplicate and move them where to where you want. Do not use Alt/Opt.

I am astonished - in which App (I) ever used is CMD + drag = copy?
And why does Alt/Option + drag the same but... somehow not the same? 
This is an inconsistency and by no means a standard.

I defined the bug in several posts, made videos about it, etc. @Alfred also made it very clear; maybe his definition is easier to understand than mine:

"Since exporting to a raster format means you can only export whole pixels, it doesn’t matter whether the output is intended for web use or not. The dimensions of an object exported at 100% scaling should always precisely match the dimensions of the object in the document, regardless of the position of the object relative to the canvas or the artboard, and regardless of the position of the artboard."

Nothing to add.... oh, but: It is a bug by all means. Serif, why don't you just fix it? There is no reason for leaving it as it is.

 

BTW: I have no intention to bite one's leg here in the forum for helping me with explanations, so, @walt.farrell, @Old Bruce and everyone around: thank you really for your help and tips to find a fix to this desaster. But doing so many jobs with many artboards this issue is a longterm PITA and after hours of designing I struggle another hour or so to get my work out, this is where I really start throwing darkgrey pixels onto the artboards ;-).

[NotMyFault]

There are already some older bug reports covering this topic, but from different perspectives, so symptoms or wording may differ. Common for all is getting unwanted extra pixels, and getting as „bonus“ wrong colors (normally lighter colors) for these extra pixels making it hurt even more.

Affinity made clear in some of these posts that it does not rate this extra pixels as bug. Instead they call it a feature request.

To summarize: Affinity is aware of these topics, doesn‘t rate them as bugs, and never posts timelines for both bug fixes and feature requests.

I personally share the frustration about this situation, but emotional posts don‘t really help. 
 

 

[walt.farrell]

45 minutes ago, abra100pro said:

I am astonished - in which App (I) ever used is CMD + drag = copy?
And why does Alt/Option + drag the same but... somehow not the same? 
This is an inconsistency and by no means a standard

Applications differ. The Status Bar in the Affinity applications tells you what to do. Ctrl/Cmd drag to copy. Add Alt to ignore Snapping. (Though the hints could be clearer.)

Others have also complained that this isn't a standard Mac implementation.

However, if you're using Alt you're helping cause the problem you have experienced, so I would suggest not using it

And from what I've seen, Serif does not agree that the requirement to pixel-align the Artboards is a bug. I may, of course, have missed some acknowledgment that they've made.

[Old Bruce]

56 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

And from what I've seen, Serif does not agree that the requirement to pixel-align the Artboards is a bug. I may, of course, have missed some acknowledgment that they've made.

I too agree that Serif doesn't acknowledge there is no bug in Pixel aligning Artboards. I do think that an automatic Pixel alignment of Artboards would be a much appreciated feature. A bonus would be if we could have Pixel sized Artboards as an added option. It would go a long way to getting rid of the gotchas experienced by so many users doing pixel work for icons etc.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Old Bruce said:

I do think that an automatic Pixel alignment of Artboards would be a much appreciated feature.

Or they could do for the Export Persona what they did for File > Export a couple of releases back. File > Export ignores the  X/Y position of an Artboard and determines the size based on the height/width of the Artboard.

[abra100pro]

4 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Or they could do for the Export Persona what they did for File > Export a couple of releases back. File > Export ignores the  X/Y position of an Artboard and determines the size based on the height/width of the Artboard.

That's exactly it - the export should not be affected by the position of the artboard in any way. This is the only remedy for this bug. I really couldn't care less about the position of artboards on the canvas - Why would anyone, other than for the personal satisfaction of "hey, mom, look how aligned they are!"

[Callum]

This is currently a known issue that is logged with our developers to be improved in the future.

C