Border around artboard?

[alonl6]

I like to have a white background when working. Problem is I can't see white artboards. When I click on an artboard I can see a stroke option but for some reason it's not working. Any suggestion? Thanks.

[GarryP]

Artboards cannot, as far as I know, have a Stroke applied to them.
However, you can put a slightly larger artboard behind the one you are working on and give the larger one a dark fill colour.
I have no idea how this might work in practice but it’s possible.

[NathanC]

Artboards can't currently have a stroke applied to them which is currently logged with the developers, as the option is given along the context toolbar when the artboard is selected despite the stroke not actually being visible once applied.

You can however change the Artboard fill to a different colour and change the Artboard Background Grey level in Preferences > User Interface to help make the artboards more visible.

 

[Pšenda]

4 minutes ago, NathanC said:

Artboards can't currently have a stroke applied to them which is currently logged with the developers

And fx please 🙂

[Alfred]

3 minutes ago, NathanC said:

Artboards can't currently have a stroke applied to them which is currently logged with the developers, as the option is given along the context toolbar when the artboard is selected despite the stroke not actually being visible once applied.

Thanks, Nathan.

4 minutes ago, NathanC said:

You can however change the Artboard fill to a different colour and change the Artboard Background Grey level in Preferences > User Interface to help make the artboards more visible.

As I understand it, the OP is specifically looking for a way to have a white artboard on a white background, with only a coloured stroke separating them.

[NathanC]

13 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

And fx please 🙂

On the fence with this one, I've just raised this internally with the QA team who have advised this will have been by design since artboards are intended as a container layer.

[carl123]

1 hour ago, alonl6 said:

I like to have a white background when working. Problem is I can't see white artboards. When I click on an artboard I can see a stroke option but for some reason it's not working. Any suggestion?

Possible workaround:

Add a 1px bleed to your document (bleed can be any colour you want)

 

[Pšenda]

1 hour ago, NathanC said:

since artboards are intended as a container layer.

But then Artboards should behave the same as Layer, which is also a container, that cannot be set fx, or Stroke, or Fill (although it is possible to set it, it just won't be displayed directly to Layer - fx are applied to nested objects as with Group).

Which would be a shame, because Artboard fill (like Stroke and fx) is very useful.

P.S. Image layer is also a container (for image data), and it can also be set Fill, Stroke, and fx.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, NathanC said:

Artboards can't currently have a stroke applied to them which is currently logged with the developers, as the option is given along the context toolbar when the artboard is selected despite the stroke not actually being visible once applied.

As a workaround, you can use the Appearance panel to add a second stroke to the Artboard, and that one will show up.

[Pšenda]

15 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

As a workaround, you can use the Appearance panel to add a second stroke to the Artboard, and that one will show up.

Interesting - "then" the first stroke is also displayed. However, if one of them is deleted, none of them will be displayed.

[Alfred]

5 hours ago, Pšenda said:

Interesting - "then" the first stroke is also displayed. However, if one of them is deleted, none of them will be displayed.

Doesn’t that depend on the width, alignment, and colours of the two strokes?

 

[R C-R]

9 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

As a workaround, you can use the Appearance panel to add a second stroke to the Artboard, and that one will show up.

Check out this Stroke via Appearance.afdesign example. It has 2 strokes applied in the Appearance panel. Currently the second one (blue) is set to invisible. The first one (green) shows up. Making the green one invisible & the blue one visible makes just that blus stroke visible. Setting both to visible shows them both.

So minimally, for this workaround to work there must be at least 2 strokes applied, but either or both can easily be made visible.

[Pšenda]

5 hours ago, Alfred said:

Doesn’t that depend on the width, alignment, and colours of the two strokes?

No.

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

So minimally, for this workaround to work there must be at least 2 strokes applied,

 

[Alfred]

16 hours ago, Alfred said:

Doesn’t that depend on the width, alignment, and colours of the two strokes?

 

10 hours ago, Pšenda said:

No.

 

12 hours ago, R C-R said:

So minimally, for this workaround to work there must be at least 2 strokes applied

I understand that in order to see a stroke there must be two strokes applied, but in my tests here I have seen only one of them: I don’t always see either none or two.

 

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, Alfred said:

I understand that in order to see a stroke there must be two strokes applied, but in my tests here I have seen only one of them: I don’t always see either none or two.

What do you see in this 2 Strokes via Appearance.afdesign example? I see both a green & a blue stroke.

Note that for both, they are set to inside alignment & their widths & stacking order are such that the smaller green one is not hidden by the larger blue one.

[Pšenda]

2 hours ago, Alfred said:

I understand that in order to see a stroke there must be two strokes applied, but in my tests here I have seen only one of them: I don’t always see either none or two.

 

For me, I just add even just a Fill (no color), and the Stroke will appear.

[Alfred]

2 hours ago, R C-R said:

What do you see in this 2 Strokes via Appearance.afdesign example? I see both a green & a blue stroke.

I see the same. Please note that I didn’t say “in my tests here I have only seen one of them”, I said “in my tests here I have seen only one of them”. In other words, I have seen two (as in this case) but I have also seen only one.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, Pšenda said:

For me, I just add even just a Fill (no color), and the Stroke will appear.

But there still has to be at least two strokes applied in the Appearance panel to see a stroke, right?

15 minutes ago, Alfred said:

I see the same. Please note that I didn’t say “in my tests here I have only seen one of them”, I said “in my tests here I have seen only one of them”. In other words, I have seen two (as in this case) but I have also seen only one.

OK, that was not clear to me, but now that it is, I think we are all seeing the same thing, there if there are 2 (or more) strokes applied in the Appearance panel then it is possible for one or more of them to be visible, right?

If so, I think not showing an artboard stroke if only one is applied to it (& it is set to inner or center stroke alignment, etc.) can be considered a bug. Are we all in agreement about that?

[walt.farrell]

2 minutes ago, R C-R said:

If so, I think not showing an artboard stroke if only one is applied to it (& it is set to inner or center stroke alignment, etc.) can be considered a bug. Are we all in agreement about that?

Yes, as indicated earlier in this topic and by the bug tag assigned to the topic:

 

[R C-R]

1 minute ago, walt.farrell said:

Yes, as indicated earlier in this topic and by the bug tag assigned to the topic:

Thanks, but it is not clear to me from the "afd-3666" tag or just the comment "currently logged with the developers" means this is confirmed as a bug or still possibly will be considered one of those cryptic "by design" things.

[Alfred]

2 hours ago, Pšenda said:

For me, I just add even just a Fill (no color), and the Stroke will appear.

 

11 minutes ago, R C-R said:

But there still has to be at least two strokes applied in the Appearance panel to see a stroke, right?

@Pšenda’s screenshot suggests otherwise. There are two fills but only one stroke.

[Alfred]

7 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Thanks, but it is not clear to me from the "afd-3666" tag or just the comment "currently logged with the developers" means this is confirmed as a bug or still possibly will be considered one of those cryptic "by design" things.

No, it isn’t necessarily confirmed, it just means it’s been logged in their issue tracking system. In the present case it’s clear from @NathanC’s comments in this thread that it’s been reported as a bug rather than an improvement issue, but the developers may reject that assessment and choose instead to resolve the issue as ‘By Design’.

[R C-R]

37 minutes ago, Alfred said:

@Pšenda’s screenshot suggests otherwise. There are two fills but only one stroke.

Thanks. I completely missed that it had 2 fills & just one stroke, even though it should have been obvious. DOH!  ☹️

In fact, when I tried it just now, even if both fills are set to no color and their visibility is turned off, a center or inside aligned stroke still appears, like in this Stroke & 2 invisible fills.afdesign example.

Yet another variation is if I delete one of the two fills in the above example file, I get 1 Stroke & 1 fill.afdesign & the stroke still appears as long as the fill is set to invisible. Set it to visible & the stroke disappears.

49 minutes ago, Alfred said:

... but the developers may reject that assessment and choose instead to resolve the issue as ‘By Design’.

In light of the above, I cannot see how they could justify saying there is not at least one bug that is not an intended part of the design!

[Pšenda]

5 hours ago, Alfred said:

 

@Pšenda’s screenshot suggests otherwise. There are two fills but only one stroke.

Thanks, unfortunately, sometimes even a clear image is not enough :-)

[Pšenda]

5 hours ago, R C-R said:

the stroke still appears as long as the fill is set to invisible.

At least for me it was a content recovery issue. Try zooming.