Copying Design Elements Between Documents

[mullywhisp]

I need to find a way to save a group of items within one document composed of both raster and vector parts that will allow me to import that group into a different (but already existing) document. Is this possible? 

 

I searched the forum as well as I could but I may not know the appropriate search terms for this operation. 

[mrqasq]

why not export it as pdf and than place it with "place image" option?

[Dan C]

Hi @mullywhisp,

39 minutes ago, mullywhisp said:

I need to find a way to save a group of items within one document composed of both raster and vector parts that will allow me to import that group into a different (but already existing) document. Is this possible? 

Assuming these layers you wish to copy are between documents in one Affinity app, rather than between 2 apps (from Designer into Photo, for example) - you can simply group the layers in the Layers Studio, select this group with the Move Tool and then Copy this group from the Edit menu.

Now, open your second document and use Paste from the Edit menu, where you should find the groups and layers are pasted.

If you need to transfer layers from one Affinity iOS app to another, I would recommend saving the document in Designer (for example), then using Document > Place in Photo, select this saved .afdesign file and you will find the document, including layers, are added to your file in Photo, without the need for exporting to PDF.

I hope this helps

[mullywhisp]

12 minutes ago, mrqasq said:

why not export it as pdf and than place it with "place image" option?

I did know .pdf retained vector elements but I did not know Place Image could be used to import .pdf as such, I'll try this! Thank you very much, this could be a huge help for me!

[mullywhisp]

1 minute ago, Dan C said:

Hi @mullywhisp,

Assuming these layers you wish to copy are between documents in one Affinity app, rather than between 2 apps (from Designer into Photo, for example) - you can simply group the layers in the Layers Studio, select this group with the Move Tool and then Copy this group from the Edit menu.

Now, open your second document and use Paste from the Edit menu, where you should find the groups and layers are pasted.

If you need to transfer layers from one Affinity iOS app to another, I would recommend saving the document in Designer (for example), then using Document > Place in Photo, select this saved .afdesign file and you will find the document, including layers, are added to your file in Photo, without the need for exporting to PDF.

I hope this helps

Absolutely, thank you so much! I know it seems simple in retrospect but I was genuinely opting to recreate certain design elements multiple times because I couldn't figure that out. I really appreciate this!

[mrqasq]

@Dan C your approach is valid, as long as we speak Affinity wise. The moment we would like to use this saved portion i.e "composite" document somewhere else - it becomes easier to export it and save as PDF.
Then you can work with it in different software as well. I've done that many times in the past with Affinity, Adobe, Corel and other softwares respectively. Each software has it's own gripes, with PDF being Adobe file format, but it works more often than not.

  

17 minutes ago, mullywhisp said:

 but I did not know Place Image could be used to import .pdf as such

this is intened by the developers. Would they want users to know what this option can do - they would name it properly to "place document" and attach multi-icon so it would also look like this option can in fact bring different media types into affinity app. Since they wanted to hide it - they miss named it and misslabeled it it's same thing with Open from Cloud option which should be "Open from Files/Cloud" which I already posted about.
But this seems to be solved in the overhaul of the UI in Publisher 2.0 shown on Apple Event. Let's hope this will also be bring up back to all other apps.

[mrqasq]

double posted.

[mullywhisp]

19 minutes ago, mrqasq said:

@Dan C your approach is valid, as long as we speak Affinity wise. The moment we would like to use this saved portion i.e "composite" document somewhere else - it becomes easier to export it and save as PDF.
Then you can work with it in different software as well. I've done that many times in the past with Affinity, Adobe, Corel and other softwares respectively. Each software has it's own gripes, with PDF being Adobe file format, but it works more often than not.

  

this is intened by the developers. Would they want users to know what this option can do - they would name it properly to "place document" and attach multi-icon so it would also look like this option can in fact bring different media types into affinity app. Since they wanted to hide it - they miss named it and misslabeled it it's same thing with Open from Cloud option which should be "Open from Files/Cloud" which I already posted about.
But this seems to be solved in the overhaul of the UI in Publisher 2.0 shown on Apple Event. Let's hope this will also be bring up back to all other apps.

Yeah I think both of these solutions will be handing depending on the circumstances but the idea of having building a folder of pdf type elements to pull from in any document is very enticing. Wonderful options here, even if they were deliberately hidden by developers! Thank you! 

[mrqasq]

You just have to be careful with many instances of this "composite" file, combined elements. If they exist in many instances in the same document - one edit will edit all those instances. This might introduce some issues in your workflow.

[mullywhisp]

8 minutes ago, mrqasq said:

You just have to be careful with many instances of this "composite" file, combined elements. If they exist in many instances in the same document - one edit will edit all those instances. This might introduce some issues in your workflow.

Ah, thank you for the warning! That probably saved me from an hour of head scratching haha! I'm really excited to try this