Artboards in Affinity Photo 2

[albertkinng]

I noticed Artboards Settings on Photo 2. I can't find where to make them? Any help will be appreaciated. Thanks

[walt.farrell]

All the Affinity applications can handle each others' files. Thus, you can create a file in Designer that has Artboards, and then Open that file in Photo. That is the usual case where that Preference will be used. (There are some other ways, too, but that's the most obvious one.)

Edit: You'll probably find that same setting in Photo, too.

[albertkinng]

On 11/23/2022 at 4:58 PM, walt.farrell said:

and then Open that file in Photo

I know that. I was wondering if you can create an art board in Photo, the same way you do it on Designer. It seems it can't be done... weird UI design flaw. Thanks

[R C-R]

3 minutes ago, albertkinng said:

.. weird UI design flaw. Thanks

Not a flaw. Like several other features that are supported in all the apps but cannot be created in all o them, this was a design & marketing decision. There are probably dozens of topics about this by now, so maybe try a search for some of them?

[walt.farrell]

2 minutes ago, albertkinng said:

I know that. I was wondering if you can create an art board in Photo, the same way you do it on Designer. It seems it can't be done... weird UI design flaw. Thanks

Each of the Affinity applications has a different target audience, and a different set of functions targeted at that audience. Thus, Designer has a tool to create Artboards, which Photo and Publisher don't have. Publisher has the Picture Frame Tool that Designer and Photo don't have. And Photo has functions that Designer and Publisher don't have.

Not weird, not a flaw.

[albertkinng]

2 minutes ago, R C-R said:

dozens of topics about this by now

Exactly my point.

[R C-R]

2 minutes ago, albertkinng said:

Exactly my point.

What specifically is your point? Are you saying you disagree with their reasons for this or something else? If so, what in particular do you think they should do differently?

[walt.farrell]

7 minutes ago, albertkinng said:

I was wondering if you can create an art board in Photo, the same way you do it on Designer

Can you? Yes.*

The same way as in Designer? No.

----

* Forum search left as an exercise for the reader.

[albertkinng]

1 minute ago, walt.farrell said:

Not weird, not a flaw

It's sad that a real observation about a design flaw triggers some people's affiliation to a certain app. Let's pretend that you are right, and it's perfectly designed with a target audience in particular. What happens if the new user, a never experienced in Affinity ecosystem designer coming from maybe Pixelmator find that in the settings. Obviously, will start looking for a way to create art boards. Frustrated will be here looking for answers and someone here tells him that is there for marketing reasons and if he buys Designer he will be able to create those art boards. Do you really think that will make him happy?  As a UI/UX designer under Sketch software, working for agencies more than 20+ years, it is in my opinion (one that should be respected because has not been said to insult anybody here) a flaw in graphic user and experience design. Why? It's not directly related with the app functionality. Primary rule of UI/UX. 

Hope you can understand my point. 

[loukash]

14 minutes ago, albertkinng said:

a design flaw

Um… the correct term here is: By design.  

19 minutes ago, albertkinng said:

What happens if the new user, a never experienced in Affinity ecosystem designer coming from maybe Pixelmator find that in the settings. Obviously, will start looking for a way to create art boards.

I have to agree that the concept of artboards in regards to the UI preference settings in Photo and Publisher should be better documented, especially for those users who don't have Designer to actually create artboards.

That said, artboards are a very specific Designer feature. Keep in mind that Affinity artboards are not pages, they are vector objects. There's no immediate need for Photo as a primarily bitmap editing application to have vector artboards. Neither for Publisher as a page layout app, for that matter. But both can handle them just fine. That's by design. 

So… the actual feature of all three apps is that thanks to the universal Affinity document format, they all can seamlessly display all unique features from their sister apps. And in that sense, it's nice to have a preference setting how such Designer artboards are being displayed if you want to add some specific Photo features (filters, for example!) to an *.afdesign document. (I, for one, like to have the Photo canvas background at 50 % gray, but otherwise I have spread and artboard backgrounds in all apps at ~90 % gray, i.e. a very light gray. It's nice to have the options to set it up for each app individually.)

So, it's not a "flaw", it's a Good Thing™, and an integral part of the overall Affinity universal document format concept.

(Have you ever tried to open and edit an *.ai document without the PDF stream in Photoshop?)
(That was a rhetorical question.)

[albertkinng]

33 minutes ago, loukash said:

So, it's not a "flaw", it's a Good Thing™, and an integral part of the overall Affinity universal document format concept.

Again, it's obvious I will never be the person with the right observation when the lack of tolerance for a constructive opinion is leading the conversation. I asked for respect of opinion, so I will respect others opinions as well. Let's just agree to disagree.

[loukash]

2 minutes ago, albertkinng said:

I asked for respect of opinion

You've asked:

On 11/23/2022 at 10:51 PM, albertkinng said:

I noticed Artboards Settings on Photo 2. I can't find where to make them? Any help will be appreaciated.

1 hour ago, albertkinng said:

I was wondering if you can create an art board in Photo, the same way you do it on Designer. It seems it can't be done

You've got several answers with explanation why it is the way it is.
It's nothing personal. Just facts.

[albertkinng]

2 minutes ago, loukash said:

Just facts

Topic has been solved, explained and understood. Anything else, I will be happy to help.

[albertkinng]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

What specifically is your point?

I missed your post, friend. It seems I was confused by a design implementation of the graphic interface. I thought something was added on version 2 based on the settings options, and I was wrong. Others were triggered by my reaction, but the conversation was moving to another path and I stop trying to explain my personal experience with the issue. So, there's no point here, I received my answer and everything is fine. Answering your questions just for fun will be:

1. Are you saying you disagree with their reasons for this or something else?

- No, I was referring to the fact that you mentioned there were a lot of forums with the same topic. Basically admitting many users were confused with the same setting in Photo.

2. Do you think they should do differently?

- If I was one of the UI/UX designers, with a small [i] next to the setting option, explaining that it would work with Designer files when opened, should work fine but, hey what a UI/UX designer knows about it right? 

Have a great night, friend. Keep enjoying V2 Apps! I'm so happy with them, I should get a job as a sales representative! lol, Already make all my friends buying the universal deal!

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, albertkinng said:

It's sad that a real observation about a design flaw triggers some people's affiliation to a certain app.

It is no more a design flaw than say a word processor app not including an extensive set of graphics creation tools.

1 hour ago, albertkinng said:

- No, I was referring to the fact that you mentioned there were a lot of forums with the same topic. Basically admitting many users were confused with the same setting in Photo.

"Many" is a relative term, but like many other things some users are confused about, it is explained in the Preferences help topic (like https://affinity.help/photo/en-US.lproj/index.html for US users) that this is for artboards in Affinity Designer. 

[albertkinng]

On 11/25/2022 at 10:39 PM, R C-R said:

It is no more a design flaw than say a word processor app not including an extensive set of graphics creation tools.

Besides the ironically intention to continue with this already finished topic, I feel the need to just point out your justification argument of a not well UI/UX design implemented as it perfectly illustrates the fact that we're not talking about a Word Processor, in fact that is why I thought it was a good thing to discuss because we were talking about a professional design software. I can tolerate a missing graphic creation tool on a word processor, but a 'setting option' for something that I don't have on my designer tool is as good as buying a house with a pool filter installed without a pool. Hope you have a great Thanksgiving Day with your family, my friend. Let's just end this topic already, at the end you will keep your opinion of "it's not a flaw" and I will keep my opinion of "It is a flaw" over and over again. Truce?

[Marekius]

This is so sad how this topic goes off the rails so quickly, without any constructive discussion.

What @albertkinng mentioned is actually pretty annoying, especially when you know AP can use artboards when they are created in AD.

If we would treat AP as a photography focused, 40% of functionalities should go off. If we treat it as a general graphic design tool (as most do), there are other use cases (social media, stationary, etc.). Now we get to the point of going somewhere above amateur or semi-professional level and with that comes a lot of responsibility and the need for consistency.

Artboards are great to have everything under control in 1 file. Let me give you my recent case:
1. I photographed a bunch of people for my company's materials
2. In AP I can easily refine those photos, e.g. get rid of the background for the portraits.
3. Further use (e.g. social media profile pictures) requires either switching to AD (apply branding elements, supervise all of the materials (artboards <3)) or have 1 file for every use case (e.g. social media post) and switch on/off the layers (portraits/branding elements).

It would be so much easier to have artboards in AP, even as a bit hidden option e.g. Documents -> Add artboard.
 

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, Marekius said:

What @albertkinng mentioned is actually pretty annoying, especially when you know AP can use artboards when they are created in AD.

If you have Designer, as well as Photo, you can create an Artboard Asset in Designer, and then use it later in Photo.

You can also (via tricky methods in Publisher if you have that) record a macro you can run in Photo to create an Artboard. Another user and I have previously supplied such macros.

Note: For now, I do not recommend using Artboards in Photo. I think there are too many bugs with pixel-based functions when Artboards are involved. They can show up occasionally in Designer, too, but seem to happen more frequently (to me) in Photo. Perhaps once some of those bugs are fixed things will be better.

[albertkinng]

5 hours ago, Marekius said:

It would be so much easier to have artboards in AP, even as a bit hidden option e.g. Documents -> Add artboard

Exactly. I give up trying to explain here. Artboards are needed as a default feature on all apps. 

[dirtstudio]

Wow, what a frustring read.

Thanks for asking and digging through this mess @albertkinng, glad it wasn't me. You handled it well.

[albertkinng]

3 hours ago, dirtstudio said:

You handled it well.

It can be frustrating when you try to explain a necessary feature that is clearly needed in an app you frequently use, but the staff members seem blind to it and are unwilling to listen or acknowledge its importance. Instead of acknowledging the need, they create unnecessary drama and insist on their viewpoint, making the company appear dictatorial. This forces users to purchase multiple apps to fulfill their requirements, rather than providing a comprehensive solution within a single photo editing app.

[why_so_complicated]

I just found this topic after searching for a while just to find out that Designer is the only program that can create Artboards. This doesn't make any sense to me. If I could at least do a fast switch over to Designer from Photo (like Publisher supports, the top left buttons), I could create it without leaving Photo. But that is also not supported, even though Publisher shows that it's possible.

[walt.farrell]

You can create Artboards in Photo, by Saving one as an Asset or by using a macro recorded in Publisher. I don't generally recommend doing that because when I was playing around with Artboards in Photo I regularly ran into bugs because of them. But it's possible.

You can find one such macro here: 

 

[loukash]

13 hours ago, why_so_complicated said:

If I could at least do a fast switch over to Designer from Photo

And you can:

1. File → Edit in Designer
2. voilà

[v_kyr]

As

14 hours ago, why_so_complicated said:

I could create it without leaving Photo

Well you can always also open ADe files in APh. - Beside making and sharing some own reusable artboard assets etc., you can of course also make some artboard template files as PDFs and reuse those then (via just opening and then copy/paste/resize artboards from these) if needed in APh.

• artboards_2x.pdf