Bleed/Crop still not working correctly in Photo/Designer Export Persona

[Wonderbarn]

Hi all... I have a 60 page Graphic Novel I'm trying to get to the printer, and the only way I can get it exported with correct Bleed and Crop Marks is to export one page at a time via File>Export.

When I use the Export PERSONA I can use the exact same settings (or even use my saved export Preset), but it always prints the crop marks at the EDGE of the bleed (as opposed to 1/8" inside -- where the document should be cut).  Again, it works perfectly when exporting one page at a time.  Am I missing something, or is this still an issue for everyone?

 I'm in OS X 10.15.7 working with Photo/Designer/Publisher 2.  I had this problem with version 1 too, but had hoped it would be addressed.  Files attached for reference.

1 - Front Cover Export.pdf 1 - Front Cover Persona.pdf

[Old Bruce]

In the Export Persona do you have "Include Bleed" checked? Here on Mac it is unchecked for the Press Ready and For Print presets. If I check that and the Include Printer marks then I get "proper" bleed.

[Wonderbarn]

Yes, I’ve checked the boxes for bleed and crop marks.  If you look at the two images I included, you’ll see that the “Export” version looks correct, while the Persona version has the crop marks on the OUTSIDE edge of the bleed.  The marks are there, they’re just in the wrong place.  Every time. For years now.  
 

Unless I’m missing something obvious?

[Old Bruce]

7 hours ago, Wonderbarn said:

the Persona version has the crop marks on the OUTSIDE edge of the bleed

No, it is at the page/canvas edge.

7 hours ago, Wonderbarn said:

Unless I’m missing something obvious?

Did you select all the slices when you made the change to include the Bleed and Printers marks? I often just work with one slice selected in order to get the export set up correctly and then forget to apply those modifications to the other slices.

[Wonderbarn]

1 hour ago, Old Bruce said:

No, it is at the page/canvas edge.

Respectfully, if you look at those two images they are identical EXCEPT for the crop marks.  On the Export file the crop marks are at the page/canvas edge.  On the Persona file the crop marks are at the bleed edge.  Why would the crop marks move between a File>Export export and a Persona Export?

1 hour ago, Old Bruce said:

Did you select all the slices when you made the change to include the Bleed and Printers marks? I often just work with one slice selected in order to get the export set up correctly and then forget to apply those modifications to the other slices.

Yes.  Additionally, it doesn't matter if I use the Default Export tab, the Selection tab, or export them one at a time from the slice layer... it NEVER puts the crop marks in the right place out of the Persona view.  I'm so open to suggestions here... 

[Old Bruce]

Here is a simple file, it has the Set to export a PDF file with Crop marks and Bleed.

Export Persona 01.afdesign

Open it and export with File > Export PDF for Print and set the Bleed and Printers marks on then Export it with the saved settings for the one slice in the document. It started as the PDF for Print and I set the include Printers marks and bleed.

here are the two PDFs

Export Persona 01.pdf Export Persona 

Export Persona 01 File to PDF export.pdf File > Export

and finally the file exported from the Designer file with just the original PDF for Print defaults, no bleed nor any printer's marks.

Export Persona 01 no Bleed.pdf

 

[Wonderbarn]

Okay... I downloaded your design file, and it works correctly -- but only when exporting all the layers as one.  My graphic novel has 60 pages (rasterized layers).  If I DON'T create slices and I export just the top level (not a slice) it prints the bleed and crop marks correctly on the first page -- just like yours.  But when I create slices, and try to export them (individually or all at once) it pulls the crop marks out to the edge of the bleed as shown in my Persona file.

For clarity, what I want/need to do is output each of the 60 layers/slices/pages with bleed and crop marks in the correct place.  Clearly I'm either not understanding something, or there's a problem with the program.  (Most likely the former, I realize.)  Any ideas...?

For reference I created slices from your file, then used the SAME export settings in Persona on the yellow (Bleed) layer.  You'll see that it pulls the crop marks out to the edges. In my scenario, I need the crop marks 1/8" in on that yellow layer.

Thanks for helping me with this, Old Bruce.

Exact size of Bleed..pdf

[Old Bruce]

Make a new Designer document of the proper dimensions. 

in that new document make 60 artboards the size of the document. Place the Photo/Designer document in the new document on a 61st artboard. Drag the 60 individual rasterized layers onto individual artboards. Something to remember is in the layers panel the bottom most layer will be Page 1 the topmost layer will be page 60. Now you can export the individual artboards with the bleed. You could even maybe export one 60 page PDF with all the pages having the bleed and crop marks.

[Wonderbarn]

Yeah... this is clearly the problem.  I do 99.9% of my work in Affinity Photo.  I don't even know what an artboard is.  In fact, the only reason I even brought the Photo document over to Design is because Photo doesn't have a "Document Setup" button where I can set the bleed.  In an ideal world, I'd be doing this from Photo.  Which begs the question...

If I have to build all these artboards individually in order to get Persona to set the Bleed/Crop Marks correctly, is it even POSSIBLE in Photo (which doesn't have artboards)?  It just seems crazy that one can't set (and build) the bleed, then go to the Export Persona and export all the slices with the correct parameters.  Am I to understand that Photo doesn't have the ability to export multiple layers at once with the correct bleed/crop parameters?

[lepr]

15 hours ago, Wonderbarn said:

 Am I to understand that Photo doesn't have the ability to export multiple layers at once with the correct bleed/crop parameters?

Photo and Designer can do what you require (and without creating any Artboard). Export Persona is the same in Photo and Designer, and so your problem involving crop marks and bleed of 'slice from layer' exists in both apps.

Crop marks and bleed for an exported slice are generated according to the trim box of the slice and the document's bleed specification. When a 'slice from layer' is created, its trim box is the entire extent of the layer/object, including any region of it which lies outside of the canvas. Therefore, an export of that slice can have crop marks outside of the canvas, and it will have an empty bleed outside of its crop marks.

The Slice Tool can adjust the trim box of a slice to match the canvas and then an export of the slice will be as you require (after specifying bleed size - see later). If you select all identically sized slices, you can snap all their trim boxes to the canvas boundary simultaneously.

As you noticed, you won't be able to specify a bleed in Photo, so move your document from Photo to Designer to do that and then the bleed will be effective when exporting from either app.

If you have trouble getting this to work, don't hesitate to ask for further help because it's quite simple when you get your head around it.

 

 

[Old Bruce]

17 hours ago, Wonderbarn said:

Yeah... this is clearly the problem.  I do 99.9% of my work in Affinity Photo.  I don't even know what an artboard is.  In fact, the only reason I even brought the Photo document over to Design is because Photo doesn't have a "Document Setup" button where I can set the bleed.  In an ideal world, I'd be doing this from Photo.  Which begs the question...

Myself, if I had to produce a 60 page graphic novel I would do the layout in Publisher after having done all the drawing in Photo. Horses for courses. I could use a backsaw to rip a 2 by 4, but I know that it is not designed to do that.

I would do all the artwork in Photo, then use Publisher to layout the 60 pages and produce the PDF.

If I needed the individual pages as individual PDF pages I would use 60 artboards in Designer to output the 60 individual PDFs by opening the PDF from Publisher with Designer and exporting the 60 individual artboards as individual PDFs. Or I would skip Publisher and make the 60 individual artboards place the Photo artwork on the appropriate artboards and export them.

[Wonderbarn]

Thank you both for the follow-ups.  I didn't realize I could drag my edges in Persona view to change the placement of the bleed marks.  This is a huge upgrade for me which I'll use going forward.  (Yes, I wound up exporting all 60 pages individually for this one.). Cheers!

[SteveKimpton]

I'm using Affinity 1 and want to use the export persona in Photo to create slices.  It all seems to work except that clicking the "include printers marks" with all options (pre) selected has no effect at all.  I tried downloading your example Export Persona 01.afdesign to investigate but that didn't work as I'm using V1.

I'm on Windows 11.

Am I missing something?

Thanks

 

[Old Bruce]

4 hours ago, SteveKimpton said:

I tried downloading your example Export Persona 01.afdesign to investigate but that didn't work as I'm using V1.

Try this one, resaved in Version 1.

I have included some slices and used the PDF (For Print) preset then added the Include Bleed and Include Printer's Marks. Not that PDF is the only export type that includes the Bleed and Printer's Marks options.

Export Persona 01 version 1.afdesign

[SteveKimpton]

Many thanks for the test file - it works exactly as it should.  I added my own slice  but it alone produced a PDF without any printers marks  i.e. all your slices worked, mine didn't.  I notice that when I click on the various slice banners, your options include "overprint black"  I don't know what this means but I am not allowed to click it.  I also see that coming back to my options after clicking one of yours, the printers marks option has gone.  I'm sure this must be at the root of the problem but I can't see what I'm doing that is different. 

[Old Bruce]

Printer's marks are not automatic, we have to tick the box(es).

This will clear the " PDF (for print) " from " Preset: PDF (for print) "

It is a very tall set of settings

[SteveKimpton]

But I am ticking those boxes.

Here’s what happens:

 I start with default set to “PDF (for print) and File format set to PDF

1. I include a new slice
2. I tick the printer’s marks and bleed boxes – all available types of marks show as selected.  The preset clears- as you say. I can click the slice’s banner many times and nothing changes.
3. I tick a banner on one of your slices, nothing seems to change (we wouldn’t expect it to)
4. I tick the banner on my new slice, the bleed is retained but the previously selected boxes are cleared – see screenshots below.  Whether or not I do the clicking of other banners, the printers marks do not appear on the exported  slice.

 My slice before clicking another banner

After clicking another banner and returning to my slice 

So far as I can see, there are no differences between the settings of my slice and yours. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[thomaso]

EDIT: I didn't notice that the exported slices do include bleed + show the object in full size (incl. bleed) but get the crop marks set outside of that area, not necessarily at the artboard edges if the object exceeds the artboard + bleed size. … as it was mentioned by @lepr before:

On 3/19/2023 at 1:19 PM, lepr said:

Crop marks and bleed for an exported slice are generated according to the trim box of the slice and the document's bleed specification. When a 'slice from layer' is created, its trim box is the entire extent of the layer/object, including any region of it which lies outside of the canvas. Therefore, an export of that slice can have crop marks outside of the canvas, and it will have an empty bleed outside of its crop marks.

/EDIT
=====

On 7/10/2024 at 7:00 PM, Old Bruce said:

I have included some slices and used the PDF (For Print) preset then added the Include Bleed and Include Printer's Marks.

Do you get contents exported in the bleed area for each of the four slices? To me only "slice 1" does, while the slices that include artboard edges get exported with empty bleed:

 

I vaguely remember a logged bleed issue in AD – (or was it just its generally empty display in AD's layout view?)

Edited July 26, 2024 by thomaso
note about my wrong assumption added on top

[SteveKimpton]

All the slices provided in Affinity's test file work as expected including bleeds.  In fact, now, so does mine! 

The instructions above indicate using the preset PDF(for print).  It didn't work for me but when answering your question I noted there is also a preset 'PDF (for export)'.  That makes it work for me.