Exporting multiple areas (panels) of the design with bleed.

[svobodavid]

Hi, I wonder if you have any solution to this printer requirement:

In order to create a stand (wall), the printer requires split the design into five panels.
That wouldn't be the issue as I can export just selected area.

But the other requirement is that each panel must have 3 mm bleed -- and this is what I'm failing to solve.
I can export PDF for print with selected "Bleed" and "crop marks", but these won't create any bleed (the area after crop marks stays empty).

Attached picture shows the required sizes. The green area is just showing the visible part, but the panel sizes that I have to deliver are:
773 mm x 2225 mm (resp. 673 mm x 2225 mm)
The red border shows the required 3 mm bleed from each side.

Thank you for *any* help.

[thomaso]

What Affinity app? In AD you can place artboards accordingly and combine the panels this way while each will get output with bleed + crop marks.

In APub you need a workaround via extra rectangle objects in bleed size (color not necessary & layer hierarchy doesn't matter) and use these for export as "Selection Area". Unfortunately you can't export with auto-crop marks this way. And, while you may add crop marks manually drawn in the layout, an exported PDF, respectively a PDF reader app, would not "notice" them technically as bleed & crop marks and the resulting page size would include the bleed and crop mark area this way and may confuse the software or printer.

[svobodavid]

34 minutes ago, thomaso said:

What Affinity app? In AD you can place artboards accordingly and combine the panels this way while each will get output with bleed + crop marks.

In APub you need a workaround via extra rectangle objects in bleed size (color not necessary & layer hierarchy doesn't matter) and use these for export as "Selection Area". Unfortunately you can't export with auto-crop marks this way. And, while you may add crop marks manually drawn in the layout, an exported PDF, respectively a PDF reader app, would not "notice" them technically as bleed & crop marks and the resulting page size would include the bleed and crop mark area this way and may confuse the software or printer.

Thank you.

Currently I've been trying to achieve that in AD (but I have all Affinity apps just in case).

I tried to replicate your suggestion, but failed with it. So you suggest to create an Artboard for each panel (733 mm x 2555 mm) and lay them side by side?
When create the content this way though, it's bit difficult as I need to move everything outside of Artboards in order to see it.
But even then, when I export the artboard as PDF (with preset "PDP Press ready", as otherwise the bleed is not ticked), I won't get the desired result: the graphic stretched beyond the crop marks.

Or maybe I didn't get it:)

[thomaso]

You are right, objects outside an artboard layer get auto-moved by Affinity once you do any modification to them – which is not useful here during the layout phase.

To surround this disadvantage you can create an extra artboard for the layout only (below: "ALL"). Its size + position covers exactly all panels (the single print pages) which remain empty and get used as export pages only. Then, before export, you move all layout layers in the Layers panel out of this "ALL" artboard to make them occur after export on the other artboards as wanted. After export you can delete the "ALL" page from the PDF.

[svobodavid]

Trying to follow and clarify:

- what is the size of Artboard1 (2, 3)? Is it the exact size of the panel? (733 mm x 2225 mm?)

- why do you have two rectangles in each Artboard and what is their size? (like in Artboard1 --> yellow and purple). I'm asking as the overal design will consist of one large photo that will span across all panels.

 

I wish there's an easier way to achieve that. I can imagine using faux crop marks (set directly in the design at the correct panel boundaries) and just draw empty rectangle of the size 739 mm x 2231 mm (adding 3 mm extra on each side) and then export "selection area" without bleed and crop marks.

[svobodavid]

I think I nailed it in the meawhile:

• I used rectangle of the exact panel size
• exported as "selection area" (no bleed, no crop marks)
• reimported back to AD sole panel
• exported whole design with bleed and crop marks 

 

The only worry with this setup is the quality of the reimported photos -- but maybe this can be somehow solved when I just "link" pictures and not embed them?

[thomaso]

10 minutes ago, svobodavid said:

Trying to follow and clarify:

In my screenshot the dimensions + layout items are just any examples, while two rectangles per panel should indicate the panel size versus bleed size. Yes, the empty artboards 1, 2, 3 represent your single panels.

With this workflow you don't need to add manual, faux crop marks. As mentioned above (for APub), those would not get interpreted as crop marks by an automated prepress / print workflow.

3 minutes ago, svobodavid said:

I think I nailed it in the meawhile:

Why a double export with re-importing and not using bleed + crop marks from Affinity? I don't see an advantage and I think it is not required to achieve your goal.

Edited April 7, 2023 by thomaso

[Old Bruce]

Make your artwork for the entire wall on an Artboard, make the dimensions for this artboard the finished size + 6 mm (the bleed x 2) for a total of 2231 x 3551. Export this finished piece of artwork to a suitable format, TIFF, PDF, etc. Or you can just use this one Designer/Photo document. Name it Finished Artwork plus the Bleed Size.TIFF/.PDF/.afphoto.

 Place the Finished Artwork plus the Bleed Size file in a new Designer file that has five artboards which are the exact size of the final panels, no bleed added to their dimensions. These Artboards need to be butted up to each other side by side and aligned top and bottom. Each artboard gets one copy of the Finished Artwork plus the Bleed Size. Make sure to have them exactly aligned.

Export the individual Artboards to a suitable PDF with Bleed. You will have it all done.

You will wind up with this sort of thing for the export

PDFs.zip

[svobodavid]

Thanks Old Bruce for trying to help. 

Unfortunately this method won't work -- if you check, the final panels have no bleed beyond crop-marks. Also I think that adjusting five canvases (target_size+bleed) over five artboards (target_size) is quite difficult -- because of the bleed.

Unless I must be doing something wrong.

[svobodavid]

4 hours ago, thomaso said:

In my screenshot the dimensions + layout items are just any examples, while two rectangles per panel should indicate the panel size versus bleed size. Yes, the empty artboards 1, 2, 3 represent your single panels.

With this workflow you don't need to add manual, faux crop marks. As mentioned above (for APub), those would not get interpreted as crop marks by an automated prepress / print workflow.

Why a double export with re-importing and not using bleed + crop marks from Affinity? I don't see an advantage and I think it is not required to achieve your goal.

I'm failing to reproduce your suggestion. 

I need a single photo to span over the width of all five panels. Then there's some other graphics. But every time I export the panel (either as an artboard or as selection area), as long as they are of panel's exact size (to get the crop marks right), they never show any bleed).

[thomaso]

41 minutes ago, svobodavid said:

they never show any bleed

Do you have bleed activated in the export options? – Here another sample (pink: bleed at an outer edge / cyan: bleed between panels):
(To avoid confusion in my screenshot: Acrobat shows the page size as the thin green line (and the bleed as dark blue) – whereas I had set in AD green for the bleed. Stupid me, sorry)

[Old Bruce]

19 hours ago, svobodavid said:

Also I think that adjusting five canvases (target_size+bleed) over five artboards (target_size) is quite difficult -- because of the bleed.

Place the image on (in) Artboard 1, adjust it to fit properly. By this I mean it is covering the area and the bleed is outside the actual Artboard. Now duplicate it four time in Artboard 1 and use the layers panel to move a copy to Artboards 2 through 5. As long as you have the Artboards (1 through 5) butted up against each other then the alignment will be perfect.

Take a look at this: (if it uploads, slow internet here on the Wet Left Coast today.

Wall sized.zip

[svobodavid]

amazing, finally understood the workflow

 

it all works perfectly -- thanks a lot for help!!

[svobodavid]

On 4/8/2023 at 12:56 AM, thomaso said:

Do you have bleed activated in the export options? – Here another sample (pink: bleed at an outer edge / cyan: bleed between panels):
(To avoid confusion in my screenshot: Acrobat shows the page size as the thin green line (and the bleed as dark blue) – whereas I had set in AD green for the bleed. Stupid me, sorry)

understood now, once you clarified the link in Acrobat -- thanks!

[Dazmondo77]

When doing exhibition display boards, I've used the above workaround a few times (working outside artboards then duplicating x6 and placing inside the 6 artboards) I have to say it's a right load of faff, which would be a total breeze if Pub could handle multipage spreads like indesign.

Next exhibition job I get, I'll work in Pub to the full size and save as a PDF and place it in Indesign CS5, setup as a six page spread then output to PDF ---- easy peasy!

[thomaso]

15 hours ago, Dazmondo77 said:

would be a total breeze if Pub could handle multipage spreads like indesign.

Agree.

Also it would be a total breeze, if in AD moving the layout objects out of their artboard layer would not be necessary but instead the Affinity option "Passthrough" could get set for artboards efficiently and thus make the top most parent artboard with the entire layout appear on export of the single artboards underneath.

Different than expected, a Group or a Layer (Layer, containing the main, parent layout artboard) may get set to "Passthrough" but does not make its contents occur on the single artboards on exports. … I wonder why.