Designer: Show elements in Bleed Area

[postmadesign]

I love to work with artboards in Designer to create Flyers and other design elements all in one document. Designer also offers Bleed for artboards, which is great when creating PDFs for printing.

One thing is a bit annoying though: Designer will not show the elements within the bleed area. It will indicate the bleed edges, but not show anything outside of the artboard but within the bleed area. This sometimes makes it hard to see how the final output will look like. Perhaps adding an option to the viewing settings to enable this? Thanks!

[Mike W077]

Yes, this is an issue. It's a production issue, too, not just a feature issue, so it seems like it should be high on the priority list to address. 

[Dan C]

On 12/1/2023 at 6:19 PM, Mike W077 said:

Yes, this is an issue. It's a production issue, too, not just a feature issue, so it seems like it should be high on the priority list to address. 

As far as I'm aware, this should be fixed within Affinity v2.3, which we've recently released.

Please retest exporting your Artboard with bleed documents in the latest update and let me know if this is now working as expected for you

[postmadesign]

I think my issue was misunderstood: Bleed is working correctly in the exported PDF. However while working in Designer, I do not see the the graphics in the Bleed area when I have artboards enabled. It shows the markers of the bleed area, but no graphics that are outside of the artboard but within the bleed area.

1 hour ago, Dan C said:

As far as I'm aware, this should be fixed within Affinity v2.3, which we've recently released.

Please retest exporting your Artboard with bleed documents in the latest update and let me know if this is now working as expected for you

 

[Dan C]

4 minutes ago, postmadesign said:

However while working in Designer, I do not see the the graphics in the Bleed area when I have artboards enabled. It shows the markers of the bleed area, but no graphics that are outside of the artboard but within the bleed area.

My apologies for any confusion caused, I can verify this is still currently logged as a requested improvement with our development team, however our recent update has also resolved may Artboard Bleed export issues.

I've 'bumped' this improvement request with our development team to bring it to their attention once again for you

[OhItsStefan]

@Dan C Has there been any progress on said issue so far? Working for print is needlessly complicated with the way it is now.

[Dan C]

I can confirm this is logged as a Feature Request with our development team and not a bug - meaning it will not be given the same priority as reported bugs within the app.

Our development team don't tend to comment on, or provide timescales for features that we may choose to implement in the future, therefore I'm unable to provide any update on this request at this time, our apologies.

If you're working with Print and Bleed, you may want to consider using Canvas' in Affinity Designer for single spreads, or Affinity Publisher for multiple spreads within one file - as these are more designed for bleed publication documents, rather than Artboards in Designer.

[Gatada]

Yes, seeing the bleed would be great improvement.

I wonder if it would help if we all organised a "user union" to represent a lot of users, to help prioritise dev effort 🙂

[MiWe]

As artboards behave like normal objects, you can use the contour tool to display the bleed.

Select your artboard after that the contour tool and enter a positive amount, for example 3mm. Now you can see all objects that are in the bleed.

Greetings

[GRAFKOM]

1 hour ago, MiWe said:

As artboards behave like normal objects, you can use the contour tool to display the bleed.

Select your artboard after that the contour tool and enter a positive amount, for example 3mm. Now you can see all objects that are in the bleed.

Greetings

Can you show how you do it? Unfortunately, this doesn't work in Windows 11.

[GRAFKOM]

4 hours ago, Dan C said:

I can confirm this is logged as a Feature Request with our development team and not a bug - meaning it will not be given the same priority as reported bugs within the app.

Our development team don't tend to comment on, or provide timescales for features that we may choose to implement in the future, therefore I'm unable to provide any update on this request at this time, our apologies.

If you're working with Print and Bleed, you may want to consider using Canvas' in Affinity Designer for single spreads, or Affinity Publisher for multiple spreads within one file - as these are more designed for bleed publication documents, rather than Artboards in Designer.

Personally, I think this has been a mistake from the very beginning of Designer's existence. For 8 years we ask Serif to show the bleed in Artboard. You can set the amount of bleed in the document. The bleed area shows but not its contents. Exporting with bleed works properly, the only thing missing is that when working in Designer you can see what is in the bleed. I don't believe that technologically it is any great difficulty. This is why I don't use Designer at all. I bought it only to work in Publisher and there, unfortunately, I have to make designs with bleeds on the pages - where I could make designs in Designer if the bleed visibility worked.

If necessary, I want to deposit the appropriate amount into the Serif account to correct this error.

 

 

[MiWe]

52 minutes ago, GRAFKOM said:

Can you show how you do it? Unfortunately, this doesn't work in Windows 11.

Ok, i try to describe …

1. Select your artboard in the layers palette
2. Switch to the contour tool
3. In the toolbar set the radius to e.g. 3mm

The artboard will be extended to the 3mm and show this part wich is normaly hidden. An artboard defined with 100mm width will show 106mm width.
Works here with designer 2.4.2 on a Win 10 machine.

Hope that is understandable. Maybe can make  short screen recording. But not before tomorrow.

Greetings

[GRAFKOM]

Thank you  MiWe - it works. It's just a pity that you have to make a detour. And the serif could be inserted in the code with 15 characters and it would work normally. One stamp in the code every day and in a month we would have working bleeds in Artboards. So 8 years and nothing.

 

 

[Glorious]

Just came here looking for answers as to why there is this behaviour. Looks like it's been requested for a long time but never implemented. It's a real shame as I've just started a big project with Affinity Designer. 

Thank you very much for the workaround, @MiWe, It's saved me some sanity. I hope this feature will be looked at soon. 

[matw-web]

Just encountered the same issue. This is definitely a feature that needs to be implemented. Bleed is a crucial part of publishing and being able to see it on the canvas is vital.

This work around works very well (thank you @MiWe), but it seems sad we need it.

[kwaaui]

On 5/2/2024 at 3:04 PM, MiWe said:

As artboards behave like normal objects, you can use the contour tool to display the bleed.

Select your artboard after that the contour tool and enter a positive amount, for example 3mm. Now you can see all objects that are in the bleed.

Greetings

It does work, but when you Bake Appearance the artboard is resized to the new width and height, including 3mm bleed + the actual bleed, so not really an option

[MChelp]

Any updates? As a designer, I'd love to see what is hidden in the bleed area. Our printing partners were also surprised we can't see graphic content there. Please, consider it, finally.

[walt.farrell]

6 minutes ago, MChelp said:

Any updates?

When/if there are updates related to this, the Affinity Info Bot will post to this topic (and others tagged with APL-514) with details.

 

[AlainP]

It works for me in version 2.5.5 on MacOS in Designer.

 

[MChelp]

2 hours ago, AlainP said:

It works for me in version 2.5.5 on MacOS in Designer.

Is there default feature already? Could you share how do set it up? Of course, if you don't mean that workaround with Countour Tool mentioned above.

 

 

[AlainP]

No special setup, just specify bleed and that's it.

 

[walt.farrell]

32 minutes ago, AlainP said:

No special setup, just specify bleed and that's it.

 

Enregistrement d’écran, le 2024-10-01 à 11.31.21.mov

With Artboards?

[AlainP]

59 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

With Artboards?

Oups.... I've been using Designer for years and never used Artboards. And .... no... nothing shows in the bleed area using artboards. Sorry.

[Glorious]

10 minutes ago, AlainP said:

Oups.... I've been using Designer for years and never used Artboards. And .... no... nothing shows in the bleed area using artboards. Sorry.

Thank you for trying just the same 🙂

[MChelp]

2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

When/if there are updates related to this, the Affinity Info Bot will post to this topic (and others tagged with APL-514) with details.

 

Thanks for one and only correct answer to my question. Sounds like a great feature, that bot annoucement. I'll wait!