Resize page/artboard to selection

[Aurea Ratio]

I haven't been able to find anything other than a recent request for this. It's in Figma and Inkscape and Illustrator kind of does it: Object" > "Artboards" > "Fit to Selected Art" (also works with several objects in a selection, I read).

I feel like the document setup too often assumes you already know the size of the graphic you're creating in Designer. I often don't, as I frequently create elements that suddenly take their final form. Then I just want to save them right after doing what I've done 10,000 times in Inkscape, resize page to selection.

It's an unnecessarily large workaround to copy and choose new from clipboard, and even then the DPI changes, I believe. It's especially a cumbersome maneuver when working on an iPad, as I often do, and you have to jump in and out of the open document.

So, I'm requesting a very useful feature that should be quite feasible to implement, and it would be a relief in my workflows: Resize Page/artboard to Selection.

It's as if you were kind of going in that direction with "Convert object to artboard", but the feature only works with single object selected, and that's not usable for me. 

Where and how it can be implemented in the user interface, especially on iPad, where Designer apparently doesn't have a document setup after the document is created??? I'll leave that to you. 🙂

Edited February 11, 2024 by Aurea Ratio

[bbrother]

You are right there is no dedicated function for resizing the artboard / page to the selection.

But there is a functionality in the Artboard tool to create artboard that size will match the selection.
This option can be used as a workaround for what you are requesting.

Scenario 1 - While creating new doucument don't check the "Create artboard" chcekcbox.

1. Just select the object to wchich you want fit the page/ artboard size.
2. Use the Artboard Tool and in the size dropdown choose "Selection"
3. Click the "Insert Artboard" command button
4. The page wil be changed to an artboard that size wil fit the selection you made.

Scenario 2 - While creating new doucument you did check the "Create artboard" checkbox to start with an artboard not an page.

1. Just select the object to wchich you want fit the size.
2. Use the Artboard Tool and in the size dropdown choose "Selection"
3. Click the "Insert Artboard" command button
4. A new artborad with the size of the selection will be created ont top of the primary artboard.
5. In the Layer panel move the object that was used as a selection to the newly created artboard. If you wisch delete the primary one.

Here's a video for scenario 2↓

 

 

[Aurea Ratio]

Thank you very much for the detailed help with the workaround, @bbrother !
I'll have to settle with that until Serif makes something automatic and more accurate than my hands! 😄

[bbrother]

1 hour ago, Aurea Ratio said:

I'll have to settle with that until Serif makes something automatic and more accurate than my hands! 😄

You're welcome @Aurea Ratio.
But don't expect it to bee soon. 
They are a small team and have to prioritize things and there's also a lot of bugs that they need to deal with.

[Aurea Ratio]

Yes, I know the game!

If I were to conclude with a personal comment for Serif, however, it would be that I think this feature has been missing since v1.0. I remember my sigh of relief when I used it in a very, very early version of Inkscape back in 2005, it's just as natural a feature as cutting paper for a drawing, painting, printing graphic artist. 🙂 

[fde101]

Something like this would probably be relatively easy to implement as a script once that functionality becomes available.

[Aurea Ratio]

Yes, I suppose so. But I think it's a logical part of the core product and should be centrally located in the user interface. 🙂

[Walton Vinícius]

After creating an artboard that fits the selected items, if you zoom in there will be still a small blank gap on the borders of the image. The artboard is not perfectly the size of the selected items.

Are they aware of it? Am I doing something wrong? Is there a workaround for this?

[fde101]

On 1/4/2025 at 4:06 PM, Walton Vinícius said:

there will be still a small blank gap on the borders of the image

If the object is not perfectly aligned to a pixel boundary then you may be seeing the result of anti-aliasing, which is normal for practically any design software.

To determine if this is what is happening to you, right-click at the corner of the rulers and choose Pixels to switch to that unit, then look at the values in the Transform panel.  If they are not integers (if there is anything other than zero after a decimal point) then this may be the cause of what you are seeing.  Artboards do not always have their sizes (height and width) on perfect pixel boundaries, but their origins (upper-left corner) are generally kept pixel-aligned, so they will not always be snapped perfectly against the left edge of their content if that content does not fall perfectly on a pixel boundary.