Print Margins

[zoomCat]

I'm just getting started with Affinity Photo, so these are basic questions regarding printing.  

 

How do I print a photo with a specific margin?  My example is I want a 4"x6" print with quarter inch margins.

 

I've set up a Document with margins, and I can see the blue margin lines but these seem to have no effect on printing.  Resizing the canvas causes the document to resize, so it always fills.

 

I expect that I'm missing something very basic.  I have seen the tutorial on adding a margin to the image, I was hoping to be able to specify an absolute size for the margin.

 

Thanks!

 

 

[Callum]

Hi ZoomCat,

 

Just to confirm do you want to put a white border around your image on a 6x4 print?

 

C

[zoomCat]

Correct.  4x6 paper with a centered image of 3.5x5.5, and .25 white border on all sides.  Very basic.

 

I had thought naively that this would be possible without modifying the image to contain the white space.  Coming from Apple Photo this would be very simple, and done as part of the Print process rather than permanently changing the image.

 

Thanks.

 

zoom

[Callum]

Hi Zoom,

 

The best way to do this in Affinity would be to unlock the Background layer and then go to Document > Resize Canvas and then make the canvas the size of your image including the border. You would then need to use the Move Tool [V] to scale down your image to fit the border.

 

Hope this helps

C

[R C-R]

zoomCat,

 

Note that if the aspect ratio of the original photo is not 4:6 (or if you prefer, 2:3) you will not get four equally sized 1/4" borders on 4"x6" print paper unless you crop, stretch, or otherwise change the photo image to that same aspect ratio. This is true for any app, including Apple Photo.

[zoomCat]

Thanks for the guidance folks, I'll keep working with it.

 

I appreciate that there will need to be some cropping necessary, particularly as fitting an image within margins changes the aspect.  In simple consumer software such as Apple Photo you can put off cropping until the last printing dialog and it doesn't affect the saved image.  This completely overlooks the issues of resolution prior to printing, but then the target audience doesn't have to worry their pretty little heads about it.  8-)  (yes, I'm in that target audience most of the time)

 

My desired flow for this particular case would be to

1) make a rough initial crop to clear out any obvious junk and define the initial composition

2) Make basic adjustments to the image

3) decide whether to print, how big, and what margins

4) adjust the crop to fit the paper size and margins, and

5) print

 

In all of this my only concern with resolution is that it is high enough for printing.  If it is marginal I might want to fiddle with the sampling, and double check the result.  I can see the need in some cases for validating the resampled result prior to printing, but that needn't be persisted for my naive usage.

 

I'm OK with the 4) being before or after I actually hit the 'Print' command; but it should be easy to make adjustments larger or smaller at that time.  In particular I may make prints of different sizes or margins, and I would like to adjust the crop rather than start over from scratch.  This would imply to me that cropping and sampling are independent. 

 

I design UX for a living, so I understand that everybody has an opinion.  I'm impressed that anybody listens.  8-)

 

Thanks!