Jump to content

add option to set other color of transparent background instead of checkerboard


Recommended Posts

hello

this was suggested many times as I saw, but perhaps here for the new V2 versions: it would be great to have an option to change the checkerboard of a transparent background like in Designer to just white (or more options), just as in other vector software.

would improve the feeling of drawing.

(no it's not about the transparent background setting)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

26 minutes ago, asterix said:

[a white background] would improve the feeling of drawing.

(no it's not about the transparent background setting)

Why not simply turn off canvas transparency for your preferred white background while drawing, and then turn it on again before export? :/

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.5.1 (iPad 7th gen)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thank you very much for your answer. While I appreciate your idea which works for many, I hope it is ok to suggest UI or functionality improvements in this forum. One of the suggestions is just to add this option that other software products also offer, which is probably very easy to implement and that would really increase usability in a very easy step. By the way as mentioned, many other users already have asked for this, I wanted to start it here for V2.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

33 minutes ago, asterix said:

One of the suggestions is just to add this option that other software products also offer, which is probably very easy to implement and that would really increase usability in a very easy step.

Serif offered customization of the transparency checkerboard in at least one of their legacy applications. If we had the same option in Designer, we could remove the checkerboard effect by changing the grey to white.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.5.1 (iPad 7th gen)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If Artboards are used in ADesigner (can also be used for standard A formats), any background color can be set using Fill color.

Affinity Store (MSI/EXE): Affinity Suite (ADe, APh, APu) 2.5.5.2636 (Retail)
Dell OptiPlex 7060, i5-8500 3.00 GHz, 16 GB, Intel UHD Graphics 630, Dell P2417H 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.4317.
Dell Latitude E5570, i5-6440HQ 2.60 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics 530, 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.4317.
Intel NUC5PGYH, Pentium N3700 2.40 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics, EIZO EV2456 1920 x 1200, Windows 10 Pro, Version 21H1, Build 19043.2130.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

36 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

If Artboards are used in ADesigner (can also be used for standard A formats), any background color can be set using Fill color.

Or, a rectangle of any color you want can be used as a background. And that's easier in Photo and Publisher than using Artboards.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
    Laptop 2: Windows 11 Pro 24H2,  16GB memory, Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) 12 Core CPU 4.01 GHz, Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X1-85 GPU
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 18.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sequoia 15.0.1

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

And that's easier in Photo and Publisher than using Artboards.

Sure, but we're talking about Designer here, so why use complicated solutions when you can use simpler ones.

Affinity Store (MSI/EXE): Affinity Suite (ADe, APh, APu) 2.5.5.2636 (Retail)
Dell OptiPlex 7060, i5-8500 3.00 GHz, 16 GB, Intel UHD Graphics 630, Dell P2417H 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.4317.
Dell Latitude E5570, i5-6440HQ 2.60 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics 530, 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.4317.
Intel NUC5PGYH, Pentium N3700 2.40 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics, EIZO EV2456 1920 x 1200, Windows 10 Pro, Version 21H1, Build 19043.2130.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

Sure, but we're talking about Designer here, so why use complicated solutions when you can use simpler ones.

Well, for one reason, using Artboards causes some complications, such as the loss of visibility of items in the Bleed area, and the loss of Clip to Canvas, which might be important to some users. Using a Rectangle avoids those problems.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
    Laptop 2: Windows 11 Pro 24H2,  16GB memory, Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) 12 Core CPU 4.01 GHz, Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X1-85 GPU
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 18.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sequoia 15.0.1

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, asterix said:

The simple solution is an option to choose whether you want a checkerboard or not - the reason for my thread :).

Just turn Transparent background on or off in Document setup.

Affinity Store (MSI/EXE): Affinity Suite (ADe, APh, APu) 2.5.5.2636 (Retail)
Dell OptiPlex 7060, i5-8500 3.00 GHz, 16 GB, Intel UHD Graphics 630, Dell P2417H 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.4317.
Dell Latitude E5570, i5-6440HQ 2.60 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics 530, 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.4317.
Intel NUC5PGYH, Pentium N3700 2.40 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics, EIZO EV2456 1920 x 1200, Windows 10 Pro, Version 21H1, Build 19043.2130.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My question or suggestion was just to add an option whether you want a checkerboard or not (because this is a feedback forum).

It's a question of workflow and usability, just a possible improvement for Designer. Other users have mentioned this before, and other softrwae products offer it since decades.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 minutes ago, asterix said:

My question or suggestion was just to add an option whether you want a checkerboard or not (because this is a feedback forum).

It's a question of workflow and usability, just a possible improvement for Designer. Other users have mentioned this before, and other softrwae products offer it since decades.

As far as I know, Designer has had this since its first release. What's the problem with using the "options" Transparent background which turns the checkerboard on however you want?

Affinity Store (MSI/EXE): Affinity Suite (ADe, APh, APu) 2.5.5.2636 (Retail)
Dell OptiPlex 7060, i5-8500 3.00 GHz, 16 GB, Intel UHD Graphics 630, Dell P2417H 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.4317.
Dell Latitude E5570, i5-6440HQ 2.60 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics 530, 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.4317.
Intel NUC5PGYH, Pentium N3700 2.40 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics, EIZO EV2456 1920 x 1200, Windows 10 Pro, Version 21H1, Build 19043.2130.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As mentioned, some other users thought of this before :). It's just a small option that all other software products, that I know, have. That you can choose whether you want to draw your vectors on a paper like background (=for example white) or on a checkerboard... Just an option "Use white instead of checkerboard" under transparent option.

Of course there is always a workaround, but my idea of a forum for feedback is to make hints for improvement, for example for usability and workflow. It is not a good idea for me to artificially pretend that the background is not transparent (although it should be in the finalized file) and choose a white color (although I could tell this to the programm in any option for all files, not for each single on/off in a file).

Same is true by the way for the missing fullscreen option in Affinity and the "fit" zoom. Also here you can say that you can zoom manually, of course, but again this would be a huge improvement of usability of this great software Affinity Designer.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

another option would be perhaps - if the user chooses to work with artboards and colors it - to add an option in the export menu (both pixel and vector, so for example PNG and PDF and all other) if the user wants to include the artboard background / color in the export.

on the other hand it would indeed be easier for both Serif developer and the users just to add an option in the program settings to choose a color for the transparent checkerboard (not another checkerboard but a plain solid color for the - transparent - background).

So this should be something at the program level, not the document level.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...

Since many here seemingly don’t understand where the OP ist going, I’ll try to clarify with an example.

Pretty much any brand we design, needs a white version of the logo. So what are my options here?

  1. Try and work with a white element against a white and grey checkerboard? Nope.
  2. Use a color on all artboards with white elements and better not forget to turn it off before export? An error prone PITA and waste of time.
  3. Work in wireframe mode? Doable but I’d rather see colors. 
  4. Change the checkerboard colors to my liking so I can not only see my black and white elements but even check them against a certain background color. Yes!

Even Illustrator — which I try to avoid at all cost since the inception of Affinity Designer — can do this.

Maybe there is a viable workaround for option 4 that I don’t see, such as excluding the background rectangle or a specific color swatch applied to the artboard from export, so I’m grateful for anything pointing me in that direction.

However the feature sure would be extremely valuable.

Bildschirmfoto 2024-08-23 um 13.47.37.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Update

After pondering over my previous post I did actually find a decent solution.

Make background rectangle in the color of your liking and hide it from export in the layers panel of export persona. The option ist only available there and the icon once clicked disappears instead of being just greyed out.

So if this visibility setting actually sticks and doesn’t revert itself arbitrarily over time, it’s an almost perfect solution.

Bildschirmfoto 2024-08-23 um 14.07.26.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Markus Plutonika said:

I did actually find a decent solution.

Do you mean what is proposed here from the beginning?

On 5/27/2024 at 2:11 PM, walt.farrell said:

a rectangle of any color you want can be used as a background.

 

Affinity Store (MSI/EXE): Affinity Suite (ADe, APh, APu) 2.5.5.2636 (Retail)
Dell OptiPlex 7060, i5-8500 3.00 GHz, 16 GB, Intel UHD Graphics 630, Dell P2417H 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.4317.
Dell Latitude E5570, i5-6440HQ 2.60 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics 530, 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.4317.
Intel NUC5PGYH, Pentium N3700 2.40 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics, EIZO EV2456 1920 x 1200, Windows 10 Pro, Version 21H1, Build 19043.2130.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Guidelines | We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.