It's all about the pixels -- what's the "real size?"

[SushiKishi]

Where am I supposed to look to get accurate size data for an object or layer?

In the Transform panel, my rectangle was 50w by 25h. I used the Skew in the Transform which skewed it horizontally like I wanted, which made it wider but not taller. Now the panel says it's a 50w x 30.5h pixel object...so either it's lying or it's giving me different information that what I'm looking for.

Additionally, when I look at the document in Pixel View, even my rectangles are getting a little fuzzy already, and it's also exporting fuzzy. After spending about an hour working on this, I read in this thread that this can be avoided by lining everything up evenly on a pixel. That makes sense! If each pixel is only one color it won't be fuzzy or whatever. But that doesn't mean every feature is going to abide by Pixel Perfection, and skewing a rectangle has apparently left it X.5 pixels wide. That's not really a problem, there's plenty of ways to work around this.

But if I line my perfectly rectangle rectangle up to the right edge of my skewed rectangle, it becomes fuzzy -- because now it's at X = 213.5px. But that's impossible, because that skewed rectangle is at x196 and is "50px wide," which makes the right pixel land at 246.0 even. And my rectangle is an even 50px wide, so if the right-most pixel needs to be at 246, then it should, well, ALSO be at X = 196 because it's the same width as the much wide skewed object and now nothing makes sense.

So what is the Transform Panel actually telling me? It's clearly not the size/position -pre skew- because the values change after skewing. And it's clearly not the size/position -post skew- because, well, it just doesn't make sense visually or mathematically. So where can I get accurate size and position information?

Edited February 2 by SushiKishi
cleared up a few sentences

[lepr]

6 hours ago, SushiKishi said:

So what is the Transform Panel actually telling me? It's clearly not the size/position -pre skew- because the values change after skewing. And it's clearly not the size/position -post skew- because, well, it just doesn't make sense visually or mathematically. So where can I get accurate size and position information?

W and H are showing the size along each axis of the displayed bounding box. Press the period key to cycle to the Regular Bounds which has horizontal and vertical axes.

 

[carl123]

Select > Cycle Selection box will also change the bounding box

If followed by Select > Set Selection Box that will make the change permanent for that object

[SushiKishi]

The hotkey/menu worked to get it show the 'regular bounds' which is what I wanted, thank you!

I still don't really understand what the panel is measuring in 'base box' mode, but just swapping it to regular bounds should be fine for everything I'm using Designer for. The information is probably useful to someone, just not to me lol

Thank you both for your help!

[Alfred]

5 hours ago, SushiKishi said:

I still don't really understand what the panel is measuring in 'base box' mode

You might find it easier to understand if you experiment with a QuickShape other than a rectangle. For example, the default shape that you get with the Polygon Tool is a pentagon, and a square base box will give you a regular pentagon, but it can’t touch all four sides of the base box (and it won’t do so unless you change the number of sides in the polygon to give you a shape such as an octagon).