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Hello,
I've been migrating from Photoshop and Illustrator to Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo.

Hopefully someone can answer a couple questions:
Can you use two separate Artboards in the same Designer document? I have one Artboard that is very wide but another shorter in width. Both share the same resources (elements) and I would like to be able to export slices based on which Artboard is relevant at the time. Adding a new artboard seems to separate it from the other and the others contents are not seen in the new Artboard? Am I not understanding how multiple artboards are intended to work?

Question 2; Whats the point of Affinity Photo? Simple pixel based image manipulations?
Coming from the Adobe toolset, I find Affinity Designer a more modern graphical tool because I can have pixel based layers as well a vector based. If Designer can manage Pixel and Vector is Photo's purpose based on filters and effects and Designer still reigns supreme for composition?

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2 minutes ago, Burndog said:

Can you use two separate Artboards in the same Designer document?

Of course. But each artboard is a kind of container so each must have its own contents (elements). If you want different artboards to have the same items then you need to duplicate them in each artboard. You may find symbols useful for this.

6 minutes ago, Burndog said:

Whats the point of Affinity Photo?

It has a different feature set more appropriate for raster image work like photos. For example there is an extensive set of filters that Designer lacks, & of course Photo can develop RAW images.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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Thanks for the reply. Regarding Artboards, are copied layers "instances" or just adding to the document size. If Symbols are the means to create an Instance, I'll have to research that.

Unfortunately is seems I'll still need two documents for my needs. Basically I have a large document that is used for a display at a venue. Then we have a second area of the same document that is used to export elements for an interactive map. Print and Web are of course differing resolutions but since the interactive map uses svg javascript interactions, it's vital to have multiple slices and the ability to have one change on the map work for differing purposes.

For instance, the small structures are all separate since they are moved to different locations each year. It would be nice to "move once" and then be able to export all our different images.

Affinity DesignerScreenSnapz001.jpg

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16 minutes ago, Burndog said:

Thanks for the reply. Regarding Artboards, are copied layers "instances" or just adding to the document size. If Symbols are the means to create an Instance, I'll have to research that.

Unfortunately is seems I'll still need two documents for my needs. Basically I have a large document that is used for a display at a venue. Then we have a second area of the same document that is used to export elements for an interactive map. Print and Web are of course differing resolutions but since the interactive map uses svg javascript interactions, it's vital to have multiple slices and the ability to have one change on the map work for differing purposes.

For instance, the small structures are all separate since they are moved to different locations each year. It would be nice to "move once" and then be able to export all our different images.

If I understand you correctly, I'm pretty sure you could do all of that in one document.

You can export in different resolutions/sizes and choose what to export, setting just one element (for the images) by selecting a layer, and outputting just that layer using Area in the Export panel

ex.jpg.93682d023c8e72ecf45530384f3cdf78.jpg

Just output them one by one.

Windows PCs. Photo and Designer, latest non-beta versions.

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Exporting at different sizes...

I changed the Transform Panel settings to the width I wanted for a particular slide. But this Transformed the slice not the output. 

In the output areas, is there a way to specify a width or is it just those predefined 1X 2X etc? I see TolTec has achieved this but I can only find that with the over all export command not slice specific.   ??

Affinity DesignerScreenSnapz002.jpg

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Ok, so you can type in 1140w in the export box that shows the defaults of 1X 2X etc...

But this really turns out a crap image. I opened it in Photoshop and sure enough it's 1140px wide but at 1.5 megs for a medium jpeg?

FullSmallPage.jpg

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9 hours ago, Burndog said:

Ok, so you can type in 1140w in the export box that shows the defaults of 1X 2X etc...

But this really turns out a crap image. I opened it in Photoshop and sure enough it's 1140px wide but at 1.5 megs for a medium jpeg?

 

I think that rather than use slices, I would create a "cropping" document.

Turn off the visibility of the Island Waterpark logo layer and save the document.

Create a blank Photo document at 1140 wide by 881 (?).

Go File > Place and you can "place" your entire document as an Embedded Document, effectively as a single image. You can move it around and resize it, just like an image until you get the area you want. When you output it File > Export, you wont even need to set anything in the resize boxes.

mapdoc.jpg.b3d0032b2f6788c20d1556b3903e6b33.jpg

I can't simulate it exactly but this is about what I would expect. High Quality at 80%. At medium Quality (40%) it was 505kb.

expo.jpg.c2be846d1d5cbcfe47834bd2ed1c11f5.jpg

All this takes literally seconds and would pretty much solve all your issues, I hope :)

 

Is having a small file size very important ?

This was not good to start with (screengrab) but I compressed it with RIOT and got it down from 642kb to 241kb with little change in quality. It would be much better with a first generation image.

tocompress2.thumb.jpg.4eb85488a83ca2a864413c3617919c89.jpg

riot.jpg.159c6a8106e153c960af4a109437a4c0.jpg

http://luci.criosweb.ro/riot/

 

Windows PCs. Photo and Designer, latest non-beta versions.

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8 hours ago, toltec said:

I think that rather than use slices, I would create a "cropping" document.

Go File > Place and you can "place" your entire document as an Embedded Document, effectively as a single image. You can move it around and resize it, just like an image until you get the area you want. When you output it File > Export, you wont even need to set anything in the resize boxes.

mapdoc.jpg.b3d0032b2f6788c20d1556b3903e6b33.jpg

I can't simulate it exactly but this is about what I would expect. High Quality at 80%. At medium Quality (40%) it was 505kb.

expo.jpg.c2be846d1d5cbcfe47834bd2ed1c11f5.jpg

All this takes literally seconds and would pretty much solve all your issues, I hope :)

 

Is having a small file size very important ?

This was not good to start with (screengrab) but I compressed it with RIOT and got it down from 642kb to 241kb with little change in quality. It would be much better with a first generation image.

 

 

http://luci.criosweb.ro/riot/

 

 

Thanks Toltec, 
Using "Instances" and dynamic embedded objects is logical and should be more common. Photoshop sort of does this when you embed a vector as it allows editing in Illustrator. Problem is it's not really bound to the original so changing the original does not update the embedded... Hopefully Affinity Photo is more along the true linked content method so that updates to the Affinity Design document update in the Cropped Affinity Photo doc.  I'll give it a try.

BTW on the Mac we have Image Opti that works well for reducing file sizes while not degrading quality:
 https://imageoptim.com/mac

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34 minutes ago, Burndog said:

Using "Instances" and dynamic embedded objects is logical and should be more common.

As already mentioned, Symbols are how Affinity Designer implements object instances. If you are not familiar with their use, I suggest first reading the built-in help topic (online version here) & then maybe watching the Symbols video tutorial.

Affinity does not currently support linking content across multiple documents, just embedding unlinked file instances.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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18 hours ago, Burndog said:

Using "Instances" and dynamic embedded objects is logical and should be more common. Photoshop sort of does this when you embed a vector as it allows editing in Illustrator. Problem is it's not really bound to the original so changing the original does not update the embedded... Hopefully Affinity Photo is more along the true linked content method so that updates to the Affinity Design document update in the Cropped Affinity Photo doc.  I'll give it a try.

Well, not linked content automatically but if you use a document that includes an embedded document, there is a Replace Document option

replace.jpg.fb4fc8f15bd0d49b4f4574be7ad46f12.jpg

So, if you amend and save the original file, click on Replace Document in the document where it is embedded and you can reload the amended file, which has the advantage that it retains the cropping and position you set first time around.

Edit Document converts it into an editable file but is not much use in this case.

Not perfect but if it gets the job done without wasting hours of your time . . . :)

Windows PCs. Photo and Designer, latest non-beta versions.

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  • 2 years later...

In another thread for Publisher need multi-page spreads of different sizes, it was suggested to use Designer instead with artboards of specific sizes. For example, a book cover where you have a front, back and spine (which is variable based on page count). However, the problem is that you cannot apparently place a single image (i.e., a background) across all three artboards with individual elements of the book cover on specific artboards.

This would also be the case with multi-panel z-fold brochures.

This is an important feature that is lacking and one of the main reasons (for me at least) I have to keep Adobe around...

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