Is there a way to change the canvas color?

[Stokestack]

I'm laying out a design that will be printed on transparent media, with some elements being solid white. Thus I want the background in the UI to be grey, so I can see what I'm doing.

I can't find any way to do this. The artboard background grey level doesn't appear to do anything. I did find "transparent background" in Document Setup, which helps a bit.

Thanks for any insight.

[Pixel and Poly]

If you are in Photo I would just add a fill layer and place it at the bottom of the layers and pick any grey that will work for you. If you are in Designer I would put a rectangle at the bottom of the layers and fill it with a grey as well. You can lock either of these so you don't move or select them. Just turn off those layers before exporting or printing the final files.

[toltec]

3 hours ago, Stokestack said:

I'm laying out a design that will be printed on transparent media, with some elements being solid white. Thus I want the background in the UI to be grey, so I can see what I'm doing.

I can't find any way to do this. The artboard background grey level doesn't appear to do anything. I did find "transparent background" in Document Setup, which helps a bit.

Thanks for any insight.

You realise of course, that if you design it with solid white elements that are supposed to print, it's no good designing them in white ? White is paper colour, so it will print transparent.

Transparent ink on transparent media is going to be, er, subtle 

If you are designing for silk screen printing and using solid spot colours, there no need to use white for white. You could use bright pink for the colour as long as you tell the print shop to use white ink. Bright pink is easy to see, or am I missing something ?

 

[Pšenda]

 

[Stokestack]

2 hours ago, toltec said:

You realise of course, that if you design it with solid white elements that are supposed to print, it's no good designing them in white ? White is paper colour, so it will print transparent.

I said I was designing something for transparent media. It's a piece of clear plastic. So yes, I am designing elements in white, because that's exactly what I want.

If I create a new document, I get a page with white background and no apparent way to change it. That's lame.

[toltec]

4 minutes ago, Stokestack said:

I said I was designing something for transparent media. So yes, I am designing elements in white, because that's exactly what I want.

So how will you print the white ?

[Stokestack]

With white ink! I don't know why this is so baffling.

https://www.plasticprinters.com/hubfs/assets-inspiration/amazing-business-cards/05-amazing-business-cards.jpg?t=1530067904463

[MickRose]

If you use AD you could make a global spot colour as white and draw a background box filled with any colour you want to indicate the plastic. Before exporting to PDF hide the background and when exporting make sure "Honour spot colours" is ticked. The white should then separate okay - it looks okay in Output Preview.

[Stokestack]

Thanks. Yes, of course I can create a background layer with a color; but that's pretty lame because you have to hide it before exporting. Usually you can specify a color for the background medium; colored paper, for example.

[Move Along People]

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[Stokestack]

Thanks, but how is that going to produce a colored background while I edit?

[toltec]

1 hour ago, Stokestack said:

With white ink! I don't know why this is so baffling.

https://www.plasticprinters.com/hubfs/assets-inspiration/amazing-business-cards/05-amazing-business-cards.jpg?t=1530067904463

It is not baffling, especially now I can see it but as I asked before, how are you going to set the white ink ? That is by far the most important question.

The white must be printed, unlike on paper which is already white.

So you need to set the white as a spot colour, along with the orange as a spot colour. Which brings me back to what I said before. If you are printing the white as a spot colour you can design it in pink or purple to make designing easier. It wont matter until the printer actually slaps the ink on, all plates (like paint brushes) are black until you put ink on them.

43 minutes ago, Stokestack said:

but that's pretty lame because you have to hide it before exporting.

It't not lame because you are printing in spot colours, you are just using pink (my favourite ) as a design aid although you could use a coloured background.

This would be a bit easier in Designer because you could set the white as a global colour, design in pink then change it in one click (maybe two) if you felt the need and that would update every instance of white used in the document..

Which of the following is easier to see when you design ?

This has the white in white.

This has the white in pink 

 

Yet when I output as three spot colours, the result is exactly the same.

Orange ink

White ink

Black ink.

Note. I designed and printer literally hundreds of things like this. (Former printer !)

[Move Along People]

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[R C-R]

2 hours ago, Stokestack said:

Yes, of course I can create a background layer with a color; but that's pretty lame because you have to hide it before exporting.

It is just one extra click in the Layers panel to hide it. Call me crazy, but I do not think that qualifies as "pretty lame."

Also keep in mind that you could fill the layer with a bitmapped image or use a photo to simulate how the design would look if viewed in front of various things, or use several of them at the bottom of the Layers stack & turn on & off various ones during the design phase. Unless the design is intended to be viewed only in front of a single thing or projected onto only one specific kind of surface, this seems to me to be not at all lame, & instead a useful feature you could exploit.

[Stokestack]

Thanks all for the suggestions.

Obviously I can draw colored rectangles behind the artwork or use temporary colors. The temporary-colors idea is just not acceptable to me for creating a color scheme in a piece of work.

Anyway... I might, for example, be printing on off-white paper. Why can't I set the background to simulate that? It's a simple request and a feature that's available in other applications. Corel Draw has it, and Illustrator apparently (but half-assedly) offers a few background grey levels (based on threads about the issue).

17 hours ago, R C-R said:

Also keep in mind that you could fill the layer with a bitmapped image or use a photo to simulate how the design would look if viewed in front of various things, or use several of them at the bottom of the Layers stack & turn on & off various ones during the design phase. Unless the design is intended to be viewed only in front of a single thing or projected onto only one specific kind of surface, this seems to me to be not at all lame, & instead a useful feature you could exploit.

A valid point and indeed I have done just that. But during most of the design phase, I'd prefer to simply have some neutral color in the background.

[GeorgeFeathers]

Preferences > User Interface > Artboard Background Grey Level

Use slider to adjust.

[lacerto]

(...)

 

[Stokestack]

16 hours ago, GeorgeFeathers said:

Preferences > User Interface > Artboard Background Grey Level

Use slider to adjust.

Thanks, but that doesn't do it. It only changes the color outside the artboard.

[Stokestack]

21 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

The document with the Background artboard could be saved and used as a kind of a template and re-used.

It would be nice though if objects, "Layer" layers and groups could have properties like "Non-printing"!

 

Thanks for taking the time to put that together, Legarto. That's probably the best suggestion at this point.

The printing/non-printing flag is another feature that one would expect. 

The "personas" strike me as asinine, especially to have one devoted entirely to exporting. But maybe I'll change my mind.

[lacerto]

(...)

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Stokestack said:

The printing/non-printing flag is another feature that one would expect. 

If you do not want a layer to print, you can turn it off (untick its visibility checkbox in the Layers panel) before printing. This works for groups, "Layer" layers, or whatever.

1 hour ago, Stokestack said:

The "personas" strike me as asinine, especially to have one devoted entirely to exporting. But maybe I'll change my mind.

The Export Persona has a number of useful features, like exporting to several different formats and/or pixel dimensions in one step, each with a user configurable file name, & even a 'continuous' export mode that updates the exports after they have been exported for the first time.

Below are several links to AD video tutorials demonstrating various Export Persona features that may give you some ideas about how you could use it:

• Slice Tool
• Slices Panel
• Export Options Panel
• Layers Panel

Each Persona has its own set of Studio panels, main toolbar items, & Tools panel items, each of which can be configured independently of the others. Among other things this helps to reduce UI clutter, particularly in Studio panel groups & tabs.

[Pšenda]

3 hours ago, Stokestack said:

It only changes the color outside the artboard.

Why not change artboard color directly?

[lacerto]

(...)

[Stokestack]

Thanks for all that info, guys.

It seems we're back to the original solution of putting a colored square behind your work. And I still think that's lame.

Also... I don't use artboards. I'm not necessarily against it, but I've never had a need for one yet. But while we're discussing them: Why is there an artboard "tool?" What is it for? It doesn't seem to do anything after you create an artboard, which could easily be done with a menu item, hotkey, or button.

Quote

If you do not want a layer to print, you can turn it off (untick its visibility checkbox in the Layers panel) before printing.

Thanks, but what if you want some kind of template or guide design? Non-printing layers are basic functionality for an app like this. Having to go and disable it, then re-enable it after every print is ridiculous and pretty much guaranteed to waste lots of paper and ink as you forget to do this once per session.

[Pšenda]

12 minutes ago, Stokestack said:

I don't use artboards.

Then I don't understand, why you're talking about them!

On 6/27/2018 at 4:37 AM, Stokestack said:

The artboard background grey level doesn't appear to do anything. 

 

On 10/24/2019 at 12:32 PM, Stokestack said:

It only changes the color outside the artboard.