Easy way to change the canvas size

[schmiddi]

I could not find an easy way to change the canvas size (meaning document size) in Affinity Designer Desktop (Windows) v1.6.4.104.

My suggestion is to get the document size from selected items or alternatively a seperate tool which allows resizing by drag&drop.

[Gabe]

Hi @schmiddi,

Welcome to the forums. 

You can change the canvas size by going to Document > Resize Canvas.

Thanks,

Gabe.

[schmiddi]

Hi  @GabrielM,

thank you for your fast reply!

I put a snippet of my screen below, it seems either I am unable to find it or there is no menu item "Document" - I can only find "File > Document Setup.." and there I can set the dimensions, however this is not a convenient way to adjust the document size.

Best regards,

Christian

[Gabe]

Oh. Designer. My bad. I was thinking of Photo. 

You can insert an artboard (the second tool from the left toolbar ) the size of your document, and resize the artboard while using the move tool

[schmiddi]

I see, thank you - so that's the way then, no extra feature necessary in this case 

[Gabe]

moved to questions. 

[Xbal]

Hello, I don't know whether this is still current but you can change the canvas size in File -> Document Setup -> Dimensions.

You just have to take care about whether or not you want to rescale the object already on the canvas: if yes choose rescale if not then anchor to page

I hope this helped!

[Amdival]

When I go to File > Document Setup the Dimensions field is grayed out and wont let me edit it.

[walt.farrell]

4 minutes ago, Amdival said:

When I go to File > Document Setup the Dimensions field is grayed out and wont let me edit it.

You probably have a document containing Artboards.

You can think of each Artboard as kind of its own mini-document, in that each can have its own size. Therefore, setting an overall document size is no longer meaningful once you have an Artboard.

To change the size of an Artboard, you can select it in the Layers panel, and with the Move Tool active you can change the Artboard's size in the Transform panel.

[tombro]

It's worth pointing out that (on the current latest mac version 2.5.7 at least) there is no padlock to indicate the aspect ratio is locked. This caused me quite a lot of confusion until I clicked on the empty space between the width and the height boxes became the traditional unlinked chain symbol.

[GarryP]

18 minutes ago, tombro said:

there is no padlock to indicate the aspect ratio is locked.

The ‘linked’ icon is there on your first screen-grab (it’s set to link, or preserve aspect ratio) but it’s very difficult to see, and the icon is a representation of a chain now (from V2 I think) rather than a representation of a padlock.

This contrast issue has been brought up elsewhere in the forums quite a lot.

[tombro]

1 minute ago, GarryP said:

The ‘linked’ icon is there on your first screen-grab (it’s set to link, or preserve aspect ratio) but it’s very difficult to see, and the icon is a representation of a chain now (from V2 I think) rather than a representation of a padlock.

This contrast issue has been brought up elsewhere in the forums quite a lot.

Now you point it out, I can see it! I guess they've overlooked it because everyone seems to use dark themes these days.

[GarryP]

The icon is much easier to see in the Windows version, even with the Light UI Style enabled, so it’s more of a macOS-only problem.

This example thread shows various examples: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/186973-invisible-or-nearly-invisible-icons-in-light-mode-in-21/

If you follow that thread you will get a notification if something happens with the issue.

(That threads currently has eight bug tickets added to it so you can get some idea of the scope of the issue.)