How do I resize picture box frames?

[James Francis]

Hi everyone,

I haven't used publishing software in many years (Indesign), but I do remember there was a way to resize an image's box without resizing the image itself. It basically then masks areas of the image that are outside of the picture frame.

Can I do that in Publisher?

thanks,

James

[MEB]

Hi James,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Yes. Select the Picture Frame Tool on the left toolbar, draw/create the frame then drag an image from Finder or Windows Explorer window and drop it over the frame (or use the Place Image Tool or the File ▸ Place command - with the frame already selected - to insert the image there). Click the Properties button in the context toolbar and set it to None. You can then drag the frame bounding box to "mask" the image without affecting image's scale (make sure it's the frame that's selected in the Layers panel).

[James Francis]

Thank you! That's exactly what I was looking for.

Is there a way to make a box fit the image? In other words, resizes the image frame to the dimensions and position of the image it's displaying.

[MEB]

No, currently no.

[James Francis]

Okay, thanks. I hope it's a feature you guys will consider. I even sorta recall the shortcut for that in Indesign. it's hardwired in - that's how often I used it! So I hope to see it appear in some form.

[Fixx]

On 10/8/2018 at 2:10 PM, James Francis said:

a way to resize an image's box without resizing the image itself.

I would say there is a crop tool in the toolbox just for that. Would be nice of course to crop direct with some mod key.

[James Francis]

4 hours ago, Fixx said:

I would say there is a crop tool in the toolbox just for that. Would be nice of course to crop direct with some mod key.

Perfect, that does it as well. Thank you.

[DeanThwaite]

Hi all, in general i really like affinity but the whole way it handles pictures just confuses me!
Despite researching it before i can't find again how you adjust a picture box without distorting the image.

Im a very experienced designer of over 30 years having used all of the major software over the years, i build websites and retouch images to a very high level so i'm not a luddite.
Yet I feel you've just made the image control just too confusing.

Why cant you simply have a frame thats adjustable independently of the image on one tool and adjustment for the image itself on another tool? It's so logical why would you confuse it by having a properties box??
I still can't change the image frame and im pulling my hair out!

 

[Joachim_L]

Step by step I am getting used to it how Publisher works with images, but still there is a lot of eye-rolling. This is not intuive. Cropping a placed image by adjusting the handles is - hmm - amateurish, this is the way we treat images in Word or LibreOffice. I don't want to complain too much, Publisher is a fantastic piece of software, perhaps the years since Indesign 1.0 ruined my way of working.

[fde101]

16 hours ago, DeanThwaite said:

Why cant you simply have a frame thats adjustable independently of the image on one tool and adjustment for the image itself on another tool?

The scaling options in the properties box for a picture frame allow you to choose alternative behaviors in the event that you want to - you don't need to use them.

 

The image and the frame are two different layers, with the frame being the parent layer of the image.

In general, within all of the Affinity products, when you adjust a parent layer, it adjusts the child layer(s) along with it.  If you use the move tool (arrow) to adjust the frame, then you are adjusting the frame and the image together, unless you check "lock children" on the context toolbar - that allows you to adjust the parent layer (frame) without adjusting its child layers (the image).

If you double-click on the image to bring up the special tools they have added (the "magic" stuff for picture frames), you can make some adjustments to the image directly, and can also click the arrow on the little control box gizmo that appears toward the bottom of the window to switch back to the move tool, but with the image selected instead of the frame.  This allows you to adjust the image without adjusting the frame.

 

Note that the process can also be reversed, assuming you are not working with a placeholder on a master page (which is in my opinion the primary advantage of the picture frames): instead of putting the image into a frame, you can alternatively use one without a frame, then create a mask out of an arbitrary shape and assign that shape as a mask layer to the image.  In this case, the image becomes the parent layer, and the shape/mask becomes the child. 

This eliminates the fluff with the extra tools and scaling options (as those are tied to a picture frame).  In this configuration, selecting the parent layer (the image) would move the parent and the mask together unless "lock children" is enabled, at which point you could move the image without moving the mask.  If you expand the layer in the layers panel and select the mask, you can move it independently of the image.  (To set a shape or other object as a mask of an image layer, drag the shape's entry in the layers panel over top of the thumbnail of the entry for the image until you see a highlight bar appear along the right edge of the thumbnail, then release.) 

This is the method that has been used in Photo and Designer up until now so it is familiar to those of us who have been working with those programs, but it works just as well in Publisher.  The picture frames are new.

[dominik]

On 10/8/2018 at 1:10 PM, James Francis said:

I haven't used publishing software in many years (Indesign), but I do remember there was a way to resize an image's box without resizing the image itself. It basically then masks areas of the image that are outside of the picture frame.

Can I do that in Publisher?

Hi @James Francis,

with version 1.7.0.292 (released on April 5th) picture frames got updated. There are new controls and if you set the picture frame's properties to 'None' you can resize the frame independently of its content (that was possible before, too, I think). There's also a new 'Size frame to content' command (in the right click menu and on the toolbar).

I personally think this is a good update and it should satisfy many users. I'm interested what others think of this particular update to the picture frame.

d.

[fde101]

37 minutes ago, dominik said:

that was possible before, too, I think

It was always possible, but the general user interface surrounding interaction with picture frames has changed multiple times over the course of the public betas.

[benwiggy]

Has this changed/improved over the years? I can't find a "Properties" button in the toolbar when I have an image selected.

[Old Bruce]

1 hour ago, benwiggy said:

Has this changed/improved over the years? I can't find a "Properties" button in the toolbar when I have an image selected.

Properties is for Picture Frames, not the images which are in them.

[benwiggy]

Well, then I can't find a way to select the frame and not the image.

However, the Crop tool seems to work to expand the frame.