Best way to resize a finished design?

[RedEyedJedi]

Hey guys, i've been making some designs on affinity designer that i want to make into stickers some day. I've made about 4 or 5 of them but now i realize that i may have made em just a tad small. most are 7 in wide by 3 in tall. i think one or two may be 7.5 x 3 in. 

Anyways now im learning that these types of rectangular sticker designs would be best if they were 8 x 3 in. My question is what is the best way to resize em? would i need to start all over? should i just stretch em with a loss in quality? 

is there even a way to resize them without opening a new file in the correct sizing and then copying and pasting my old design onto it? 

 

-thanks in advance my fellow Affinity users. 

[R C-R]

More info or a representative Designer file attached to your post would help. It sounds like you just want to make the stickers wider. If so, do you want the width of every item to stretch proportionally, or only some of them to do that & others remain the same? If the latter, what do you want the horizontal positions of them to do, remain the same or move to some other place? Is every item a vector object or is there a mix of vector objects, text objects, & images?

[gdenby]

3 hours ago, R C-R said:

More info or a representative Designer file attached to your post would help. It sounds like you just want to make the stickers wider. If so, do you want the width of every item to stretch proportionally, or only some of them to do that & others remain the same? If the latter, what do you want the horizontal positions of them to do, remain the same or move to some other place? Is every item a vector object or is there a mix of vector objects, text objects, & images?

What R C-R requested points out several things. If the width only needs changing, you should be able to only resize the document, keeping the elements centered. If you want to re-position elements, constraints may be the way to go. Myself, have only used those a few times, but the feature appears to give extensive control over how any elements are positioned within the bounding area.

 

[Bri-Toon]

You can do this in Document Setup. Under the Dimensions tab, there is a section that says "Objects will," and by default, "Anchor to page" is selected. Switch to "Rescale," and then add in your new dimensions above that. Rather than just change the artboard size, it will change the size of the vector objects inside as well.

[RedEyedJedi]

6 hours ago, R C-R said:

More info or a representative Designer file attached to your post would help. It sounds like you just want to make the stickers wider. If so, do you want the width of every item to stretch proportionally, or only some of them to do that & others remain the same? If the latter, what do you want the horizontal positions of them to do, remain the same or move to some other place? Is every item a vector object or is there a mix of vector objects, text objects, & images?

Ok lol i hope i'm doing this correctly. I've attached an affinity file here. this is something that in the future i'd like to make into a type of bumper sticker. so this one is 7 x  3. i have a few layers here. for example the actual background is an image file. the text i typed out then turned into curves, ungrouped it, expanded the layer. all sorts of stuff. it essentially isn't text i could change the font size of. then i have another rectangle with no fill to act as a border around it all. i dont exactly know what a vector is... sorry. hope this helps clarify things. 

Trooper.afdesign

[RedEyedJedi]

2 hours ago, Bri-Toon said:

You can do this in Document Setup. Under the Dimensions tab, there is a section that says "Objects will," and by default, "Anchor to page" is selected. Switch to "Rescale," and then add in your new dimensions above that. Rather than just change the artboard size, it will change the size of the vector objects inside as well.

ok i will try this first option as it seems pretty simple. hopefully it works. also i added an affinity file to one of the responses so u guys could better understand what it is im trying to resize

Edit: just tried this method and it sort of works. i think that to rescale it also forces the height to change a little. so i always end up with it being like 8'' x 3.49'' or something like that. looks like this method wont work. because i dont want the height to change. only the width but it forces the height to get bigger. 

Edited October 13, 2018 by RedEyedJedi

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, RedEyedJedi said:

Edit: just tried this method and it sort of works. i think that to rescale it also forces the height to change a little. so i always end up with it being like 8'' x 3.49'' or something like that. looks like this method wont work. because i dont want the height to change. only the width but it forces the height to get bigger. 

That method should work fine. Just make sure the width-height lock is open & set the width to 8 inches:

I suggest using the Lanczos algorithm for better quality in the background image file, & if you are picky, before doing this, make these minor changes:
1. Select the group that contains your converted text (third from the top in the Layers panel) & in the Stroke panel tick "Scale with object." That will apply that stoke setting to all the subgroups & their curves in one go.
2. Expand one of the 2 subgroups with your converted text so you can see the subgroup with the fx symbol, click on that symbol, & at the bottom of the window that opens, tick "Scale with object."
3. Do the same for the other subgroup with your converted text.
4. Select the top level rectangle, click on its fx symbol & (you guessed it!) tick "Scale with object" for it as well.
5. Now do Document > Dimensions, rescale as above & you should have an 8x3 inch document.

In the attached Trooper 8x3.afdesign file, I did all of the above except I forgot to do #4.  I included the history so you can see my steps.

[RedEyedJedi]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

That method should work fine. Just make sure the width-height lock is open & set the width to 8 inches:

I suggest using the Lanczos algorithm for better quality in the background image file, & if you are picky, before doing this, make these minor changes:
1. Select the group that contains your converted text (third from the top in the Layers panel) & in the Stroke panel tick "Scale with object." That will apply that stoke setting to all the subgroups & their curves in one go.
2. Expand one of the 2 subgroups with your converted text so you can see the subgroup with the fx symbol, click on that symbol, & at the bottom of the window that opens, tick "Scale with object."
3. Do the same for the other subgroup with your converted text.
4. Select the top level rectangle, click on its fx symbol & (you guessed it!) tick "Scale with object" for it as well.
5. Now do Document > Dimensions, rescale as above & you should have an 8x3 inch document.

In the attached Trooper 8x3.afdesign file, I did all of the above except I forgot to do #4.  I included the history so you can see my steps.

well.... my friend... you are indeed a genius. it worked alright. do u recommend doing this method for all rescales? i have to do about four more of em 

they all have similar stuff to em such as text, an image, a border most of the time. 

now simply out of curiosity, how does Affinity Designer do the rescaling? did it just stretch the back ground image? i cant quite tell from the old one if its stretched or not. hard to tell

 

anyways thanks again. 

[Fixx]

I would just set new page size and scale objects as one, then look what should be done to aspect ratio... but that is the quick and dirty way. Most objects are vector and background is [image] so there should be no impact on quality.

[RedEyedJedi]

51 minutes ago, Fixx said:

I would just set new page size and scale objects as one, then look what should be done to aspect ratio... but that is the quick and dirty way. Most objects are vector and background is [image] so there should be no impact on quality.

Thanks. That is also a good idea. I ended up going the other route and then deleted my older files. Just to move on lol. They turned out pretty good

But I'll keep this method in mind too. Thank ya. 

[R C-R]

6 hours ago, RedEyedJedi said:

now simply out of curiosity, how does Affinity Designer do the rescaling? did it just stretch the back ground image?

The pixel image is resampled using whichever method you choose (what I outlined in cyan in my screenshot). A brief explanation of the available methods is buried in the Export help topic:

[RedEyedJedi]

R C-R you are an Afiinity god! Thanks m8.

Could i ask u to confirm one other (random) thing? i noticed while messing around on designer that dragging an image or object corner and holding down Ctrl key seems to also rescale stuff right? I always thought it was the shift key that was supposed to be the button. Is this true or was i imagining things lol?

I wouldn't try it on the stickers. Just something i noticed while messing around on designer. 

 

Anyways guys thanks a bunch. I appreciate your answers.  

[Bri-Toon]

Holding the shift key constrains the size for objects; not images. When you drag the corner for images, it is already being constrained without having to hold Shift - which makes sense since it would distort it. Is that what you're thinking?

You must be on Windows, because when I hold Ctrl and resize, objects and images scale and rotate.

[Alfred]

On Windows, holding down the Ctrl key (equivalent to Cmd ⌘ on a Mac) makes the selected object(s) resize from the centre. The effect of the Shift key modifier will depend on your Preferences settings, but the default setting for ‘Move Tool Aspect Constrain’ makes objects with a natural aspect ratio (e.g. images) retain that aspect ratio unless the user holds down the Shift key.

[RedEyedJedi]

6 hours ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

On Windows, holding down the Ctrl key (equivalent to Cmd ⌘ on a Mac) makes the selected object(s) resize from the centre. The effect of the Shift key modifier will depend on your Preferences settings, but the default setting for ‘Move Tool Aspect Constrain’ makes objects with a natural aspect ratio (e.g. images) retain that aspect ratio unless the user holds down the Shift key.

Thank you. i understand now