Workflow for standardised mounts

[Jack G]

 

I mount all my pictures, both A3 and A4 on a standard size 400 x 500 card mount with standard size cutouts for portrait or landscape.
I always surround the image with a thin black line with the same margin on top and sides but with a larger margin on the bottom

I need a simple workflow to achieve the following

1 To select the appropriate part of an edited image and set it to the standard size.

2 To create the black line around the image with the standard margins and thickness and density

3 To be able to go back at any time and easily change any of the above.

 

[v_kyr]

There are several possibilities to accomplish this, you can setup and make yourself some own A3/A4 portrait/landscape template documents with the needed lines etc., which you then always reuse to place your respective images inside. Or you make yourself some APh macros for most of these tasks.

[toltec]

I would make a template document 400 x 500. Use a solid black background (fill layer) and place a rectangle on top, the rectangle being sized to give you the correct borders.

You can then place an image inside, which will "crop" itself to the rectangle.

Click on the Insert Inside button

and Place the first image (as shown below). Then save the document as your template.

Simply by loading, resizing and moving an image inside the rectangle, you can adjust the position and the cropping.

To change the picture each time, double click on it and a Replace Image button will appear on the Context Toolbar

Load, resize and position the next image, and so on with each picture.

That makes for a very simple and very fast workflow.

You only need to make the document once and every picture you do will end up the same size, same resolution and with exactly the same border. No matter what size it was to start with or how you crop it.

 

[Jack G]

 

Dear toltec

Thank you for your suggestion which solves part of the problem. But I didn't want a solid black border which is next to the picture. I want a thin surround spaced away from the picture whose density I can control. This would mean that the template would have to be transparent between the picture and the line and outside the line. When printed these areas would show the base colour of the printing paper.

 

[toltec]

19 minutes ago, Jack G said:

Dear toltec

Thank you for your suggestion which solves part of the problem. But I didn't want a solid black border which is next to the picture. I want a thin surround spaced away from the picture whose density I can control. This would mean that the template would have to be transparent between the picture and the line and outside the line. When printed these areas would show the base colour of the printing paper.

Like this?

I just used a rectangle for the border and set a stroke around it, the inner rectangle for the image is the same.

[Jack G]

Yes exactly like that!

[Jack G]

I know where it is in PS but can you please tell me where I find the stroke tool in AP.

[R C-R]

19 hours ago, Jack G said:

I know where it is in PS but can you please tell me where I find the stroke tool in AP.

There is no stroke tool as such in the Affinity apps. Strokes & fills are properties of vector shapes (like rectangles, polygons, & so on) & of text objects. So to create strokes you need to create one of those objects & (in Affinity Photo) use the context toolbar's controls to set their width & other properties like style, caps, & pressure curve.

[Jack G]

Sorry but l cant get my photoshop head around your reply. Suppose I have a rectangular pixel layer fiiled in white. How do I put a 20 pixel border around it in black.

[MEB]

Hi Jack G,
There's various ways to approach this. Here's one: draw a rectangle from the top left corner of the image to the bottom right corner or the image, give it a stroke with 20px, set the Alignment of the stroke to Outside and the Join to Mitre in the stroke width popup in the context toolbar (the stroke is not visible at this point because it was created outside the canvas). Set the colour of the stroke to the one you want in the context toolbar as well. Then go to menu Document ▸ Unclip Canvas to enlarge the canvas just enough to include stroke you just created.

[toltec]

20 hours ago, Jack G said:

I know where it is in PS but can you please tell me where I find the stroke tool in AP.

In the example I created, I used two rectangles.

Set the stroke of the outer rectangle on the Context Toolbar. Colour or width (i.e  20 px).

If you place an image on the page, you also have the option to place a stroke around it using pretty much the same command on the Context Toolbar. 

This is a simple border though, it is not the same thing as the 'stroke' command in Photoshop.

[Jack G]

Many thanks both   I'll work on it.

I note that the stroke width units are pt. Is there ant other option such as mm or pixels?

Is it possible to get the tool to snap to the exterior of the image?

Thanks again for your help

[toltec]

2 minutes ago, Jack G said:

Many thanks both   I'll work on it.

I note that the stroke width units are pt. Is there ant other option such as mm or pixels?

Is it possible to get the tool to snap to the exterior of the image?

Thanks again for your help

If you click on the stroke bar, it opens the panel.

You can enter 20 px or something like 5 mm and it will be converted for you. As shown, 20 px is 4.8 points for the image I tried.

5 minutes ago, Jack G said:

Is it possible to get the tool to snap to the exterior of the image?

What tool ? 

[Jack G]

Sorry. The rectangular tool.

[toltec]

36 minutes ago, Jack G said:

Sorry. The rectangular tool.

I'm not 100% sure what you are wanting to do.

In my earlier example, the image of the boat and beach is clipped by the rectangle. So the image sort of snaps to the rectangle shape, not the other way around.

If you apply a stroke directly to an image using the Stroke option on the Context toolbar the stroke is applied to the exact outer edge of the image, so I guess it 'snaps', kind of ?

If you wanted to draw a rectangle exactly around an image, you could set Snapping on, in which case the rectangle would snap to the image edges, but there is not much point in that because you can apply the same borders/strokes directly on the image.

Note: There are lots of other things you can do with borders. In Layer effects, you can apply borders, shapes and other exoric things. These can be applied directly to an image or to a shape (such as a rectangle). 

[MEB]

1 hour ago, Jack G said:

I note that the stroke width units are pt. Is there ant other option such as mm or pixels?

Yes, go to Affinity Preferences, User Interface section and untick Show Lines in points. They will then display in whatever units you have selected for your document.