Replacing images / image scale .227

[robinp]

Unless I'm missing something, I'm surprised that there is still no way of interrogating and manipulating a placed images scale. We are Architects. It is VITAL that we know what scale an image / drawing is placed at. It is VITAL that we can easily control the scale of a placed image.

This is really basic stuff. I don't know why this still hasn't been addressed. It is concerning that after several months of asking for this and explaining why it is important, nothing has been done about it.

So, given the above, I'm forced to find work arounds. Such as scaling a placed image to a full sheet so that I know how big it is and then manipulating it from there. OK when you first do it, but terrible if you want to come back and edit it later because you have no way of knowing what the current scale is of the image and then you have to start again. Pretty crap.

To top it off, when replacing an image in a frame, all scaling and position information is lost. It's like that was attached to the placed image rather than the image frame. This is really bad. For example, we often want to place several drawings that are positioned and scaled identically to each other. For example, if we have several design options, we want to show all of them next to each other with the same scaling and position relative to the frame and page. A work around to this used to be to go to the Resource Manager and replace the image from there. Currently, there seems to be a bug with the Resource Manager where not all instances of a placed image are shown. This breaks the work around.

I'm sorry to sound fed up, but it is because I am. These are really basic things that are essential to a sensible workflow for anyone that needs confidence over the scale of placed images.

Are there any other work arounds?

When are all of the above going to be fixed?

[robinp]

I have found a different work around.

Select the image frame in the layers panel, expand and then select the "(linked document)". Then there's an option to replace the document. Doing this retains the positioning and scale of the original document with the replaced one. It is only a partial work around in that there is still no way of knowing the actual scale. And doing it this way has resulted in the file being Embedded instead of Linked despite my preferences being CLEARLY set to link not embed. Come on!!!

Oh, and the Resource Manager is definitely broken. It doesn't show these files properly, so it isn't possible to even change this now embedded file into a linked file.

[robinp]

OMG now when I select the images from the layer panel, I can no longer see the 'replace document' option in the tool bar. This is all so inconsistent. 

[robinp]

Having restarted Publisher, the replace document option has reappeared. The resource manager is slightly better too but still not great.

Having replaced the drawings by selecting via the layer panel, choosing 'replace document', the files are then embedded. While they are named correctly in the layer panel, the resource manager thinks they are anonymous TIFF files (they are actually vector PDFs). However, if I think click 'make linked' in the resource manager, they now retain the correct scale.

Also, having restarted Publisher, the 'Replace...' option is now working again in the Resource Manager. However, replacing a linked file results in an embedded file but it does now work as per my previous work around aside from that.

[fde101]

1 hour ago, robinp said:

It's like that was attached to the placed image rather than the image frame.

That is correct, it actually is.

The image is a separate layer in Publisher and it is the layer that is scaled; the control that appears when the frame is selected is mostly just for convenience and actually scales the contained image layer, nothing to do with the frame.

The frame is for cropping and to serve as a placeholder on a master page.

 

1 hour ago, robinp said:

This is really basic stuff. I don't know why this still hasn't been addressed. It is concerning that after several months of asking for this and explaining why it is important, nothing has been done about it.

For however many people there are that consider this vital, there are probably at least as many more that couldn't care less.  Serif can't do it all at once so they need to pick and choose.  Not to say that your particular use case is not important, but you are probably in the minority in the grand scheme of things.  I too would hope they will eventually get this fixed, but I would argue that lack of anchored/inline image support, footnotes, cross-references, hyperlinks, etc. are probably impacting a much larger community of users than are most of the things listed here.

 

1 hour ago, robinp said:

the Resource Manager is definitely broken

Not sure if we are seeing the same issue or not, but I have noted in another thread somewhere that images placed on individual pages into frames that were created on master pages do not show up in the resource manager.  This is going to impact a lot more people than most of the other things listed, plus it represents a fairly serious bug in an existing feature rather than a request for a new one, so I would expect this to have a relatively high priority in getting addressed.

[robinp]

7 hours ago, fde101 said:

For however many people there are that consider this vital, there are probably at least as many more that couldn't care less.  Serif can't do it all at once so they need to pick and choose.  Not to say that your particular use case is not important, but you are probably in the minority in the grand scheme of things.  I too would hope they will eventually get this fixed, but I would argue that lack of anchored/inline image support, footnotes, cross-references, hyperlinks, etc. are probably impacting a much larger community of users than are most of the things listed here.

Personally I’d put accurate and precise control of elements as one of the most important requirements for a page layout application.

In truth, the image frame controls are generally imprecise and need a pretty major rethink.

I have no idea of relative sizes of market, but I’m pretty sure there are hundreds of thousands of people in the construction industry or other technical design areas where exact image sizing placement is essential. Almost all of the things you describe I’m pretty sure are nice to haves for almost anyone and maybe only essential to a few people. 

Construction is, or should be, a major target market for Affinity’s apps. We don’t use such apps enough to really justify the huge costs of Adobe, but we need a suite of apps, pretty much like Affinity’s. Perfect, they are so affordable by comparison. They just have to tick a few boxes and being able to accurately and precisely scale drawings is about as fundamental as you can get in our industry. 

[fde101]

3 minutes ago, robinp said:

Personally I’d put accurate and precise control of elements as one of the most important requirements for a page layout application.

Sure... and there is already placement relative to the page boundaries and the ability to set the position and size of the items, in terms of its width and height.  Maintaining consistent ratios between images is something more unique to the types of applications you are working on and less important to someone adding illustrations to a book who needs to the pictures to stay with the relevant text, making anchored images more important to that person.  Inline images will be more important to someone working on a document with math formulas they are pasting in as images (equations from an equation editor).  People doing scholarly works will need footnotes.  People writing large technical documents of many kinds will want those cross-reference features.  And the people clamoring for hyperlinks keep piling on top of each other all over the forum.

 

7 minutes ago, robinp said:

Construction is, or should be, a major target market for Affinity’s apps. We don’t use such apps enough to really justify the huge costs of Adobe, but we need a suite of apps, pretty much like Affinity’s. Perfect, they are so affordable by comparison. They just have to tick a few boxes and being able to accurately and precisely scale drawings is about as fundamental as you can get in our industry. 

Sounds good to me.

[Mark Oehlschlager]

I'm not sure I understand the expectation here. Publisher is a page layout application for books, magazines and other long documents. It is not a drafting program for the production of construction drawings. Presumably your office outputs scale working drawing from a drafting program onto large sheets.

If you need to print books with detail drawing at 1/4"- or 1/8"-scale, or even a very small-scale plan drawing, why not export a properly scaled, 300-ppi raster image with dimensions appropriate for the page size of the book you are trying to produce?

[robinp]

24 minutes ago, Mark Oehlschlager said:

I'm not sure I understand the expectation here. Publisher is a page layout application for books, magazines and other long documents. It is not a drafting program for the production of construction drawings. Presumably your office outputs scale working drawing from a drafting program onto large sheets.

If you need to print books with detail drawing at 1/4"- or 1/8"-scale, or even a very small-scale plan drawing, why not export a properly scaled, 300-ppi raster image with dimensions appropriate for the page size of the book you are trying to produce?

Of course we are not producing drawings in Publisher. 

We produce design reports which are typically A3 documents. We also produce numerous drawings which are stand alone. The reports serve to provide background and explanation to the design. Therefore placing of scale drawings is essential. It is simply bad practice to not place drawings at a known scalable scale. 

For example, a 1:50 drawing @ A1 would be 1:100 @ A3. Often you might just want to place part of a drawing, so it is cropped, which would be done in the DTP app. You therefore can’t rely on snapping to page boundary. At least, you can’t once you start cropping.

Our drawings are typically ‘printed’ to PDF for issuing to clients / contractors / others. The last thing you want is to also have to export to a particular DPI raster. For numerous reasons, but primarily because it wouldn’t actually solve the problem. 

 

[Mark Oehlschlager]

@robinp

Well, unless you're producing scale drawing for your A3 document pages, you would need to scale your drawing down to fit the A3, and then do the math to compute your compounded scale, and record that in a caption to your placed drawing.

Are you unable to place your drawing at 100% and then use the Transform panel in Publisher to reduce that placed image by an appropriate percentage?

If your 1:50 drawing needs to be scaled down 50% to fit a document page such that the new scale is 1:100, why not place the image at 100%, go to the Transform panel, link the Width & Height fields, and add the expression * 50% after the actual image Width and then hit the return key?

[thomaso]

15 hours ago, robinp said:

We are Architects. It is VITAL that we know what scale an image / drawing is placed at. It is VITAL that we can easily control the scale of a placed image.

I miss it, too. Though it is not a technical problem to tell/show the scale % and to enable to set a % scale (without the *x% workaround), I assume the team momentarily is still involved in other, also related issues.

You might have noticed that in Resource Manager a placed image dpi value changes with the documents resolution – which is a bad bug to me.

Also it is not solved yet that an image size on canvas is related to its file format: for instance a PSD gets placed in real/expected size whereas the same file as JPG gets placed in a size related to its dpi. – Just give them time. For now APub might not be a good one for your reasonable needs.

[robinp]

5 hours ago, Mark Oehlschlager said:

@robinp

Well, unless you're producing scale drawing for your A3 document pages, you would need to scale your drawing down to fit the A3, and then do the math to compute your compounded scale, and record that in a caption to your placed drawing.

Are you unable to place your drawing at 100% and then use the Transform panel in Publisher to reduce that placed image by an appropriate percentage?

If your 1:50 drawing needs to be scaled down 50% to fit a document page such that the new scale is 1:100, why not place the image at 100%, go to the Transform panel, link the Width & Height fields, and add the expression * 50% after the actual image Width and then hit the return key?

Thanks. I’m aware of all this. You seem to be trying to tell me this isn’t actually an issue for me when it most certainly is  

If you have loads of drawings placed in a long document. You crop them (either crop tool or with a frame) and position them. Then someone else picks up the document and wants to check they are all placed at the correct scale. How do they do this?

Or if you leave it for a few days or weeks and then need to adjust the document, how do you check the scale of the placed drawings?

Or you place it and adjust it to one scale and then later need to adjust it again. Unless you happen to remember how it was originally transformed your only option is to start again rather than just adjusting a simple scale %. 

[robinp]

3 hours ago, thomaso said:

I miss it, too. Though it is not a technical problem to tell/show the scale % and to enable to set a % scale (without the *x% workaround), I assume the team momentarily is still involved in other, also related issues.

You might have noticed that in Resource Manager a placed image dpi value changes with the documents resolution – which is a bad bug to me.

Also it is not solved yet that an image size on canvas is related to its file format: for instance a PSD gets placed in real/expected size whereas the same file as JPG gets placed in a size related to its dpi. – Just give them time. For now APub might not be a good one for your reasonable needs.

I agree, I don’t think it should be difficult to implement. It is, in the context of the features that are being delivered a question of performing some straightforward maths and reporting that in a panel. That would be a huge improvement over just not knowing anything. 

To then make the panel editable would be marvellous, but I can do the maths myself if necessary for a few months. 

It would just be nice to know this is coming so that we can genuinely plan to go all in with Publisher or not. 

Any update on this @MEB @Chris_K @Ash ?