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When posting my photos to my blog, I often add a small border. In Photoshop, I use the resize canvas tool to add pixels in whatever color I choose. I have benn able to add to the canvas in Affinity Photo Beta, but only as a clear background (if that makes sense). How do I add (for example), a 50 pixel gray border?

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  • Staff

Hi RKTodd,

 

When you are ready, resize you canvas, then switch to the Export Persona, using the Slice Tool draw a selection around your project, including the resized canvas area. Now on the Export Options panel change the colour of the Matte and then export that Slice.

 

Another way is to add an outline to your image, you can do this via the Outline option on the Effects Tab, click to enable and then click on the cog icon for more options. Set the alignment to Outside and Radius for the thickness and also the colour.

 

Thanks

 

Lee

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Thanks Lee, I'll give these a try :)

 

Actually, most of the time, I add a triple border; it might be 50 pixels black, 10 pixels gray, and then another 50 pixels of black. It would be great if I could do this in Affinity.

 

Thanks again!

 

P.S. Do you plan to implement something similar to Photoshop's "Droplet" option. When I do blog posts, it's nice to automate the process I outlined above. 

 

So far, I am really liking Affinity Photo, and I definately want to replace Photoshop!

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  • Staff

Hi RKTodd,

 

Another way to do it is to create three overlapping rectangles with the colors and offset you need and put them behind the image in the same layer, then export the layer slice containing all the elements.

 

There will be a Macro Persona (not enabled yet in the interface) that will allow you to record and apply actions/macros, but i´m not sure we have considered something similar to Photoshop's droplets yet. I think there's still other higher priority features to implement before we consider it, but it's a good suggestion.

 

Glad to know you're enjoying Affinity Photo.

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@RKTodd

 

Resize canvas with +100 px at each side. Add new layer. Add a rectangle, no fill, stroke i.e. 2 pt and any color you want, 100px smaller in width and height of your new canvas size, switch to Move tool (V), center your rectangle, done.

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  • 1 year later...

I am in the process of switching over to Affinity.  As a club member Affinity simply has to provide something simple like stroking a line.  All club projection competition entries need a white/black line to delineate the outer reach of the image.  Doing this to my own images in PSCC with an action is sooooo easy, and so too when I have to adjust beginner members who send me stuff to show.   In Affinity??????  This alone could make me regret buying Affinity.

Have I missed it?

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A simple tutorial for adding simple boder photo is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5tEOiNZNbo

 

(Maybee too late for you, RKTodd, but hopefully it will help others. And I also borrowed your pohoto for this. I hope it's OK.)

 

The steps are these:

1) resize canvas (Cmd + Alt + C) to add 100 px width and 100px height (50 px on each side - so don't forget to choose center alignment).

2) add a rectangle to cover the whole canvas, make its fill transparent and its border black

3) set the border properties so it is 50px wide. It's key to check the second "Align" checkbox so the border is drawn into inside the rectangle.

4) duplicate the rectangle (Cmd + J), change border color of the new rectangle to gray, change border widht and resize it appropriately.

 

And you're done. The good thing is that you can copy / paste those two rectangles to another photo and only resize them. So next borders are quite easy to do. Of course, there are still some additional actions to resize the canvases. An automatic action would certainly improve bulk workflows, but for a few images this seems OK to me.

UX/UI designer, IT analyst & consultant, Business Architect at Cool Ticket (www.coolticket.co).

MacBook Pro 13'' Early 2015, 3,1 GHz Intel Core i7, 16 GB 1867 MHz DDR3, Apple Thunderbolt Display 27'' (2560 x 1440).

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This isn't Photoshop!

Yes but supporting workflows such as these is important and its ok to admit that PS can do something better than AP, if AP was a perfect replication of 20+ years of development in 3-4 that would be unbelievable bc its impossible. AP has room to grow, it is however an AMAZING piece of software and has an awesome dev team behind it. It will get there as long as people continue to give that great dev team good feedback

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  • 2 weeks later...

Notwithstanding the 'simple tutorial' to borders, it is in fact simpler to use Layer Effects and add a coloured border to your taste.  This does not work by copying the pixel layer and trying to add a similar black layer outside the white of first choosing.

But when one has lots of club images sent for projection and each needs a thin two-tone border that is most often 3px white then 4px black, Affinity just is a pain.

I tried adding a border of white using Layer Effects and then the pen tool stroke.  That works for one or two images but for several?  Nope.

Added that problem, when I returned to Affinity after 24 hours shut down, when I came to use the pen tool in a similar situation, the green and red alignment line assistants had disappeared...

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  • Staff

Hi Tw48,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

Yes, this process is still a little convoluted for double or more complex borders, however Affinity Photo 1.5 Beta introduces Macros and batch processing which should help to speed up all this considerably. Some improvements that are already planned can also offer a few more ways to approach this task like Multiple Effects/Fills/Strokes per shape.

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Thanks for all the replies to my original question. I still think it would be great if Serif could program the option to just increase the canvas size and allow the use of colors. I know, it's always easier said than done, but I can hope....right?

 

I am really looking forward to the 1.5 version. I believe that will finally put Photoshop to rest for me.

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