Custom Printing using Affinity v2

[R5er]

I’m using an Epson P900 printer and have a roll of 17” Fine Art Paper. I’d like to put together a series of photos eg. leaves taken in studio each next to the other spaced an equal distance apart and print say 17 x 36” using Affinity. I know how to create a custom paper size but I have no idea how I’d go about placing those images onto the custom paper for printing. May be too specific but haven’t had any luck finding anything on line that can shed light on the process. Any suggestions would greatly appreciated!

[Manfred M]

I'm not quite sure as to what you are trying to do.

Are you planning to arrange the leaves in the studio so that they fit on a 17" x 36" page and then photograph the whole scene at once?

Are you planning to photography them individually and then digitally cut them out from the background you have photographed them on and then digitally place them on the page?

[R5er]

Individualy photographed in studio then placed/arranged to fit the paper.

[R5er]

Manfred, I hope this explanation is a little clearer. Lets say I’ve taken 6 images of head shots of my dog done in studio, instead of printing each one separately I’d like to incorporate all 6 images onto a 17”x whatever length of paper. I’m not familiar with Affinity but I assume there’s a process within Affinity to it, I just have no idea how.

Thanks for getting back.

[R5er]

Manfred, I checked out your website. You’ve got some very impressive imagery on there!

[Manfred M]

I used Affinity v1 a number of years ago, but found it frustrating to use, so I just went back to Photoshop. The two have quite similar functionality, so I suspect. Doing this type of composite image well does take some experience.

1. Determine the background colour you are going to use for the composite image and use a similar background to shoot the individual leaves.

2. Use flat lighting to ensure that there are no (minimal) shadows cast by the leaves.

3. Use the selection tools to cut out the images of the leaves that were photographed and place them on the 17" x 36" paper. Use the Move tool as well as the rotation and sizing tools to place them on the working image. Repeat until all done. I would place each leaf on an individual layer to make fine tuning easier.

You are going to have to play around with the selection tools to ensure that the selections are sharp. You may have to feather the leaves a bit to get a good blend.

4. Be careful to use the same colour space on both the images that you are manipulating and the final print.

5. When I do this work, I assume that image PPI is the same as the printer DPI. With the P900, use the native 360 DPI resolution in your work for both captured and print images.


You mentioned that you visited my website; the ToolBugz series was done this way.

[Chataignier]

In your initial post you speak of Affinity v2 - but dont say which of the programmes. If you have only Affinity photo then you will need to create a "photo" of 17 by 36 and paste the individual images as Manfred describes. However, if you have the whole Affinity suite you can do much the same thing using Affinity Publisher but it's much easier because Publisher has vastly better and more refined tools for page make up.

The finished page can then be exported as a jpg or pdf or even printed direct.

[Manfred M]

David - I don't know the Affinity suite, other than the original version of Photo, but I am reasonably familiar with Adobe's version of Publisher which is called InDesign.

InDesign is a desktop publishing tool and is used for layout work for print and digital publications. It needs "print ready" art that can be assembled into a number of different electronic (website, advertising poster, advertising flyer, instruction manual, etc) as well as their print form.

While it is good at page layout, it does not allow the actual artwork to be manipulated. That has to be done in Affinity Photo (or Photoshop). Arranging leaves that are resized, inter-nested and rotated, which are what Steve appears to want to do, is best suited to a pixel based editing tool.

The actual printout can be done from any piece of software, but the control for fine tuning an image (as a piece of art), is better accomplished in Affinity Photo, rather than Publisher. This is especially true when the output is being made on a printer, like the Epson P900.

[R5er]

I’ve invested the $45 and purchased Affinity Publisher. I’ll do my post in photo and transfer the finished images to Publisher. A dry run gave me the results I was trying to accomplish. Thanks to all for responding, you guys are the best!

[Chataignier]

Manfred - I dont know InDesign well enough to comment, but I used its fore runner Pagemaker for years. As for The Affinity suite, it's much more powerful than you might imagine. For example, after you have imported a pixel image such as a PSD onto a page, you can switch "persona" as they call it and WITHOUT leaving the page you can use a wide range of pixel edit tools such as dodging and burning, object removal, gradients, sharpening, vignettes, filters such as gaussian, warp etc on the imported image while still seeing things like overlaying text or other vector graphics or even other pixel based elements in place.

[Chataignier]

Steve - I look forward to seeing the result !

[Manfred M]

Manfred - I dont know InDesign well enough to comment, but I used its fore runner Pagemaker for years. As for The Affinity suite, it's much more powerful than you might imagine. For example, after you have imported a pixel image such as a PSD onto a page, you can switch "persona" as they call it and WITHOUT leaving the page you can use a wide range of pixel edit tools such as dodging and burning, object removal, gradients, sharpening, vignettes, filters such as gaussian, warp etc on the imported image while still seeing things like overlaying text or other vector graphics or even other pixel based elements in place.

InDesign has been around for about 25 years, so any real semblance to Pagemaker is long gone.

InDesign very much uses a pointer based system for assets it uses, so to edit, say an image file, the user pops over to Photoshop and does the edits there and the changes are automatically reflected in InDesign. If both Photoshop and InDesign are open, this operation is seamless.

What InDesign lacks are the ability to fine-tune the print parameters versus what I get with Photoshop. That being said, most people probably won't care.

[Manfred M]

Steve - I look forward to seeing the result !

Agreed!