The Slice tool lets you divide designs into individual images, exporting each one separately with its own optimization settings. This is useful when working on web designs or interface designs where you might need to export, for example, buttons in one format and photographic images or logos in another.
In Pixelmator Pro, you can create slices from layers or layer groups in your image or draw them by hand. Each slice is optimized with your chosen settings and has its own optimized preview in your image.
Choose the Slice tool by doing one of the following:
Drag over the area of your image you’d like to export.
Choose the Slice tool by doing one of the following:
Do any of the following:
When you create a slice, the areas of the image that fall outside the slice can be promoted to become slices themselves. To create a slice from areas remaining between slices:
With the Slice tool selected,
– click an area of the image you’d like to promote to a slice and choose Promote to Slice.By default, slices drawn by hand are named Slice 1, Slice 2, Slice 3, and so on, and slices created from layers are named according to the layer name. If you like, you can rename any slice in your image.
With the Slice tool selected, double-click the name of a slice in the Tool Options pane and enter a new name.
Tip: Press and hold the key after starting to move a slice to move it vertically, horizontally, or diagonally.
The stacking order of slices is shown in the Tool Options pane. Their order doesn’t change the exported images, but the optimized preview is shown for the topmost slice. Moving slices to the front also makes it easier to select and move them. If part of a slice is behind another slice, the solid outline changes to a dashed one.
With the Slice tool selected, you can change the stacking order by doing any of the following:
Add one or more export formats and customize them.
See Export an image for the web to learn more about optimizing images (including slices) for the web.
When the Slice tool is active, each slice in your image is displayed with its optimization settings so you can see exactly what the exported image will look like. Most of the time, you won’t see much of a difference, but if you drastically reduce the quality or colors of a slice, you may start to see visual changes.
To hide or show the optimized preview,
–click anywhere in your image and choose Hide Optimized Preview or Show Optimized Preview.Click to select one or more slices and do one of the following:
With the Slice tool selected, do one of the following:
Choose a location and click Export.