I use image as fill a lot in my designs. It has some limitations, but I find it’s the easiest way to manage images easily.
When I do handoff to a developper, they can’t export the original full size image in any way. Only the cropped, styled rectangle. If the rectangle has rounded corners, it exports that too. It’s problematic. I don’t use the Inspect mode a lot personally so I didn’t think it could be an issue.
In an ideal world, I would use/store an independent image library for the developper, but it’s not always the case.
I would like to see a way to export the original image data somehow. Could even be a new section in the Components for images?
(I’ve also not find any way to copy back the image data in my clipboard, or export it from the Sketch App)
No worries, I guess I saw it as an issue because the image couldn’t be selected/exported.
I was also curious to see if people had better ways to work with images they could suggest. I just tried images in the new Beta, and it’s nice to be able to add rounded corners, but it still isn’t all I need, I’ll do a separate topic.
As for your question. In the desktop app, it’s not possible to extract the image data once it’s in a fill.
The image data appears to be embedded in the Sketch file, at the original size. But there is no ‘open linked file’ or ‘export image’ available in the fill edit panel. If I wasn’t the one to create the file for example, it’s not available to export from the document.
My workaround as sometime been to guess the size, duplicate and change the rectangle size, and export that. Not ideal.
This also applies to any images inside Sketch, but at least with a bitmap I can hit ‘Original size’ and copy/paste that into another program or export it @1x.
The use case for all of this, for me, is usually handoff. The artboards are at a specific size, for design purposes, but the images need to be given to the developper at full size so they can be responsive.
The obvious solution is to always have the images outside the app on the computer. But you know, projects, clients, etc
Hi there. Whilst I understand your frustration of the image-fill not being available to the developer at handoff in the web app, I did just want to follow up on one thing you wrote above, with some information that might be helpful to you.
It is actually possible (and very easy) to do this simply by copying the fill and then pasting it. I’ve included a screen-recording below showing how to do it.
Hi Brett. That’s really nice, thanks for the tip, that really helps.
I didn’t know you could select the image fill that way. It’s a bit hidden, I probably tried to right-click it, or did look for a copy icon or menu item/icon.
