[How to cut, copy, paste pixels in a rectangular Marquee select?]

MacOS Ventura / Affinity Photo 2.0.3

I want to achieve something profoundly simple in Affinity Photo:

    a) Use the Marquee tool to drag out a rectangular selection (No problem there)

    b) Cut, Drag, Copy, Drag-copy, or Paste the selection to the same layer, to a different layer, or to a different document. In other pixel/raster editors I‘ve accomplished this without confusion or effort. (For instance, to drag-copy I simply make a selection, and then (on MacOS in other editors) option drag.

In Affinity Photo the closest technique I’ve found is:

• select a portion of my single layer
• Copy Merged (Copy does work ... why is that?)
• Paste

This results in Affinity Photo placing a copy of the pixels on a new child layer. I can work with this, but I’d like to find an easier way to:

a) using the existing canvas (of a particular layer) as a place to copy-dragged selections from the original pixel image. 

b) to copy-drag a portion of a layer onto the image itself so that they replace (merge into) the area I've dragged it to. 

What am I missing?

bezster
 

[Designer: Vector mask layer. Lock Children?]

I can’t find a way to move an image with in its vector mask In Affinity Designer. (Naturally, I can easily move the mask group as a whole —the parent image and its mask. And I can move the mask independently of the parent image. )

Mike Rankin—an extraordinarily good presenter!—has an excellent Affinity Publisher tutorial series on LinkedIn Learning. It includes a short video topic (1.5 minutes) about working with Vector Masks in Publisher which shows a Lock Children solution in Publisher (BTW, I see the same option in Affinity Photo, official video below).

Unfortunately Lock Children appears to be unavailable in Designer's Context Toolbar, regardless of the layer selected.

At 0:40 seconds in Rankin’s Publisher video he shows how to

• a) move and scale the Parent object and the vector mask as a group
• b) move (or manipulate) the Mask only (i.e. reveal different portions of the Parent image)
• c) move the Parent image within the mask—to accomplish this, choose the image in the layer panel and enable Lock Children in the Context Toolbar. (Explained at 0:59 in Rankin's video).

Note that Affinity Photo has option c) ... as illustrated in Affinity’s tutorial on Lock Children:

As mentioned at the outset options a) and b) are easily accomplished in Affinity Designer and work as described in the Rankin's Publisher video tutorial.

And Lock Children (option c) seems like a perfect solution, unfortunately I can’t find Lock Children in Designer, nor can I find an alternate solution.

Is there currently another way?

Hoping I'm just overlooking something obvious!

bezster

P.S. I also like that in Publisher layers have a contextual menu containing Mask to Below (0:24) in the Rankin’s video. Makes masking a little more discoverable!