LilleG

Uh, Lille definitely does want a Destructive Crop! Lille is praying for a Destructive Crop. An out-of-level photo drives me nuts so I am quite often rotating to straighten then cropping to remove the transparent areas. Except that Affinity's crop doesn't remove anything; it just hides it. Until you try to resize the canvas. When you do...your original now-rotated image is back with some really odd looking transparent spaces around it! As for the rasterize option, in another discussion about the crop issue Rasterizing was suggested and someone pointed out that Rasterizing at that point would degrade the image. Is that not correct? If Rasterize does not affect quality then it would be an option. But it's still an added step in what should be a simple operation. I'd love to see a Preferences option for Destructive/Non-Destrutive because I will never, ever, want a non-destructive crop. Other people do; let us choose what is best for us.

Is there any information on when, or even if, we will ever get a Destructive Crop option? Finally learned (thanks again to all who helped) how to create more than one border for an image but I still have to Save it as a Tiff, close the window, and reload the image if I have done any cropping or leveling.

Thank you for sharing these.

One only has to look at Jony Ive's UN-decorated Christmas Tree Window for Claridges to see where the OS is going next. Prolly a large blank slate that neither requires nor allows any user interaction whatsoever. (I think that used to be the definition of TV, which has conversely become more interactive.) And too many apps blindly follow suit, sacrificing usability for all for coolness for a few.

The original post referred to expanding from the center. That is still not available in RC2. (Or if it is, I haven't discovered how to do it.) And it is still greatly desired. I don't know why such a basic option has been ignored for so long.

I'm loving most of the new features. But having View/Studio/Show Left Studio turned on by default is a PITA. It's a constant irritant to have to go in and turn that off not only every time I open a new image but also anytime I hit Undo one time too many. Please let that be a user choice option.

Old Photoshop habits die hard! My problem was in trying to resize the background layer, fill with a color, then resize it again and add another color. That worked in PS. What works here...and thanks to whoever's suggestion it was...is to add the fill layers below while continuing to resize the background (or image) layer for additional borders. Most of what I do is photo editing...so thanks to everyone for the elimination of a major frustration for me!

Well, the crop method sounded good. And it works great for the first border but...on my system, running RC1.5 on El Capitan, the second border mis-behaves just like it does using my method. The bottom and right-side expansion is empty like you would expect it to be but the top and left-side expansion fills with the previous color. Maybe it's a glitch in my system somewhere but it drives me nuts trying to work around it.

Adding one border is doable, if not simple, using these steps. 1. Duplicate the background layer 2. Select the background layer 3. Under Document in the Menu Bar, select Resize Canvas 4. Click on the lock to unlock it 5. Click just to the right of px in the left size bar and add +20 (0r however many pixels you want to add) 6. Do the same thing in the right size bar 7. Click on the center of the Anchor 8. Click on Resize 9. Fill the blank area with the desired color However, repeating those steps to add a second border is not workable. The canvas resizes as desired but two sides are empty as they should be but the other two sides fill with the previous color. Resize is something I have been fighting with since the first release of Affinity. I don't know if it will ever be fixed. If I need to do more than one border, I just dig out that old copy of Photoshop and zip right through it.

Once you've selected your Export format (jpeg, tiff, etc) a dialog box comes up where you can edit the name (if desired) and select the download folder. Are you not seeing that dialog box?

Thanks, Paolo. As always, great tools and a generous source! You give so much to this forum.

One more big YES! for this feature.

Good. Thank you. Since Prefs is the first thing I check with each new update, that's the first thing I notice. Haven't had a chance yet to work with much of the new and improved but so far, it's looking good. It's prolly extremely frustrating for the developers that human nature being what it is, the better something becomes, the more we complain about the less than perfect.

In Preferences, Shortcuts, the text on the individual items that can be reassigned has been changed from light gray on a dark gray background to black text on a dark gray background. This is NOT an improvement! As should have been obvious by simply comparing the text on the top of the panel to that within the lower part. Please! Stop making it harder for some of us to use this app.

And if the very sight of this makes the developers shudder with revulsion, we promise we won't ever tell you that we're using it. We'll just pretend it doesn't exist while feasting our own eyes on legible, easily recognizable letters and icons that let us make swift and correct decisions instead of our usual "squint and stab." ;)

Thanks. That will be quite handy for reading through the Help files in spare moments. I've been trying to just work my way through start to finish since I've discovered several things that I didn't even know I wanted to do. And this will make it much easier to do.

You won't see anything unless you decide to resize the canvas (maybe some other operations as well?) But if you do try to resize, suddenly your original pre-crop but rotated (if you did any straightening )image is back with some really oddly shaped blank space around it where you resized the canvas.

Jer has it right. It was to illustrate a need for a destructive crop. My original question, which caused the confusion, "Why would a person want to crop destructively?" was a response to an earlier post questioning the need for a destructive crop. And I was advocating for a destructive crop that should have always been an option.

Or how about this situation? Here's what happens to my carefully straightened and cropped shot when I Resize the Canvas to try (unsuccessfully, of course) to add a white mat-like border around my image! A snap in Photoshop; endless frustration in Affinity Photo. This is the point where I throw up my hands, export as a Tiff to freeze the crop, then re-open the Tiff and finish in APhoto. <Large file removed>

I do really like Photo and Designer and expect to keep them as my go-to apps but unless there is an option for a lighter UI in version 2, I don't expect to upgrade either one. Instead I'll just muddle along with the final version of V1. I'm hoping that's not a choice I have to make but I'm really, really tired of struggling with this dark, low-contrast interface.

MEB, would you also request that Shortcuts for the Macro and Library Panels be added in Affinity Photo Preferences as well?

Or you can create custom Shortcuts in Preferences to Toggle almost every panel in the Studio if you want to really free up screen space.

First of all, I have never used Lightroom (other than a brief trial that didn't impress me much since I wasn't looking for an all-in-one.) And while I have an older version of Capture One, I never used it as an editor either, preferring Capture NX and NX2 as my RAW developer and Photoshop as my editor. What I use MediaPro for, and all I use it for, is as a Digital Asset Manager. For that, it offers everything I need or want. Personally, I don't see needing editing capabilities in a DAM when I have Affinity Photo for that. Other users have other needs but those are mine. <EDIT> My post may have been a bit misleading about my preferred photo editor. Earlier it was Photoshop, Now it is Affinity Photo.

I use Phase One's MediaPro as my DAM and open in Affinity Photo for editing and finishing.

As someone with a completely satisfactory DAM (Media Pro) I'm much more eager for iPad Photo, which I will definitely buy.