dysamoria

It is unacceptable that these are not CONSISTENT across all selection tools.
SHIFT is almost universally the ADD to selection modifier in MOST SOFTWARE.

It is unacceptable that these are not CONSISTENT across all selection tools.
SHIFT is almost universally the ADD to selection modifier in MOST SOFTWARE.

I'm not averse to shift being to add while ctrl (cmd on the mac) is constrain, as long as it's consistent along all the tools. What messes up my muscle memory is EVERY SINGLE TOOL DOING SOMETHING DIFFERENT!!!! Ahem...

It is unacceptable that these are not CONSISTENT across all selection tools.
SHIFT is almost universally the ADD to selection modifier in MOST SOFTWARE.

Hi, for the Flood Select Tool, if you go “control click” on mac you get to add more selection to the existing selection. It should however be “shift click” that lets you add to the magic wand selection so that it matches to photoshop shortcuts. And it makes sense because all other applications use SHIFT to add selection. Not CONTROL. In order for photoshop users to easily transfer to APhoto, the add selection magic wand feaute should be SHIFT CLICK. Thanks!

Wasn't the whole point of these apps that they were 100% the same functionality between platforms? I swear I just read this very claim on the Affinity pages marketing these products...

It's not always that straightforward of a conversion.  For example, on Windows you can switch among open windows using Alt+Tab, but on the Mac the closest equivalent is to switch among open applications using Command+Tab (not Option+Tab).
In Windows you can close a window / exit an application using Alt+F4 but on the Mac it is Command+Q (for Quit).

Wasn't the whole point of these apps that they were 100% the same functionality between platforms? I swear I just read this very claim on the Affinity pages marketing these products...

Wasn't the whole point of these apps that they were 100% the same functionality between platforms? I swear I just read this very claim on the Affinity pages marketing these products...

And I am yet ANOTHER person here for this same undocumented, unexplained in the UI, and unintuitive/uncommon behavior. I copied an image on a Safari page and pasted it into Affinity Photo. Couldn't delete parts of it. Repeat over and over. I found the Edit menu has some kind of masking command, but it seemed stupidly obtuse and I KNEW I'd been able to delete before. Came here and... 
Affinity need to come up with some different behavior or visual to indicate what's going on to the user. The concept is not a bad one, but the implementation is utterly opaque.
Another inconsistency is using Control modifier key to Add to a selection instead of the Shift or Command modifier. I know I could edit the keyboard commands, but the default most everywhere else is to use Shift or Command. Control is not used as often on Mac OS, and certainly not for these kinds of things. Usually Shift is a sequential add, while Command is a non-sequential add.

Count me as another user who ended up in this thread after pulling my hair out trying to figure out why I couldn't simply delete a selection from a layer. (Ironically, I had moved my work over to Affinity Photo an hour earlier to get around a frustration with a competing photo editor.) After reading through the thread, I understand the concept of image layers vs. pixel layers, although I agree that it is not at all intuitive to a new user. Might I suggest an "always/never/ask" preference regarding rasterization of drag and drop images? Or perhaps a dialog that asks if you intend to delete the selection rather than the layer and offers to rasterize in the former case?
Regardless, there does seem to be a bug involved. Just like user Macoun back on 27 January 2016, after I read the solution here and returned to my document in Affinity Photo, I found that the layer was already indicated to be a pixel layer. Nevertheless, I converted my pixel layer to a pixel layer and that solved it. As a test, I dragged the same image into another file and it indeed showed as an image layer, so something else is going on that sometimes changes the labeling of the layer without actually changing its state. 

Thanks you so much! Also glad Google indexed your answer high up.
I do get where the person is coming from you gave this answer to. I bought Affinity about a year ago, and from having used Photoshop for many years but refused to pay subscription fees, I just assumed that most of the operations would more or less follow the same paradigm, since i presume photoshop users are part of affinity's core target market, but maybe not... Anyway, not bitchin, but seriously  almost every operation I take a shot at using just by guessing based on tool icons and tool tip descriptions, 9 time out of 10 there's a different operational paradigm and i just don't get it. What you say makes sense re images being considered an object that must be rasterized... and maybe somehow photoshop would handle that automatically when i drag and drop objects onto the image area to create layers. What's impt is now i know, but i cant tell you how many videos i started to watch in Youtube about background removal using flood tool, only to follow their directions but after selecting,  and what appears to be an intelligent selection based on pixel color, hitting delete thinking the selection will be deleted only to find the whole layer deleted. 
it just never occurred to me that i'd have to take an action on an image beforehand...  Really appreciate your quick to the point answer which was the secret sauce! thank you much!

I'm glad I found this thread, it looks like an software wierdism. I had four layers, one where i selected an open Affinity image and two where I dragged them in from explorer, plus the origibal image.
The pasted image behaved as expected but the two dragged layers just got deleted rather than the selection. All were pixel images, so I cannot see why the problem exists but MEB's response works perfectly.
There are some wierd aspects to Photo but c'est la vie.
The problem is, really, that the image layer is an undocumented feature.

Ran into the same problem, completely baffeled me as I tried to select a rectangular area and then delete it, which ended up deleting the entire layer. I tried this multiple times and eventually had to search online and find this to realize what was happening. After reading your explanations I understand why it's happening, but it's completely unexpected and very hard to understand for the user, especially when they're used to any other photo editor.
Basically, I think the problem is that when you paste in or drag in pixel graphics they're made into image objects. This has some benefits, but the problem is that it's not clearly indicated to the user, so they don't understand this is happening or expect that they won't be able to edit them without rasterizing them. Next complication is that when you make a rectangular selection the interface clearly signals to the user that this area is selected, and not the entire image layer. This makes it again very unexpected that Affinity actually considers the whole layer object selected and not the selection area and deletes the entire layer when you press delete.
So, a few ideas to make this easier to understand in future updates:
- Communicate more clearly that something you paste in is not a rasterized layer that you can edit the content of. Or maybe offer a setting on how pasted in images are handled.
- Communicate more clearly what is selected, or don't consider the entire layer selected when you make an area selection.
- Offer the offer to rasterize the layer if they try to edit it (like removing a part), or even better, just let the user edit the corresponding part of the transformed bitmap and keep it an image object.

When Affinity works, it's great, but when it doesn't it's maddening. I've spent the past hour trying to delete a selection - literally the easiest thing you can do in a photo editor - and I'm having many of the same problems listed above, and none of the "solutions" work. I use the word solutions roughly, because everything seems like an unnecessary workaround. None of this has ever happened to me in any other photo editor I've ever used and now I'm venting at a 3-year old thread because Affinity is so spotty and unpredictable with the simplest of tasks. If this is so complicated, you need to head back to the drawing board.

I think you're confusing what AP is. AP is not a Management system like Lightroom, it is an alternative to Photoshop. 

The subscription based use is the reason why I uninstalled all Adobe products from my computer. I'd rather deal with the outcome of that move than pay/month for something I should be able to purchase once at a reasonable price.

Just in case it wasn't mentioned yet: This rendering issue also affects the appearance of the rectangular selection marquee with Select All (Cmd-A), which to me mostly is shown on the left + upper edges only. It seems to depend on the zoom level, I get it on 4 edges correctly only in quite small zoom levels. Quite confusing, since a selection as 'usually' shown (just top + left) also is possible and can be in purpose.

APhoto selection marquee Cmd-A.m4v  

Any idea?

Hello Meb,
i bought my license yesterday, version 1.7.3.481. The affect still apears, to me it's bug. It irritats me. When I cut out something it's unclear, if I something went wrong or if it's the Affinity bug.
Do you have an idea, when it will be fixed?
 
Best wishes

Hi IanSG, 
The dev team is aware of this effect. I don't know if we have this filled as a bug specifically since it's widely known internally (i can check it out if it's logged or not) but i believe it's one of those things that we hope to polish/address at some point as the development moves forward/time permits.

I'm an art photographer so details are important to me. At certain magnitudes in Affinity Photo, I experience a white line along the edge of my images on the left and top. If I enlarge the image (CTRL + "+"), the white border usually disappears. But it's very disturbing to work with white edges, where you do not expect a white edge.
My other photo editing programs work without a white edge!
I have attached screendumps with a picture with white border and an image without a white border.
with-white-border.afphoto
without-white-border.afphoto

But is it being treated as a bug?  Like the OP, I don't like seeing things on the screen which aren't really there. 

Problems: 1) In the course of changing FX parameters, I will tend to touch an empty area on the screen (sometimes by accident, sometimes thinking to de-select the current object and move on to a different task, etc.). It instantly messes up my FX parameters. This is annoying.
2) de-selecting yourself out of the FX menu, or selecting a different object, is a pain because you have to select the move tool, then click on your new object, then click back on your desired FX. This is too many steps, and requires selecting a tool that you don't actually want to use (ex. move).
3) when you turn an FX on, the bottom bar does not automatically update to show the FX you just enabled. You have to hit the name of the FX instead. This is unintuitive.
 
Solutions: 1) if you hit an empty area on the screen, the FX menu does not change parameters.
2) to edit a different object's FX, simply click that object to have the bottom bar / FX side studio menu change and reflect that object's settings.
3) if you turn an FX on, change the bottom bar to that FX's setting.
 
Other thoughts: It other tools and studio interfaces in the program, you can tap an empty spot on the screen to de-select the current object. Or you can tap another object to select that one. Then, the bottom toolbar applies to that newly selected object. FX settings, however, don't work that way. I feel like I constantly have to second-guess what I'm doing when working with FX. "Will this accidentally mess up the parameters I just set? Am I working with the right object? Why don't I see the settings for the FX I just turned on?" etc.

Thanks for your suggestion, this is already logged with our developers to be investigated