st87

Thank you SO MUCH for your quick response. Man, I was pulling out my hair. I confirm that it as an image layer, and it changed to a pixel layer after rasterizing. It then allowed me to delete selections as I would normally expect.

Okay this is ridiculous. Maybe I'm using it wrong. So in my document, I have a layer from a scan. I'm trying to crop off the edges, so with the layer selected, I use the marquee tool to select an area. I press (fn + backspace) on my macbook (which is equivalent to the del key), and the whole layer gets deleted!! What the hell??

Thanks guys. Rotation was 0º and aligned was ticked at least during that second time when it was successful. I'll keep this in mind for future references. Cheers.

Hmm no I don't see any options that is obvious. However I had to reopen the document and to my shock, it works as expected. No more curly erratic and unpredictable cloning reference. Very weird. Bug?

Okay, so I have a general concept about what it does, but I can't really follow or appreciate its behaviour. When I press alt, and select a spot to clone, and as I drag the cursor to clone an entire sweep, how come it doesn't follow the trajectory of my cursor movement? So say, I want to clone an entire horizontal line about 50 px above. I hold alt, and select the start of the line from the left. I then release alt, and place my mouse where to start, and start dragging in a straight line towards the right. The crosshair indicating where it's cloning, rather than following the straight line per my mouse movement, starts dropping (note, my cursor is NOT drooping), to the extent that it actually CROSSES over my cursor from the top to the bottom. I don't understand it. Why doesn't it just follow the direction that I'm headed? I can't find any logic in the tool's behaviour. Am I using it wrong or is there an option that I should select that I don't know of? Cheers.

Okay, new problem. I have a custom brush that is pointing straight down. I want to angle it like a forward slash. The rotation tool only goes from 0 to 50% (seriously, percentage?!) which translates to swinging the brush to the opposite direction. How to I put in, say a "-20%"? Doesn't seem to support negative numbers. Seriously, why only swing in one direction, and why call an angle as a percentage? Hope there's a fix for this!

OMG thank you so much. Any reason why this is not shown by default? I was on the verge of ripping my hair out.

I am going insane with AP tonight. For some reason, I CANNOT locate the window that shows me all the dfferent brush tips. All I get is the "Brush Selection" tool. But how do I select the freaking tips??

Also, after exiting the live lighting adjustments, there seems to be no way to get back in to make further adjustments? Please tell me that I'm just not looking hard enough...

Hey, you guys have got to add a level of undo on the LIve Lighting feature. I love the idea, but I've been attempting 10 times and I'm getting absolute ape-sh*t over here. What happens is, any slip of the mouse or tablet, the whole thing goes to sh*t and collapses into a straight line and I have to pretty much start over again. Please, make undo work for the last movement of those markers!!

Oh yeh, that works for me too... Thanks yakk!

Hi, I appreciate AP's freedom when cropping, but for idiots like me, is there a way to activate some form of restrictions so that the cropping frame does not exceed the confines of the actual image? I'm sure there's a way, right?

Thanks MEB. I really appreciate your honest response. Overall, I have wasted an hour of hair pulling over this; more so had you not come back to tell me that I'm chasing a carrot that didn't exist. I then went back to Photoshop and did everything I wanted in under 10 mins. Please pass this over to the development team.

... is there actually a solution to this, or is this a bug? Is it a problem with my technique? Are my expectations too high? Is there a genuine defficiency with the tool itself? I can't believe it can be so bloody hard!!

Thanks. That definitely worked. I hate to keep bombarding you, but I feel like I'm about to smash my computer with a baseball bat soon. I appreciate AP's nature of doing everything in a non-destructive manner, but this is really affecting my productivity here. So trying to edit the mask layer, it turns out I don't like the exposure and I want to wash it out more by adjusting the brightness/contrast. So having no option to directly tweek the mask layer (i.e. the black and white image), all I could do was to create a brightness/contrast adjustment layer underneath the mask layer. Now I have the following problem: - If I hold option and click the mask layer, I see the grey scale image I want to edit, but I lose the brightness/contrast adjustment dialog. - If I double click the brightness/contrast adjustment layer, I get the dialog box back up, but I lose the view of my mask. ARGHHHHH!!!! Why is this so difficult??? I need a way to see that greyscaled mask image WHILE using the brightness/contrast adjustment dialog!

Wait, hang on. A new problem has emerged... the mask layer (the one containing the grey scaled image snippet) is totally invisible. I unticked all the layers with only that mask layer ticked, and all I see is the checkered transparent background. How do I see the contents of the mask layer again so I can edit it?

OH, it's all good now! Thanks guys!!!

Hi all, Love you guys for replying. The "Rasterise to Mask" option is invalid (greyed out). Also, it might help to note that the layer I've created (i.e. the snippet of the photo) has a mask associated with it. How do I delete just the mask, and is that the reason why the Rasterise to Mask option is blanked out?

Please help. I don't understand why this is so hard. It's probably because I don't know what I'm doing let alone being familiar with AP's interface. I have a normal layer. I want to use it as a mask. I don't want to create a new layer mask underneath this layer, no. I want to TURN this layer into a MASK layer. I don't know why this is so difficult, but I'm pulling my frigging hair out trying to figure out how to do this one simple task. I dont want to draw my own mask layer, I want to use a portion of an image, which I've turned into greyscale to act as my mask. Thank you.

Sweet! So then there shouldn't be a problem with Serif delivering that DAM software soon. Their announcement to PetaPixel was only a month or so ago. So I guess we have around 6 more months to go until we hear some news about a beta program?

Having said that though, has anyone tried Coral's AfterShot Pro? What are your thoughts on this software and how does it compare with Aperture?

I suppose for the same amount of human resources, you will be diverting your efforts away from research/development of additional features and improvements on the Mac platform because those bodies will be committing time on developing and ironing out whatever kinks there will be on the Windows platform. Personally, i think it's a good move if we want to see Serif surviving. From what I've seen, besides some minor issues, Affinity Photo is already "quite good". At least for what I need, and especially for the price it asks for. Every Mac user will only typically buy it once. Spending more effort "enhancing" this software is dead money to Serif, unless said enhancement is proven to turn more Mac users towards AP. The alternative will be Serif running very lean, possibly not even surviving, and we'll lose support for their software entirely. Which will suck, given how often Mac OS changes. Also, my newest Mac is my Macbook Pro, early 2011 model. It's likely to be my last, because I simply do not agree with Apple's attitude and direction (both hardware and software). Everything is trending towards a more "consumer" and over-simplified feel. Your new Mac Pro looks like a toy, they took away Aperture, no more CD/DVD drives even on desktops... It's become a numbers game since the death of Steve Jobs. It's no longer about developing nice products, but about culling "low performers" in favor of what is profitable (which is, the general consumer market). What's next on their cull list? Probably Logic as I'd imagine Final Cut Pro will stick around for a bit longer. After all this, all I'm trying to say is, as much as I hate Windows equally (especially Windows 10), I might (quite unfortunately) be joining the Windows platform very soon. And it'd be nice if Affinity is there to provide some level of familiarity.

Noted, but I don't actually have LR, I'm just pointing to LR as an example. I'm not planning on buying LR either as Adobe is not getting a cent of my money after they have decided on forcing people to pay a subscription. Ditto :-)

Thanks, I appreciate you sharing your experience with Aperture on 10.12. I'm still hesitant because I'm hearing a mix of things working perfectly and things that went drastically wrong. Just in case I end up in the second camp. I was tempted by Capture One but too costly considering the light usage volume for me (I don't do photography for a living so it's not like my life depended on an expensive tool). Honestly, I value the idea of an integrated ecosystem like Adobe's, where you can get an image to open up into PS for the heavier editing, then go back to LR with the edited image. If Serif can do the same with their software, then it's worth the wait. I'm just hoping that the wait wouldn't be too long from now. We have passed the second half of 2017 after all.

Thanks! I'll try that button on Photo, but I don't think I've see that Application list on my tablet driver on the Mac..