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Edit: to answer my main question: I was confused because the Flood Select Tool does not work on Mask layers the way I thought. A) flood selecting a feathered mask with 0 tolerance does include the fade out border. That makes it easy, the crop tool works etc. B) flood selecting the black outside of a mask seems to include invisible areas outside the canvas, if the mask was moved earlier. When you invert that, you get a visible selection where you want it, and apparently some invisible selection that messes up all the snapping tools. Bonus questions 3 and 5 are still not clear to me, but that's not important. Have a nice day, may the infinitely finicky fairies of Affinity be kind to you j This should be an easy workflow, but 2h later I still don't get it. The task: I have a photo of a person, cropped to remove some background. The face is nice. I want to make a profile picture from it. 400x400 PNG, with a feathered circle and the corners transparent. What I have: A round feathered mask layer on top of the pixel/image layer, face visible, and a lot of transparent area around it. Looks good. I have an active selection that matches the round mask. What I cannot figure out: solved: Q1: How do I crop the image to the selection/mask? Thanks a lot. Bonus questions, not that important: solved: Q2: What does 'menu > View > Snapping... > Snap to Pixel Selection Bounds' mean in plain English? For me, it means "Snap the Crop tool to the right edge of the selection, to top edge -100px, don't snap to left and bottom bounds" still a mystery: Q3: What does 'menu > File > Export > (PNG), Area: Selection Area' mean? For me, it means "Export the entire canvas including formerly cropped margins". Maybe it means "Export the selected layer"? doesn't matter anymore: Q4: Instead of having the mask as a top level layer (option A), I can combine it with the pixel layer, by either B) dragging it on the pixel layer thumbnail, or C) dragging it on the label ("Background"). Those are two different things, in both cases the description is "Mask" (I think B) results in a clipping mask, but I keep forgetting about it). Question is: does the position of the mask layer in the layer stack, when everything looks the same on screen, make any difference to the exporting/cropping/selection tools? open: Q5: I can right click the Background layer and rasterize it (I keep forgetting I have to do this). Why can I do this repeatedly? Shouldn't the Rasterize option be greyed out when I already rasterized it, or am I not understanding this? solved: Q6: to select the visible area (including the feathered fade out), is there a better way than: select mask layer, flood select the outside, invert selection? Ideally, the final selection should be rectangular. Open: extra Bonus question Q7: when I move the mask layer 20px to the right to adjust the visible area, then there is a 20px unmasked border on the left. Is there any way to either have a mask that is bigger than the cropped area, maybe infinitely large?

The bounding boxes for masks (the area allowed to paint inside) doesn't always increase / decrease automatically. Masking an image outside of an artboard bugs it out somehow. Here's a file showcasing the issue. I don't know how to replicate it entirely, but the whole right side won't mask at all in this example: Mask Issues.afphoto Also, masks don't affect outside of the artboard and I think it's a strange behavior. Especially for cutting out objects. It's a lot of extra work for no reason. We shouldn't need to Rasterize > Trim and lose the photos quality as a workaround.