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It'd be great to have an option to have Affinity switch to the move tool after each item you place. The current method is especially irksome when placing text. I have to hit escape several times in a row, and then V.... EVERY TIME immediately after putting text in. It's tedious. Sketch, for instance, switches back to the move tool after you put text in (indeed, after each thing you place). I submit that this is the most natural method. Most of the time I place an object, then drag / adjust it exactly where I want it to go. Then place another object, adjust, etc. I understand if not everyone would prefer this, but it'd be nice to at least have the option for either behavior. Thanks

I thought it would be fun to take on the appearance of a ghost in a rustic old home long ago abandoned by using the cutting out method. And I want to thank MEB, Alfred and toltec for their generous help with learning the method. I realize improvements can and should be made to lighten the figure of the ghost of a man even more but this is more about accomplishing what I needed to learn than being paid to produce a fantastic photo. Happy Halloween and of course I'd truly enjoy any critique offered, or just enjoy my first try.

Affinity photo developers need to seriously make selection and moving objects much easier in iPad! It is such a hassle to select and copy to a new layer (why so many unnecessary steps?) ... and then to use the Move tool is a very aggravating chore which is MUCH MUCH easier in Photoshop! Come on... I'm sure you guys can do better than this considering how efficient and easy it is to do everything else in Affinity Photo. Please refine and simplify the selection, copy/paste and move functions in Affinity Photo for iPad.

Affinity Photo developers need to seriously make selection and moving objects much easier in iPad! I don't know about the desktop version but it is such a hassle to select and copy to a new layer (why so many unnecessary steps?) ... and then to use the Move tool is a very aggravating chore which is MUCH MUCH easier in Photoshop! Come on... I'm sure you guys can do better than this considering how efficient and easy it is to do everything else in Affinity Photo. Please refine and simplify the selection, copy/paste and move functions in Affinity Photo for iPad.

Hi, I keep trying to cut and paste an object to a different part of the canvas but when I move the object, a blue square appears. When I try to move the object outside that blue square, the object disappears. It's like there is an active frame I did not (intentionally) create that is limiting the paste area. How do I fix this? thanks

As mentioned here, the "Selecting Objects" help topic explaining how the modifier keys can be used to change the behavior of marquee selections does not seem to be complete, as clear as it could be, or totally accurate. Not only is there nothing (I can find) about using the Alt/Option key to avoid dragging an object, for Mac users it is not made obvious that to use the Control key as indicated it is necessary to first press & hold the mouse button & only then press & hold the Control key (to bypass the Mac OS feature that pops up a contextual menu). Also, the correct app preference dialog to change the default marquee behavior is currently the Tools one, not the User Interface one.

Hello Affinity Users. I am using affinity, but is there any way to change the move tool, so instead of moving the object i clicked on, the move tool would move the layer instead. And would there by any chance be a way to add that to a keybind? (possibly see this: https://www.ctrlpaint.com/digital-painting-101/layers at about 3:10) Thanks for your time, have a nice day!

Currently it seems that it's only possible to copy text from a single text object using the text tool to select the desired text. This is fine, but doens't help much if you need to copy text from multiple text objects. Selecting one or more text objects with the Move tool and pressing Ctrl+C should also make their content available as text as well.

Hello there! I use Photo for UI design where, in many cases, I need to transform a part of a screenshot to do some quick and dirty modifications. The problem is that the box selection (the only one I've tested), seems to have a slight amount of anti aliasing on it's edges. When I try to transform a selection using the move tool, the selected image quickly goes beyond the selection bounds as seen in the image: I see how anti aliasing is a useful feature for selections in general (ellipse, free hand, etc.) but it's not any useful for the box selection, in my opinion. Hope that I put you in my mind and it's something easy to fix :)

Hello everyone, I found a bug in affinity 1.6.0.75 (it may existed in older versions too, but not sure), where when I change to the Move tool after making a selection, some times, the move handles have an offset (see attached image). If I try to resize the selection and then undo, the handles move to the correct position. Hope it gets fixed on the next release. Keep up the good work guys! Edit: Sorry for my mistake, I've attached the image now :rolleyes: Edit 2: I've been able to reproduce the issue each time like this: Make a selection Move it using the move tool Make another selection Change over the selection tool

I've noticed a behavior when moving objects while holding down shift. I would expect that holding down shift locks the object on an axis, but alas, small movements are still happening. I thought holding down shift is intended exactly to prevent this? Is this a bug or am I not understanding this feature correctly? I've recorded a short video to show exactly what I mean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SMCSVoD4fQ

I apologize if this question has been answered, but previous answered look like they referred to just the resizing of a layer relative to the canvas. Lets say I have two images - both 300 dpi. I place one image on top of the other. Now I have to scale up the front image by 10x. Effectively, the new image has only 30dpi relative the actual canvas. The layer looks very pixelated, as opposed to blurred. If I were to blow this up 10x in it's own document by resizing the image, it would look blurry but not pixelated. It appears that AP keeps placed layers in their original data size. I'm wondering if there is a way to rasterize a layer in a way that it effectively scales up the source media using bilinear scaling, so that filters could then be applied to the higher-res document. I'm attaching a closeup of the two layers on top of each other with a composite mode applied (1). You can see that the white area is sharp, as it is a text layer. The black dot that overlaps the white area is a bitmap image that was copied from another document and scaled up. The black and white versions are the original image placed in a larger image and scaled, with no effects (2), and the original image scaled to 5x using image size (3). Although Image 3 isn't perfect, it's a little better to work with and can be cleaned up with some additional filters. Also, you can see I was able to get it a little smoother by scaling in increments (4) using 2x, 2x, then about 1.3x It would be great to just be able to place this image on top of the other, then run the rasterize function to create a solid bitmap to the native resolution of the image, and then be able to apply filters to at that native resolution. Thanks!

(i) I like the idea of ​​having a single tool to move a layer and make it undergo various geometric transformations; also the short instructions for use at the bottom of the display. Unfortunately, these tips are not complete in the current version. After a click somewhere in the image, which selects the corresponding layer, I am instructed "Drag to move selection" in order to move the layer, but it is not specified that I must operate from the inside of the selection. If I click outside, it's another layer that is activated. This behavior is unfortunate if one tries to rotate or to shear the layer, because one then seeks sensitive areas outside, just beside the handles; if one clicks too soon, before the mouse pointer has changed, one activates another layer. I would like it better if one could not change the selection merely by clicking outside the current selection. (ii) The effect of SHIFT key when moving a corner to change the layer size is opposite to the usual convention, actually followed by AP for other functions, when this key is associated to some constraint within the change : with the Move Tool, one must not press SHIFT if one wants a true homothety (i.e. changing the size while keeping the shape), and, on the contrary, one must press this key to compress or stretch the layer without considering its shape. This is exactly the opposite for Geometric Shapes tools. Too bad for the logic of the whole. Charles

I can't move text if.... opened a google doc text.. very loooooooong. https://docs.google....dit?usp=sharing select all.. copy and in AD just option+v I get document text there but.. now I can't move that text. just zoom out around -18000 mm. And text handles are on very top of the document. I can't move text position but only if selected with in text area. Text area should automatically be extended to fit the text .. Also.. please add...linked text so that I can put text on document page wise.

When using the move tool with the keyboard arrows to reposition objects precisely there are all sorts of measurements and guides that pop up. I can see the obvious advantage of this for designers when working very precisely with neat geometrical shapes but when working freehand, as I do, in pure photo compositing, I find that these can get severely in the way. If you have several small overlapping objects they all start showing measurements relative to one another at once and start to obscure the image itself. The information overkill can really get in the way of simply being able to see what you are doing! Is there a way of turning this off when not needed?

According to this video, holding down Ctrl when drawing a box with the move tool should change the selection behavior. With Ctrl pressed, any object touching the marked area should be selected, however this does not work on Windows. Objects still need to be fully within the area to be selected, even though I'm holding down Ctrl. I've tried Shift and Alt, but no modifier key seems to have this effect. Thanks. PS: Your program is totally awesome nonetheless. It's just a joy to learn about the features and how simple and well thought out things are. :wub:

Feeling a bit embarrassed at such a basic question ...... but here goes ....... How can I stop AP's pick tool selecting in the image and select only in the layers palette? (The equivalent of turning off "auto select" in PS? When I have layers hidden or partially hidden beneath others selecting can be very difficult (or even impossible) to do in the image. Can I select a layer in the Layers Palette and then use the Pick Tool to move it around in the image without automatically shifting the selection to the layers above as soon as I touch the image with my pen? At the moment it all becomes a rather clumsy process of hiding layers I don't want to select and then unhiding them afterwards. Is there a parameter I haven't found that can be set or a keyboard modifier that will prevent the move tool from selecting in the image when required? This is so basic that I am assuming it must be there but I am simply too obtuse to find it ....... :unsure:

PS: It seems I sent this twice. Thought it did not go the first time since it did not appear for a few minutes. Sorry about that. ____________________ One of the many things I liked about AD is the ease of selection of an object or frame text box on my doc, i.e., that one can select an specific object/box by dragging the mouse totally around it, selecting it only although other objects/boxes are partially enclosed. I know I can select via the layers/object dialogue box, but when deeply in a doc that method is sometimes cumbersome. A few days ago my 1.4.2 AD (which I've used since it came out) appeared up differently than I had left it the day before. I had to reset my Pref, again choose Separated Mode, etc. I also found that the feature described above no longer worked. When I dragged my mouse around a frame text box it selected all the frames box in that layer, i.e., selecting one box selected the entire group. I was forced to go over to the box in layers and choose the specific box I wanted from there. This really slows up my work flow since I used to use the drag method in my doc rather than moving over to my layers. I've looked through Pref to see if something changed from before but cannot find a thing. Has a new mini-build of AD 1.4.2 recently been sneaked in which changed this feature, or is there any other explanation? Thanks. ADDED CLARIFICATION: By double clicking an object/text I can select it. However, I have a rectangle color box behind my text box, both within their own layer. I have multiple layers like this (frame text above a rectangle of color), all under a top layer (Notes). Dragging my mouse over the text and rect previously always selected it. It no longer does.

Howdy, I'm new to this program, using a demo and I love it except for a couple of things. One extremely basic and simple thing I absolutely cannot figure out how to do is set the cursor to fall back to the Move Tool after I create an object. This is standard behavior in many other graphics programs but I can't find a way to make this setting in AD. To be more clear, after I draw a square with the Rectangle Tool I want the cursor to revert back to the Move tool and not have to manually select it or press "V" on the keyboard. I hope this functionality exists, please say it's so! Thanks!

Working on an icon in Affinity Designer (1.2.1 App Store version) and I can’t get the Node Tool to work as expected. Please see this screenshot to illustrate my issue: http://cl.ly/image/1l0g260H3i30(have attached too) The Node Tool is behaving just like the move tool and selecting whole shapes instead of individual nodes? I’ve tried switching to other tools then back to the Node Tool, both with and without shapes selected but to no avail. The description tool tip at the bottom of the window and the tool specific toolbar also doesn’t change from the Move Tool to the Node Tool — I get the move description and toolbar when using the Node Tool too. Not sure if I’m just going about it the wrong way, just logically would have thought if a shape was selected and I switch to the Node Tool, it would enter a 'node mode' and allow for moving nodes but it’s not working. Any ideas?

Hi, Please add option like in PS to make move tool select either just groups or layers. It is impossible now to marque select multiple items in a group. Af Designer will just select the group instead. I have to ungroup to do that and then group again. Also for the Node tool please add option + click(or some other shortcut) to select all nodes in a shape. Like in AI :) Thanks, Vlad

Hi all! When re-re-re-reading all the stuff I wrote on the other thread, I came to a sudden realization: I won't be able to easily do incremental, exponential duplication of objects and *many* other procedures because AD doesn't (yet?) support an extremely important function: snapping to ghost objects and curves while dragging. This seems to be a common thread with AD; It's not that I don't want to give it fair a chance; it's just that *every* seemingly basic and expectable timesaver from my regular workflows under Ai seem to have gotten “lost in translation”. And it really frustrates me, because I do recognize just how much of a leap in functionality and attention to UX AD really is… except for my workflows. I really, honestly, can't even begin to [re-]make some of my favorite projects in AD. Sure, drawing logos, dabbling in digital illustration, etc., are all nice and dandy, but that is definitely the core of what I do these days. :\ But I digress… I love how AD renders objects while dragging and, in fact, believe that WYSIWYG approach is probably the most intuitive, as opposed to Ai's “outline when dragging”. However, not having a “ghost”, meaning, a representation of the starting point (be it in a drag, resize, or distort operation), breaks transience and doesn't allow for quick before/after comparisons. Also, it doesn't allow “snapping to itself”, or snapping, mid-drag, to the former positions of nodes and curves. This, in and of itself and depending on what exactly you are trying to achieve (geometric/rigorous drawing with modules being a poster example), can be a severe usability hindrance that should be addressed either through a modifier (which would be very unlikely, as you have probably run out of them already) or a *very* visible toggle (much like basic stuff that you may or may not wish to do on a per-document or per-operation basis, like snapping or “scale strokes and effects” – which, incidentally, doesn't have a visible toggle in Ai, AFAIK). So, what do you think? Is it in the cards? Pretty please? ;)