Boldlinedesign Posted October 21, 2019 Share Posted October 21, 2019 I'm not sure what I am doing wrong - I opened a jpeg in Affinity designer and then lowered the opacity and locked it so I could trace it with the brush tool overtop. As I drag and copy items on the canvas (nodes and strokes, etc) it's unlocking the jpeg layer and making copies of it as well. Am I missing something? I saved a screen capture video and included it in this note in case it helps. thanks! ScreenFlow.mp4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gear maker Posted October 21, 2019 Share Posted October 21, 2019 Boldlinedesign, I can't tell from the video what key strokes are being done. But as far as my experience has gone I believe that a copy & paste will make an unlocked copy that could then be moved. Also a cmd J (ctrl J in windows) power duplicate will also make a copy that will be unlocked so it could be moved. I see you are on Layer1 then suddenly it looks like you are on the Background. Then it looks like Layer1 is expanded and then it looks like a copy of the background is at the top of the Layer1 list. Could you have tried to do a node copy but didn't have a node selected so it copied the background? Hopefully this will have helped you see what happened. Otherwise we'd need to know what keystrokes have been done. Are you using a tablet? Boldlinedesign 1 Quote iMac (27-inch, Late 2009) with macOS Sierra Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sara72 Posted October 22, 2019 Share Posted October 22, 2019 Hi, Try turning off edit all layers (which is on by default) will stop the program jumping around the layers and editing the wrong thing by mistake. Boldlinedesign 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boldlinedesign Posted October 22, 2019 Author Share Posted October 22, 2019 Thank you Gear Maker and Summersara - both of your input helped immensely. In the video, I was locking the jpeg layer and working above it. After I clicked and dragged over the strokes I wanted to make a copy of and flip, I hit control-c and then control -v, to copy and paste and that was when it made a copy of the bottom (locked) layer as well. So that's an interesting thing AD does compared to Illustrator where a locked layer is always left untouched and the way to edit all layers is to just to leave them all on. I had not turned off the "edit all layers" option and when I did that, it solved my problem. Thank you again for helping me learn and figure that out! Sara72 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted October 22, 2019 Staff Share Posted October 22, 2019 Hi Boldlinedesign, Please check my reply here . The reason for this is that pixel layers placed on the bottom of the layers stack are - exceptionally - selectable on canvas (due to technical reasons). Since in your case you have all objects placed inside a layer, turning Edit All Layers button off allows you select objects inside that layer only (thus excluding the background which is outside the layer). Another thing you can do to prevent the background layer being selected - keeping the All Edit Layer button enabled - is creating new (empty) pixel layer and placing it below (on the bottom of the layers stack) your current background layer. This ensure your current background layer is no longer on the bottom of the layer stack and thus un-selectable on canvas (since it's locked). Boldlinedesign and Sara72 2 Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software | Affinity Quick Reference Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boldlinedesign Posted October 22, 2019 Author Share Posted October 22, 2019 Thank you @MEB, I appreciate your reply and linking me to the other thread with the expanded info. You mentioned it was done intentionally this way - (technical reasons), did you mean it had to be done that to get the program to operate as you want, or that it was done for a deeper reason? I've got a very open mind about the choices Affinity makes with their apps. A little ways back, I realized I was unfairly comparing Affinity to Adobe, assuming Adobe had the "right way" simply because it was the only way I'd done it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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