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One of the things in Photo I have not been able to get my head round is the elliptical selection tool when wanting an ellipse rather than a circle. I find it very difficult to find a good starting point that will get me my precise selection,  as you do not seem to be able to increase the boundary by dragging in anyway once you have moved the ellipse.

My current method is to select the midpoint of the image I require (usually longest dimension) and then drag down or sideways depending on the where the midpoint is selected, with just a narrow ellipse. I then go in to the transform panel and select midpoint and increase the smaller dimension until I get the selection just as I want it.

I have tried suggestion in previous posts about using rh mouse button or holding control, but I do not seem to be able to increase the ellipse in anyway with the mouse.

Any thoughts on this greatly appreciated

 

Alan Pickup

Windows 11 Home all Affinity suite of Apps PC and Gigabyte Laptop 16gb Ram and Nvidia GTX1660 Super on each.

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It might be easier to use the Ellipse tool, possibly with a semi-opaque fill, drag the ellipse into position using the Move tool, use the drag handles to get the precise shape you want. Then Cmd-click (Mac, ??Ctrl-click for Windows??) on the Ellipse layer thumbnail to create a selection.

Affinity Photo 2.0.3,  Affinity Designer 2.0.3, Affinity Publisher 2.0.3, Mac OSX 13, 2018 MacBook Pro 15" Intel.

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Thanks for the replies  I did not get far with  h_d's method. Haakoo if I right click in the layers panel and select rasterise to mask, then crop to size then merge viable gives me something I can export as a png, which seems longer than my original method.

I also have the situation where I want to delete the selection. e.g I have an oval picture frame where I want to remove the picture then use the frame as a png layer to frame part of an image, is there a subtract option that is simple?

 

Alan Pickup

Windows 11 Home all Affinity suite of Apps PC and Gigabyte Laptop 16gb Ram and Nvidia GTX1660 Super on each.

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If you are wanting to fine tune the size, position, angle, etc… of your selection you can use Quick Mask.
Drag out your ellipse.
Hit the Q key.
Then hit the V key. You can now use the bounding box and or the Transform panel to resize, move, rotate, etc… you’re selection.
Hit Q again to exit Quick mask.

macOS 10.15.7  15" Macbook Pro, 2017  |  4 Core i7 3.1GHz CPU  |  Radeon Pro 555 2GB GPU + Integrated Intel HD Graphics 630 1.536GB  |  16GB RAM  |  Wacom Intuos4 M

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1 hour ago, AlanPickup said:

I did not get far with  h_d's method.

Sorry if I wasn't clear. Hopefully this shows the steps:

 

 

The opacity of the ellipse layer needs to be greater than about 50% or the cmd-click won't work.

Affinity Photo 2.0.3,  Affinity Designer 2.0.3, Affinity Publisher 2.0.3, Mac OSX 13, 2018 MacBook Pro 15" Intel.

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Thanks h_d for you mov file and I used an filled ellipse tool and got  your result, but still needed to do the cropping, although I suppose I could have exported to selection.

Markw your method is exactly what I was looking for and works with cut as a new image and delete to create a frame without having to guess sizes in the transform panel, many thanks

Both ways have given me further insight in using photo.

 

Alan Pickup

Windows 11 Home all Affinity suite of Apps PC and Gigabyte Laptop 16gb Ram and Nvidia GTX1660 Super on each.

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