Delete selection not working as expected

[fredphoesh]

Hello peeps,

I have made a little video to show what i mean, but basically its this:

I have several layers, I select one. Then I click the selection tool, create the selection, press Backspace. The whole layer disappears, not just the selected area. I don't understand how to delete just the selected area. Thanks!

See the video here  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NhNTFho5onXLVKFSbqkg62BT-94hK3u5/view?usp=sharing

[MEB]

Hi fredphoesh,
This happens because the selected layer is an Image layer type. Look at the label between parenthesis after the layer's name in the Layer's panel. Image layers are considered an "object", they retain all original image data but cannot be edited at a pixel level - you can only transform them (scale , rotate etc). To make changes at a pixel level you must convert them to a Pixel layer first (the equivalent to the  regular layers you are used to in Photoshop and similar image editors), right-clicking the Image layer in the layer's panel and selecting Rasterise. You can then create and delete the selection as you were doing/edit the layer at a pixel level.

[fredphoesh]

Hi MEB, ok great, thanks. It does seem odd though that a photo, which is pixels, and only pixels, would still need rasterising. I would understand if it was a text layer, or a layer which might not contain pixels only...

Anyhow, now I know to rasterise before. TX

[fredphoesh]

Ah, and the undo not undoing? Did you see that on the video?

HUH? It seems Ctrl-Z isn't working as undo... I'll look into that.

CTRL-Z is the command for undo in the Preferences, but does not work at all... selecting UNDO in the menu does work. (???)

[MEB]

18 minutes ago, fredphoesh said:

Hi MEB, ok great, thanks. It does seem odd though that a photo, which is pixels, and only pixels, would still need rasterising. I would understand if it was a text layer, or a layer which might not contain pixels only...

Anyhow, now I know to rasterise before. TX

Image layers are considered "objects" that you place in your document as part of a design which you usually already have prepared/edited and just need to adjust them to the layout keeping their best quality. They usually make more sense in Designer/Publisher contexts but Photo also supports them.

Undo seems to be working fine for me (on macOS) - i will check windows. Switch to the History panel to see if the command is doing anything or not.

[fredphoesh]

34 minutes ago, MEB said:

Switch to the History panel to see if the command is doing anything or not.

Hi MEB. When I undo ctrl-z (tried both left and right ctrl keys) nothing appears in the history panel.

And yet CTRL-z is undo in Keyboard Shortcuts in Preferences!

WEEEEIIIRD>>>>> I deleted the Keyboard Shortcuts undo command and put CTRL-Z back in, and now it works. It is identical to how it was... I'm pretty sure its a bug but have no way of repeating it now. Thanks for the input MEB. Previously I had also tried the "Reset" button to reset all shortcuts, though I had not customised any of them, and this did not make any difference. Only deleting the shortcut and recreating it worked.