BEGINNER CROPPING QUESTION

[TedR]

I like Affinity however I use it infrequently so my skill level has risen very slowly and I get stuck on what I believe are simple tasks. I have read the help pages and the FAQ topics here without finding my topic which is cropping within a document. I have created a photo document into which I have pasted two images. I wish to crop one of the images. I seem to be able to crop the complete document but that is not what I want to do, I want to "trim" one of the images while it remains within the document. It is probably something quick and simple, can someone provide guidance please?

There is a related question which is about creating a layer that functions as a matte that overlays an image, the matte is the same size as the document outline and simply has a window cut out of it, this is kind of like inverse cropping, how should I proceed?

Thanks

Ted in NY

[firstdefence]

Hi Ted, you could create a rectangle, and make the image a child of that shape layer, this will clip that image.

[firstdefence]

51 minutes ago, TedR said:

There is a related question which is about creating a layer that functions as a matte that overlays an image, the matte is the same size as the document outline and simply has a window cut out of it, this is kind of like inverse cropping, how should I proceed?

You could simply scale a rectangle to the document bounds, duplicate it (CMD+J) and scale the duplicate down and Geometry: Subtract it from the larger rectangle to create the matte.

Another method using a single rectangle would be to make a rectangle the size of the document, have no fill but have a stroke aligned inside to the colour you want the matte to be. You can be creative by using the layers blend modes like soft light to make interesting borders.

[Fixx]

Or select image layer you want to crop, drag a selection marquee as you would like to crop and click mask button in the bottom of the layers palette.

[Pšenda]

Copy image to Clipboard, Delete, New from Clipboard, Crop, Copy to Clipboard, Paste to original document. 

[TedR]

Thank you folks, those are good suggestions. I tried the method "layer mask" first and this does what I want 🙂