Copy or Cut and Paste part of an image

[IanfaeAiberdeen]

This may seem a stupid question but I am used to the idea of drawing a selection box round part of an image and hitting command-C or command to copy and then command-V to paste a section of the image somewhere else on the same image or on another one - that works in Photoshop. When I try to do this in Affinity Photo (working on a PDF image), after drawing a selection box, both Cut and Copy are greyed out in the Edit menu and using the keyboard shortcuts has no effect.

 

I do this all the time in Photoshop with newspaper cuttings, using copy and paste to fit the page header with the name of the newspaper and publication date, which typically spans four or more columns, above the single column cutting.

 

How can I copy part of an image in Affinity Photo? 

[A_B_C]

Hi IanfaeAiberdeen,

 

and welcome here …  :)

 

Suppose you open a PDF document in Affinity Photo. Then you will see that Affinity Photo interprets the PDF data, creating text boxes, vector shapes, image layers etc. as faithful as possible to match the content of your document. But the marquee selection tools do only work on pixel layers, so you either have to choose Edit > Copy Merged (Shift+Cmd+C) and then Edit > Paste (Cmd+V) or to merge the layers Affinity Photo has created into a new pixel layer before copying, e.g. by using Shift+Opt+Cmd+E (merge all visible layers). More merge options are present in the Layer menu.

 

Hope that helps. Cheers,

Alex  :)

[IanfaeAiberdeen]

Thanks, Alex. Using Shift-Command-C and then opening a new document with the clipboard allows me to produce a copy of the clipping isolated from the page. Then I can resize the canvas to leave a space at the top into which I can paste the sections of the page header. Same as Photoshop with the only difference being the use of the shift key.

 

Subsidiary question: you refer to 'image layers' but this is not one of the types of layer listed in Affinity Photo Help (pixel, mask, adjustment, fill, snapshot, vector). What is an image layer and why isn't it listed as one of the types of layer - when you open a PDF and go to the layer panel, the layer is marked '(image)'?

 

I found your second method very confusing because of the presence of the image layer but it doesn't matter because the first method fits what I need to do better anyway.

 

Maybe this is a question for the developers to make the help system more helpful, so I hope they read this post.

 

Ian

[A_B_C]

Let me quickly answer your subsidiary question. Let’s say you create a new document and use File > Place … to place a pixel image or an Affinity Photo document into your document. Then this placed item will show up in the layers list as an image "layer". To create a pixel layer from an image layer you have to rasterise the image layer (Layer > Rasterise …). Now it seems that pixel images which were placed in a PDF document are interpreted as image layers by Affinity Photo. Therefore I used this term.

 

In my screen shot you will see a pixel layer created by rasterising the image layer below. For the difference between pixel and image layers please have a look here:

 

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/1774-placed-images-areare-not-linked-to-the-source-file/?p=22848

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/10274-in-photo-what-is-the-difference-between-image-and-pixels/?p=44075

 

Hope that helps … Alex  :)

[MEB]

Hi IanfaeAiberdeen,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

An Image layer is considered an object layer (like a path, a shape or text). It's an entity/object by itself.

A pixel layer is a just a generic container where you can perform pixel based editing tasks. So in order to edit an Image (object) - to paint over it for example -, you must first convert it to a Pixel layer, rasterising the Image (object).

[IanfaeAiberdeen]

Thanks, Alex and MEB. My point about the help system still applies but I've got it now.

 

When you 'open' a PDF in Photoshop, it rasterises it before you can do anything else, according to settings which you can change in the dialogue box, so it is already in what Affinity calls a pixel layer and you can operate on it directly. In the case of digital images of newspaper pages, these contain only a single rasterised image or a paste up of a number of rasterised images and (if they have gone through OCR), one or more text layers.

 

In Affinity Photo, a PDF opens as an object in its own right and you are in charge of rasterising it. I see the point because PDF files can contain a variety of different types of image and text and Affinity Photo can edit vector images directly, without rasterising, so you wouldn't want to rasterise the whole file if it contained vector images which you wanted to edit. The same might apply to text though the newspaper page I was working on didn't appear to have a text layer, or if it did, I couldn't see it in Affinity.

 

Any chance of a tutorial on PDF editing? You're probably going to tell me to buy Affinity Designer ....

 

Ian

[Giovanni]

How to have a copy of a Photo ?

[MEB]

Hi Giovanni,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

I'm not sure i understood your question. Do you meant duplicate a layer (image) inside the document?

If so, right-click the layer/image in the Layers panel and select Duplicate from the menu (or press ⌘ (cmd) + J).

[parveen banu]

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