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I've been persuaded to change to Affinity Photo, after a good many years using Graphic Converter as a pixel editor on my MacBook Pro's and desktop Mac's.  The relevant work I've done is scanning and cleaning up old documents, sometimes generating diagrams mostly made of solid-colour lines.

So far I've imported a task I was working on, and re-saved it as a .png, with a file-size (800KB) half that which GC had produced, so I'm pleased about that.  However, that is as far as I've got.  I tried opening a marquee on my work-piece, wishing to shift a clump of pixels sideways, but after an hour or two trying I found no way to move the contents of the marquee sideways, only the marquee itself.  Not very usefull.  For a rest between efforts I clicked on the page I spotted behind the working one.  This was called 'New Document'.  I clicked on 'My Presets' and found that the list of platforms included no computers at all, only tablets and smartphones.  I've never indicated that I work on either of those, so I've no idea where Photo got the idea that I might wish to?

So I don't really have much idea where I want to go next.  I'm used to being able to plant or delete pixels one at a time, but there doesn't seem to be a tool for that.  And corralling stuff in a marquee doesn't seem to let me do anything to them.  I don't want to paint anythingm so the various brushes don't help.  I sometimes want to change the colour of things, but first I need to put them where they belong and clean up what is usually a scan, with untidy edges to everything,

Where (if not here) should I seek help?

Best regards, Tony.

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Welcome to the forum Tony,

Affinity Photo has a Pixel Tool
 2095194724_PixelTool.png.830f52e7ba777b90ba92983642a4dfad.png

https://affinity.help/photo/English.lproj/pages/Tools/tools_pixel.html

https://affinity.help/photo/English.lproj/pages/DesignAids/pixelAlign.html 

 

Re selections/marquees, make sure the layer you are working on is a (Pixel) layer and not an (image) layer, if it’s an image layer right click on that layer and select Rasterise, the layer should now be designated a (Pixel) layer

To move the content you have selected hold down the Command/Ctrl key and drag. It tells you this in the context status bar just below the workspace. I’m a Mac user so it shows the command symbol  ⌘ for me.
549411655_ScreenShot2020-05-26at08_19_08.png.6417093fdb04bebf9a12033b3cbe18bb.png

It says “to move layer with selection”  but what I think it should say is “to move selected content with selection"

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
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Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions

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Hi, thanks for this speedy reply!

No pixel tool on my screen or in my menus that I could see?  I have a single column of tools on the left – is there somewhere I should collect the pixel tool from and drag it into that column?

Of course, I've no idea what sort of layer I'm on/on.  I just opened the document in Photo and got what I got.  No obvious place where I could change layers, if that is what I should do?

I'm on a Mac, so I don't have left- and right-click (although I have an accessory mouse which I think does, I've not started using it yet!

I tried the control key for dragging my marquee with its contents.  No effect.  Tried the Command key, not quite sure what it thought it was doing, but everything went all mushy and jpegged-looking.  I quickly pressed Command-Z!

Written beneath it says :  Drag handles to set crop size.  Drag inside to move crop.  Drag outside to rotate canvas.

Well the handles work, I was quickly able to set the marquee to fit what I wanted to move.  Dragging inside the marquee just dragged the marquee, having no effect on what I hoped I'd gathered.

I hope before long I'll look less stupid, but that is how I feel at the moment!

Best regards, Tony.

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2 hours ago, Tony Jackson said:

For a rest between efforts I clicked on the page I spotted behind the working one.  This was called 'New Document'.  I clicked on 'My Presets' and found that the list of platforms included no computers at all, only tablets and smartphones.  I've never indicated that I work on either of those, so I've no idea where Photo got the idea that I might wish to?

The New Document window is divided into two sections, Presets & Templates. The My Presets category of the Presets section is where your own custom document presets will appear if you create any. You can do this by changing/setting the document parameters in the rightmost column of the window & then clicking on the small + symbol in a circle in the Layout part of that column. Separate from the My Presets category is the Devices category, which includes a variety of built-in device presets for tablets, smartphones, etc.

Any of the items in any of the preset categories can be used as a starting point for creating your own custom document presets. So even if you never intend to create anything that would be used with any of the devices in the Devices category, you might find it useful to start with one of them as the starting point for creating a preset of your own.

The Create New Documents topic in the Getting Started section of the built-in & online help briefly explains how this works. Also, there is a New document with templates video tutorial. At about the 30 second mark, it shows the Devices category before continuing with a demonstration of how to add a custom preset to the My Presets subsection at about the 2:20 mark.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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15 minutes ago, Tony Jackson said:

No pixel tool on my screen or in my menus that I could see?  I have a single column of tools on the left – is there somewhere I should collect the pixel tool from and drag it into that column?

By default, some of the tools on the Tools panel are grouped with others & can be selected by clicking & holding on a tools group until a fly-out pops up with others, or by clicking on the small triangle at the bottom right corner of the group. You can customize the tools panel if you do not like the default, including setting it up to have more than a single column.

21 minutes ago, Tony Jackson said:

I'm on a Mac, so I don't have left- and right-click (although I have an accessory mouse which I think does, I've not started using it yet!

All modern Macs include methods to generate right clicks (a.k.a. secondary or Control clicks). 

27 minutes ago, Tony Jackson said:

Written beneath it says :  Drag handles to set crop size.  Drag inside to move crop.  Drag outside to rotate canvas.

That means you are using the Crop Tool , not the Pixel Tool.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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24 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Hi R C-R, thanks for this!

The New Document window is divided into two sections, Presets & Templates. The My Presets category of the Presets section is where your own custom document presets will appear if you create any. You can do this by changing/setting the document parameters in the rightmost column of the window & then clicking on the small + symbol in a circle in the Layout part of that column.

I did that, and was rewarded with a pre-set called Unnamed 1, with a screen size of A3.  Couldn't find any way to name it any more usefully?  I noticed also that black and white is not available as a colour option.  Disappoinyting, as much of my work involve line drawings!

Separate from the My Presets category is the Devices category, which includes a variety of built-in device presets for tablets, smartphones, etc.

Yes, that was what appeared when I first looked at this page.

Any of the items in any of the preset categories can be used as a starting point for creating your own custom document presets. So even if you never intend to create anything that would be used with any of the devices in the Devices category, you might find it useful to start with one of them as the starting point for creating a preset of your own.

There are perhaps deep and dark things going on underneath, but making my own pre-set seemed quick and easy?

The Create New Documents topic in the Getting Started section of the built-in & online help briefly explains how this works. Also, there is a New document with templates video tutorial. At about the 30 second mark, it shows the Devices category before continuing with a demonstration of how to add a custom preset to the My Presets subsection at about the 2:20 mark.

Yes, I found and looked at that, but didn't really understand.  I'm getting there!

Best, Tony (suddenly out of the box!?)

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2 hours ago, R C-R said:

By default, some of the tools on the Tools panel are grouped with others & can be selected by clicking & holding on a tools group until a fly-out pops up with others, or by clicking on the small triangle at the bottom right corner of the group. You can customize the tools panel if you do not like the default, including setting it up to have more than a single column.

It will take a lot of experiment, then, to find the pixel tool the first time?

All modern Macs include methods to generate right clicks (a.k.a. secondary or Control clicks). 

That means you are using the Crop Tool , not the Pixel Tool.

Yes, the marquee is called a 'Crop Tool' seemingly, and I was trying to use it to alter something.  The pixel tool would have been a very long-winded way to move a whole bunch of pixels.  Except in my case it won't, and the message below appears to conflict with what I  was told?

P.S. how do I quote part of what some one writes, then reply to it in context before quoting another bit?

Best regards, Tony.

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1 hour ago, Tony Jackson said:

P.S. how do I quote part of what some one writes, then reply to it in context before quoting another bit?

Do you mean like this?

You need to select the text by dragging over it with your mouse. You should then see a pop-up saying 'Quote selection'. Click on the pop-up and it will appear in the reply box.

1 hour ago, Tony Jackson said:

PS. how do I quote part of what some one writes, then reply to it in context before quoting another bit?

You can go back to  your source and repeat as necessary.

John

Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC

CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

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5 hours ago, John Rostron said:

Do you mean like this?

Yes, but I was confused by the way doing a carriage-return at the end of a line gotm me three fresh empty lines, with the cursor waiting for me at the beginning of the second one.  I used to use a wondereful email client called Eudora which did this similarly, but then kept the response text visibly separate from the original.  Clearly this was not happening here (so why the three lines?)

You need to select the text by dragging over it with your mouse. You should then see a pop-up saying 'Quote selection'. Click on the pop-up and it will appear in the reply box.

You can go back to  your source and repeat as necessary.

John

You need to select the text by dragging over it with your mouse. You should then see a pop-up saying 'Quote selection'. Click on the pop-up and it will appear in the reply box.

Nope.  No pop-up box.  And come to that, nowehere to thank you at the beginning, which I was managing somehow earlier...

So, thanks for your kind reply John!

Best regards, Tony.

 

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Next level of frustration is the display size.  I'm used to being able to flip the magnification around to suit my purpose. 1000% for fine work, 66% if I want to go looking for something, 20% if I want an overview of what the document looks like.

Having successfully exported the file as a .png I opened it in 'Preview'.  Pleasing that the file is now so much smaller, not so pleasing to find that my colours are no longer as I chose them...  Then I tried Graphic Converter, which produce bits of the file in a big black rectangle.  I think my aging copy of this has suffered some kind of corruption (which has prompted me to get on and try Af Photo...)

I'm pleased to be able to move things using the marquee tool, but underwhelmed by the need to draw a fresh marquee all the time and then click back into pixel if that is what I wish to do.  Pixel occasionally works without a marquee drawn over the area I want to work with it, but not often enough for it to be worth trying, so I have to draw a fresh marquee every few actions.  And without being able to choose the screen magnification I can only do a few actions in the bit of the document I have on the screen.

Best regards, Tony.

Edited by Tony Jackson
typo
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You do not need to create a 'marching ants' selection to use the Pixel Tool. The app also supports zooming the document view through a huge magnification range, from less than 1% to as much as 1,000,000,000 %.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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Good morning all!

I had a go at size, and looked at the tutorial (only for Designer, not applicable to Photo).  Then, in a moment of brilliance, I tried the Help system from the menu.  Immediate success!  Sorry to have been so slow to think of that!

So now I realise that all the blue lines in my diagram (Photo has made them a sort of RAF blue-grey, which makes them much harder to discern at a magnification where the disagram is useful) have ants crawiling around them!  But the help system doesn't offer any way to tamper with the colour (never mind to get it back to what it was in the first place).  I searched for 'change colour' which got nothing of interest – is there a jargon word I have to learn to find this?  Of course, being able to control the colour of pixels I place individually would  also be useful...

Meanwhile getting to be able to zoom so conveniently is a big leap forward!

As to the pixel tool, I found that almost always I needed to make a marquee around what I wanted to edit, but occasionally the tool would work without the marquee.  This would be important if it could be relied upon, as it appears to be impossible to modify the marquee other than by moving it.  So if I'm trying to make a pixel-accurate marquee it usually takes several fresh starts before I succeed.

I guess I must be doing something which causes the program to allow pixel-editing without marquee, but I can't figure out what!

Best regards, Tony.

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You can control the colour of coloured pixels; such as red, blue, green, yellow and Black but not white other than for it’s shade, using adjustment filters such as HSL and the recolour filter. Or you can simply overwrite the pixels in that area using the colour you want and redrawing and replacing the pixels.

172243245_ScreenShot2020-05-27at07_56_36.png.23c3edf231c886effd1511fd44fc0c23.png

704343003_ScreenShot2020-05-27at07_56_14.png.1047af731e8249ceff9def2fa6e68f10.png

Not sure why you think you need a marquee to edit pixels, that is not a requirement unless marquee means something different to you than us?

The march ants effect denotes the border of a selection using the selection tool or the marquee tool, I think you need to make a video to give us a demo of what you do?

At what scale are these pixel drawings, for example, are lines 1px or 100px ?

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
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Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions

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@Tony Jackson,

11 hours ago, Tony Jackson said:

And come to that, nowehere to thank you at the beginning

You can start your reply and then return to your source to copy/quote and then return to your reply.

How you select your text will vary with your browser and OS. I use Chrome, but it is different in Android and Windows.

John

 

Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC

CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

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The "marching ants" dashed lines indicate you have made a pixel selection. In Affinity Photo there are 7 tools that can make them:

  • The Rectangular Marquee Tool
  • The Elliptical Marquee Tool
  • The Column Marquee Tool
  • The Row Marquee Tool
  • The Freehand Selection Tool
  • The Selection Brush Tool
  • The Flood Select Tool

The Creating pixel selections help topic includes information about them & links to other help topics relevant to their use, visible if you click on the "Selection tools" section to expand it. When expanded, the Selection procedures section includes info & links about other ways to make them. The remainder of that help topic includes info about how to modify them & links to other relevant help topics.

You do not need to make a pixel selection (marquee or other) to use the Pixel or any of the other drawing tools but if you have made one, your drawing will be confined to within it. To remove the pixel selection, either press CMD+D on the keyboard or choose "Deselect" from the Select menu.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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Hi R C-r,

I think you have it.  There was probably always a selection of some kind when I was trying!  Gottim!  In fact while hunting for a way te recolour my blue lines I'd got them all selected, but not in the working window.  Cmd-D did it!  Thanks!

To first defence – most of the way there – and my lines (at 600 dpi) are typically 12 pixels wide.  Getting these legible is quite demanding of the colour selection – e.g. the yellow needs some custard added to make it followable on the white background, the blue, in its new form, looks very similar to the grey, the grey likewise.  The grey has to be quite pale if it is to be distinguishable from the black, etc..  There are six colours, plus white, grey and black.

The present document, FWIW, is a wiring diagram for a 40-year-old french car!

And now I've skirted getting the quoting etc right and tidy, John.  Next time!

(Is the spelling-checker part of the Affinity site?  It seems to expect me to write in French, which I can, but it is slower, and having all my English words underlined in red makes it harder to spot my numerous typos!)

Best regards – and thanks!  Tony.

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11 hours ago, R C-R said:

The "marching ants" dashed lines indicate you have made a pixel selection. In Affinity Photo there are 7 tools that can make them:

  • ..The Flood Select Tool

The Creating pixel selections help topic includes information about them

Alas, not about the Flood Select Tool.  The help system believes it exists, but doesn't tell me how to find it.

So how on earth *do*  I find it?

Best regards (and thanks for your patience!) Tony

11 hours ago, R C-R said:

 

 

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Hi Tony, I use the online version of Affinity help: https://affinity.help/ I find it easier to search and find info quickly.

Flood select tool floodselecttool_lightui.png.ffc575fd6ed21957301fb50cd9fabc28.png : https://affinity.help/photo/English.lproj/pages/Tools/tools_floodSelect.html

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
B| (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum)

Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions

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17 minutes ago, Tony Jackson said:

Alas, not about the Flood Select Tool.  The help system believes it exists, but doesn't tell me how to find it.

So how on earth *do*  I find it?

Best regards (and thanks for your patience!) Tony

 

Help shows the icon for the tool, so look in the vertical tools bar for that icon.

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47 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

Hi Tony, I use the online version of Affinity help: https://affinity.help/ I find it easier to search and find info quickly.

Flood select tool floodselecttool_lightui.png.ffc575fd6ed21957301fb50cd9fabc28.png : https://affinity.help/photo/English.lproj/pages/Tools/tools_floodSelect.html

Darn!  There it is.  The Help system didn't show the icon, but did show an affinity icon, so I presumed that was what I was looking for...  I'll try online in future.

Thanks!

Tony.

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47 minutes ago, anon2 said:

Help shows the icon for the tool, so look in the vertical tools bar for that icon.

Yes, but see above!  Still, between you you've got me through it.  Now just a small matter of figuring out a way to make my simple change...!

Best regards, Tony.

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6 minutes ago, Tony Jackson said:

Darn!  There it is.  The Help system didn't show the icon, but did show an affinity icon, so I presumed that was what I was looking for...  I'll try online in future.

Thanks!

Tony.

Strange. On my machine, the app Help shows the tool icon and the web Help shows the tool icon.

 

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14 hours ago, anon2 said:

Strange. On my machine, the app Help shows the tool icon and the web Help shows the tool icon.

The help system on my MacBook Pro gives:

24 results for “flood select tool”

No sign of where to find it, or of what its unlikely item might look like!

Still, I eventually found it.  But alas it looks as though it only selects the actual bit of a colour which the tool-bit is touching.  I had innocently believed it  would would highlight all the occurrences of that colour 

(sorry about standing on your toes, but the system evidently felt it had heard enough from me in the only other window provided!)

Best regards, Tony

 

[EDIT] NOTE: thread edited/corrected for clarity [/EDIT]

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4 minutes ago, Tony Jackson said:

The help system on my MacBook Pro gives:

24 results for “flood select tool”

Click on that first result ("Flood Select Tool"). That should open the same-named help topic with an image of the icon at the top, next to the help page title.

7 minutes ago, Tony Jackson said:

But alas it looks as though it only selects the actual bit of a colour which the tool-bit is touching.  I had innocently believed it  wouldwould ighlight all the occurrences of that colour

As the help topic explains, the Continuous option determines if it selects just a range in the same area or everywhere.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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