In Affinity Photo, after using the cloning tool for several times in continuous, it seems to go mad

[AlejandroJ]

Some strange things are happening with Affinity Photo when I keep using the cloning tool several times in continuous.

One of them is that the tool begins to react very slowly. Could it be that the function is very demanding of the resources of the computer? Too much to remember? 

Another problem and the strangest one is that sometimes (quite often though), the cross indicating the cloning position and the cloning brush begin to move in opposite directions. Not at first, but after using the cloning tool several times, when I move the cloning brush in one direction, the cross indicating the position of what to be cloned begins to move in the opposite direction. This happens no matter if “aligned” is or not chosen (ticked). The tool turns wild and mad and I can’t control the cloning process. When this happens, I have to save the work, close the program, open it again and reload the work I was doing in order to be able to continue editing my image file.

Is this a bug? Is it something I am doing wrong or not doing? Is there anything that I could do to avoid / stop the tool behaving as I described?

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, AlejandroJ said:

Another problem and the strangest one is that sometimes (quite often though), the cross indicating the cloning position and the cloning brush begin to move in opposite directions.

That sounds like the Clone Brush Tool context toolbar item "Rotation" is set to around 180° or so, or that the "Flip" item is set to horizontal. Because there are so many items on that tool's context toolbar, you may have to click on the ">>" symbol to see some of its items.

[AffinityJules]

That's another one of those Affinity Photo software mysteries that has also affected me at times. I have no explanation or remedy for it. Each and every time it happened to me I double checked that I had not accidently altered any of the settings like 'flip' or 'rotation etc.' Nothing had changed but the expected behaviour of the tool had for some reason best known to itself. As I always do under such circumstances, I closed the program and restarted it - that usually clears any temporary fault.

[AlejandroJ]

Thank you RC-R and AffinityJules for your feedback.

It seems RC-R is right. Next time this happens to me when cloning I’ll check how are the parameters set. But I tried setting them on purpose as RC-R said and, particularly when being in the “aligned” mode, the tool went mad. I tried setting "rotation" to 180° and "flip" to horizontal and what I previously described began to happen. I then tried re-setting "rotation" to 0° and "flip" to none and I recovered control of the tool (at least this time when doing these trials, but I don’t know if this will always work and I might have to close and re-open the program, I’ll see).

The strange thing is that I have been using the rotation device, controlling it from the keyboard (with the arrows), but have never altered (never changed it from its default value of none) on purpose the "flip" device. Same as Jules said happens to him now and again. Might there be a keyboard shortcut for doing the flipping that I might have accidentally applied? I couldn’t find in the Manual that there would be any.

[R C-R]

There seems to be something wonky about using the arrows to change the rotation after a reference point for the clone brush is set vs. setting the rotation before that point is set, but I am not sure how it works/is supposed to work. It seems like the context toolbar value does not update while brushing & rotating with the keyboard, only afterward (??) so I am not sure if I should trust what it shows or what.

Hopefully, someone else can explain it.

[AlejandroJ]

Thank you RC-R, I’ll take into account what you said.

I have been always doing the rotation after selecting from where to clone. The thing is that if doing it in this order, I am able to see how much do I have to rotate something that I chose to clone in order to have it better fit where I want to clone it. If doing it the other way around (as you say), I would be guessing the angle I need when trying to anticipate it. I would have to go back and forward on the operation until finding out the correct angle. Does it make sense what I have just said? Maybe I could try choosing from where to clone, then find the correct angle and then re-choose the same reference point from where to clone. I’ll try and see if it helps.

[R C-R]

What you said makes perfect sense to me.

I think the problem is somehow related to the context toolbar value not updating as it should, but TBH I use that tool so infrequently & almost never at other than 0° rotation, so I have no idea if that or something else is the cause.

[AlejandroJ]

I don’t use the rotation device much either, but some times it comes very handy, specially when for example having to eliminate something from a photo which is on top of and interrupting a curved line (a border of a petal of a flower was my last case) which one needs / wants to reconstruct. The device allows me to reconstruct the curve copying from the curve at the vicinity of the part to be reconstructed and then working (cloning it) at different angles by bits. Maybe there is a better way of doing it, but this is what I have been doing when needed. Also, useful to change a bit the way in which the pattern of something being cloned several times looks, so as to make the cloning less obvious.