Masking problem in a 1.8.4

[Bryce]

I've always been able to drop things inside of other objects and now in 1.8.4 I can't seem to do it, or at least not consistently. When the picture, or other object, goes inside, it all shows white. See the video here:

[Bryce]

Was there a change in how everything works in objects in the last update?

[dominik]

4 hours ago, Bryce said:

I've always been able to drop things inside of other objects and now in 1.8.4 I can't seem to do it, or at least not consistently. When the picture, or other object, goes inside, it all shows white. See the video here:

Hi @Bryce,

there are two drop zones in the layers panel. The one is right to a layers icon and is represented by a vertical blue line (like in your video). The other one is below (but inside) the layer and represented by a horizontal blue line. The latter one still works as you would expect. 

d.

[telemax]

[Bryce]

I can get it to work - but rarely. If I do it in Publisher, it is no problem, but in the latest iteration of Designer it is very difficult.

[dominik]

16 minutes ago, Bryce said:

I can get it to work - but rarely. If I do it in Publisher, it is no problem, but in the latest iteration of Designer it is very difficult.

Well, at least it works 🙂

I noticed, too, that it is sometimes hard to hit the correct position. What works well is to drag a layer slowly from right to left towards the layers icon. It reliably shows the vertical blue line. To hit the horizontal blue line I find it best to drag from top to bottom on the left part of the layer icon.

d.

[MEB]

Hi Bryce,
We tweaked this a bit in v1.8.4. To clip a layer inside another drag it a bit more to the right than you were used to in previous versions. If you target the middle bottom half of the parent layer it should always work reliably. Notice the difference in the horizontal line/marker when you drag the layer just a bit to the right of the parent's thumbnail (doesn't work) and a bit more to the right in direction of the middle of the parent layer:

[Frozen Death Knight]

On 9/7/2020 at 3:28 PM, MEB said:

Hi Bryce,
We tweaked this a bit in v1.8.4. To clip a layer inside another drag it a bit more to the right than you were used to in previous versions. If you target the middle bottom half of the parent layer it should always work reliably. Notice the difference in the horizontal line/marker when you drag the layer just a bit to the right of the parent's thumbnail (doesn't work) and a bit more to the right in direction of the middle of the parent layer:

I think clipping feels better after that update, yeah. However, one point of criticism that I hope you guys over at Serif will consider for a future release is that you add better indicators for when you are doing a clipping action or some other thing.

For instance, instead of the highlight being the regular blue colour when doing a clipping layer action it is instead shown in a different colour; i.e green or yellow (just to take colour blindness into account). Would make it a lot easier to notice what kind of action you are taking at a glance. Alternatively you do it like Photoshop by changing the cursor icons for those types of actions. Considering the amount of modifier shortcuts there are for the Layers panel (i.e. alt clicking the thumbnail to isolate it), you could make several icons for the cursor indicating what is going on. Would be a fantastic quality of life change.

[Bryce]

I agree about making it more noticeable. the contrast between the actions is not very distinct for my color blindness. That may explain some of the issues. With the tweak in 1.8.4 that MEB noted that makes sense because I was going on muscle memory and less on visual response.