Merely Making a Selection in an Image Causes AP To Believe the Image has been Altered

[PeterinJapan]

Using Affinity Photo 1.8.6 on a fully updated Intel iMac running Mac OS 10.15.7 (19H15), I have the following repeatable bug:

If I've altered an image, it's expected that AP ask me if I want to save the altered image. However, merely making a selection, such as select all then copying the image to paste elsewhere, causes the app to ask me if I want to save my "altered" image. This is not correct behavior as far as Mac or PC software goes, so the bug should be fixed.

To replicate, open any JPEG, select all, then close with command + W. The program asks if I want to save the "altered" image even though it hasn't been touched.

I hope you like my choice of example image

[Alfred]

When I used Serif PhotoPlus regularly it always annoyed me that it did this. It makes sense for Affinity Photo to do it if you’ve enabled ‘Save with history’ (a feature that PhotoPlus lacked) but not otherwise.

[walt.farrell]

Technically, the file has been changed, because

1. There is now a History entry and those only happen for changes. And
2. If you look in the Channels panel, and scroll to the bottom, you will see that there is not a Pixel Selection channel that has been added.

My question would be: Is the "change" significant enough that Affinity should question whether you want to Save or not. Unfortunately, I don't think the applications have the concept of "significant" vs "insignificant" change; they only know there was a change.

Having that concept would be nice, but I'm not sure that it's a bug not to have it

[carl123]

If you open an Affinity document and just make a selection you would also be asked if you want to save the changes. This is because selections on an Affinity document can be saved and will reappear when you next open that document

With a JPG image you cant save a selection.

But imagine you had spent 2 hours work just carefully using the Freehand Selection Tool to make a selection on a JPG image and then wanted to continue working on it at a later time.  Closing the document will give you the option to "save your changes" but that selection will not be saved. So, it's a bit of a misleading message.

I think the message should be changed to the standard one you get when you have added other "non-pixel" elements to your JPG.

Which is...

 "The document contains non-pixels elements. Would you like to save the document flattened to pixels, or save as a new document?"

At least then you get an appropriate warning that you are about to lose 2 hours work if you don't choose the option to save your work as an Affinity document

[PeterinJapan]

That's true, someone might make a complex selection and consider the document "changed." But based on how Photoshop and other apps work (e.g. expecting you to make actual changes), it seemed odd which is why I flagged it

[Gabe]

Hi all,

As far as I'm aware, the "Modified" pop-up is triggered by having any history records.I will move this to feature requests as it's not a bug.