additive marquee selections across layers not working...

[AndyQ]

Affinity Designer - vector object marquee selections across layers

I hadn't noticed this before tonight, but I'm unable to use a series of marquee selections to add to my selection set (by using SHIFT) if subsequent groups are on different layers. The weird thing is that I can add objects from any layer to my selection set if I use simple SHIFT-Click additions (i.e. SHIFT-Clicking objects adds them to the selection set, regardless of what layer they're on, SHIFT-click-drag-release only adds objects to the selection set if they're on the same layer). The other super weird thing is - if I use SHIFT-Click to select two objects from different layers, then i can add to that selection set by using SHIFT-marquee-selects on whatever I want. Am I missing a setting somewhere or is this a bug? (I've tried this with the "Edit all layers" toggle both on and off)

[Old Bruce]

The Marquee makes a Pixel selection of All layers. After you have a selection you can use that to restrict your painting with pixels using the brush or gradient or paint bucket in that selected area only. You can also copy the pixels from Pixel layers you select. There are caveats regarding copying pixels dependant on which type of pixel layer you have selected. The caveats are too numerous to describe in a general set of rules.

[walt.farrell]

4 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

The Marquee makes a Pixel selection of All layers

@AndyQ may be talking about drawing a marquee selection using the Move Tool, which is a selection of vector objects.

[AndyQ]

3 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

@AndyQ may be talking about drawing a marquee selection using the Move Tool, which is a selection of vector objects.

Doh! Yes - exactly that, I forgot I was in a general forum thread! It's just vector object selection.

[walt.farrell]

11 hours ago, AndyQ said:

if subsequent groups are on different layers

Which application are you using? And by "different layers" do you mean Layers (with a capital L), e.g. what you get in Designer with Layer > New Layer?

If so, do you have Edit All Layers enabled at the bottom-left of the Layers panel?

[AndyQ]

13 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Which application are you using? And by "different layers" do you mean Layers (with a capital L), e.g. what you get in Designer with Layer > New Layer?

I've edited the original post to specify Designer, vector objects, layers as per your description.  As mentioned, the "edit all layers" switch being "ON" doesn't help. It's looking to me like a bug rather than a mistake, because you can select objects from different layers if you simply SHIFT-CLICK multiple objects across layers. What really makes it seem like a bug is that if you have just two objects selected from two different layers, then you can SHIFT-MARQUEE-SELECT anything you want, from any layers (including layers that weren't any any way part of the original selection set). So the only thing that's not working is the sole use of additive marquee-selections. Once you've used marquee to select objects that are only in one layer, you can't use shift-marquee to select objects in another layer (unless a cross-layer selection of some sort already exists). You can use a from-scratch marquee selection to select across layers in the first place. Sorry this is so hard to explain!

To test yourself: make 2 layers, add some rectangles to each (in different parts of the page), use a marquee selection to select all or some of the rectangles on one layer, then try using shift-marquee-select to select all/some of the rectangles on the other layer. For me, that operation fails - the second marquee selects nothing.

[walt.farrell]

19 minutes ago, AndyQ said:

To test yourself: make 2 layers, add some rectangles to each (in different parts of the page), use a marquee selection to select all or some of the rectangles on one layer, then try using shift-marquee-select to select all/some of the rectangles on the other layer. For me, that operation fails - the second marquee selects nothing.

Or try it with 2 rectangles on one layer. Same thing happens, for me.

Question: What leads you to think that shift+drag with the Move tool should add to the selection? The Status Bar doesn't indicate that it should. And the Help doesn't say anything about using Shift with the Move Tool for a marquee selection.

[AndyQ]

7 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Or try it with 2 rectangles on one layer. Same thing happens, for me.

Question: What leads you to think that shift+drag with the Move tool should add to the selection? The Status Bar doesn't indicate that it should. And the Help doesn't say anything about using Shift with the Move Tool for a marquee selection.

I can certainly do multiple marquee selections on a single layer, so I don't know why that's not working for you; and as stated, can do so across layers as long as there are at least two objects already selected that are on different layers.

I'm almost certain that this issue has only cropped up with the latest 1.9 release - the habit of making additive marquee selections is so ingrained I would have noticed immediately if it wasn't possible; I can't imagine working without being able to add to an existing selection by this method. I'm just trying to ascertain whether this is a software bug or whether there's a) something wrong with my system/installation b) there's some other functional switch that I'm unaware of that might affect this behaviour. For the later point, I am aware of the "edit all layers" mode so it's not related to that.