Fine-degreee Rotation in Affinity Photo

[Ken Hjulstrom]

Hi,

I'm using Affinity Photo to clean up scanned images, and part of the cleanup is to correct any skewing by rotating the image.  Typically, I only need to perform less than two degrees of rotation for an image, and I do this via the Transform panel.  When I open an image directly in Photo via File | Open, the Transform panel is disabled, and I can't figure out how to activate it.  The only workaround I've found is to delete the only layer that's present ("Background"), and then use File | Place to place the same image that was originally depicted on the "Background" layer.  Once I've placed the image, I can click on the image to select it, at which point the Transform panel is active.  Am I experiencing a missing feature or a bug, or is there a way to activate the Transform panel without having to use my workaround?

Thanks,

Ken

 

[Greyfox]

1 hour ago, Ken Hjulstrom said:

Hi,

I'm using Affinity Photo to clean up scanned images, and part of the cleanup is to correct any skewing by rotating the image.  Typically, I only need to perform less than two degrees of rotation for an image, and I do this via the Transform panel.  When I open an image directly in Photo via File | Open, the Transform panel is disabled, and I can't figure out how to activate it.  The only workaround I've found is to delete the only layer that's present ("Background"), and then use File | Place to place the same image that was originally depicted on the "Background" layer.  Once I've placed the image, I can click on the image to select it, at which point the Transform panel is active.  Am I experiencing a missing feature or a bug, or is there a way to activate the Transform panel without having to use my workaround?

Thanks,

Ken

 

In Layers pane untick the padlock on the background layer, then on the toolbar select the move tool.

[carl123]

In Edit > Preferences > User Interface

There is an option to... 

"Automatically lock background layer on import"

If you de-select that, you won't have to unlock your background layer all the time

[Ken Hjulstrom]

1 hour ago, Greyfox said:

In Layers pane untick the padlock on the background layer, then on the toolbar select the move tool.

 

1 hour ago, Greyfox said:

In Layers pane untick the padlock on the background layer, then on the toolbar select the move tool.

Thanks!  I hadn't realized that the layer was locked when I opened the image.

[Ken Hjulstrom]

10 minutes ago, carl123 said:

In Edit > Preferences > User Interface

There is an option to... 

"Automatically lock background layer on import"

If you de-select that, you won't have to unlock your background layer all the time

Thanks, I hadn't realized that this was an option.  Actually, when I was trying to figure out why I couldn't access the Transform panel, I duplicated the "Background" layer, figuring that the duplicate version might be able to be rotated, and it appears that my hunch was correct, but I must have accidentally selected the original "Background" layer (easy to do when both the original and duplicate layers initially have the same name).  For now, I'm leaving the "Automatically lock background layer on import" checked, figuring that the time spent figuring out the cause of this issue and discussing it will make me remember how to handle this the next time I encounter it.

Ken