Custom Ratio for Rectangular Marquee Tool?

[vicdus]

The Crop Tool has the Mode option for "Custom Ratio", for example 1 x 3 or 1200 x 628. But I can't find this Mode for the Rectangular Marquee Tool which is something that I really miss. Is there any other way to set a fixed ratio for the Marquee Tool? I've played around with the Transform Settings, but that didn't help.

[Joachim_L]

Welcome to the Affinity forums @vicdus!

I am sure the AP aces have much better ways achieving what you want. I would create a layer with your desired width and height, keep it selected, then menu Select >> Selection from Layer and Delete. If you need to re-use this layer, you can save the selection to file and load it at a later time.

[loukash]

37 minutes ago, vicdus said:

I've played around with the Transform Settings, but that didn't help.

The Transform panel can do all the math you need: affinity.help/photo/English.lproj/pages/Workspace/expressions.html
Make your marquee selection, open the Transform panel and adjust the selection width, height and position as you see fit.

E.g. if you need 16:9 ratio of W = 2000 px, type into the H field: 2000/16*9

[Joachim_L]

5 minutes ago, loukash said:

The Transform panel can do all the math you need: affinity.help/photo/English.lproj/pages/Workspace/expressions.html
Make your marquee selection, open the Transform panel and adjust the selection width, height and position as you see fit.

E.g. if you need 16:9 ratio of W = 2000 px, type into the H field: 2000/16*9

As said AP aces! The good thing about giving bad answers, that there is always someone who knows better. Shame on me, I should have known better with the Transform panel.

[loukash]

You can also use the Move tool to manipulate the marching ants even further: rotate, sheer, resize, you name it. Just make sure to add and select a blank pixel layer first, otherwise the Move tool will destructively edit the next best pixel layer. To apply the finished selection to a layer of your choice, simply keep the ants marching and select the target layer in the Layers panel.

Alternatively you can create temporary vector shapes and convert them to marquee selections:

1. create a shape
2. if it's a predefined shape, convert it to curves first and keep it selected
3. select the Pen tool
4. click the Selection button from the context toolbar

The possibilities are virtually unlimited…

[vicdus]

Thanks! But I'm looking for something dynamic that is not limited to fixed pixel dimensions, like the Custom Ratio in the Crop Tool.

I want to be able to drag and resize and move around a Marquee that has fixed dimensions, for example, 2 x 7, to be able to copy, cut etc. areas with specific dimensions (regardless of the px height/width). 

See attached video of how the custom ratio works for the crop tool.

 

Edited April 14, 2021 by vicdus

[Alfred]

18 hours ago, Joachim_L said:

E.g. if you need 16:9 ratio of W = 2000 px, type into the H field: 2000/16*9

Alternatively, if you need the width-to-height ratio to be 16:9 for any width value, type w/16*9 into the H field.

[vicdus]

Thanks Alfred, that's perfect! I'll stick that as a note on my desktop.

If the devs are listening, it would be nice with a Mode for Custom Ratio for the Marquee Tool, to not have to remember formulas (even though they might be quite simple like this one). This is a feature that I miss from (and sorry for using a curse word) Photoshop.

[loukash]

1 hour ago, vicdus said:

I'm looking for something dynamic that is not limited to fixed pixel dimensions

That's what the move-tool-on-temp-pixel-layer trick will do.