Failure to allow cropping in Develop and Photo personas intermittently

[BGMALC]

Intermittently I get the situation where I go to crop an image and it will not let me. Pressing the crop tool it fails to show the grid  and will not allow any changes to the size etc. All it will allow it ROTATION and MOVE to take lace.  I delete the image and reload and the same thing occurs. I quite Affinity photo and reload Affinity and image - same again. When this happens cropping in both Develop and Photo personas do the same. The only way I can solve this is to reload MAC OS and then Affinity and then it will probably work. It does not appear to be caused by what I may have done before as the majority of times cropping works ok in both personas. 

Has anyone else had an issue ?   I believe it may have started following a couple of releases earlier as I can not remember it happening when I first used AFFINITY. It is intermittent and   as such have not been able to determine if there is a pattern or if I am failing to do something correctly of if there is a setting I have mucked up. It is a nuisance as it always seems to happen at the most inconvenient time.  Help would be appreciated.

MAC OS Catalina up to date / Affinity Photo Latest release.  I use Adobe Bridge for my image management and have Affinity Photo as the default editor.

[loukash]

4 minutes ago, BGMALC said:

Has anyone else had an issue ?

I've seen that a few times. Some nervous clicking and a few expletives thrown at the display would usually help…
That's would be on El Capitan, possibly also on Catalina (I don't use it often), MacBook Pro mid-2012.

[Dan C]

Hi @BGMALC & @loukash,

Sorry to hear you're having trouble! Unfortunately I cannot find any internal logs for this issue, so we're going to need some more information here.

I have opened multiple documents in Affinity Photo, I tried to open a full mix of image formats (JPEG, TIFF,PNG &HEIC), as well as RAW images and .afphoto & .afdesign documents.

In all instances, the crop tool worked as expected in both Personas, the grid was always shown and worked as expected for me - this was tested on the latest version of Big Sur.

Can you please confirm for me, have you noticed any consistencies when this tool is not working for you? ie does it only happen on a certain file format, or only in a document that has a certain adjustment or filter applied to it?

I will also ask a colleague of mine to test this using an OS different from Big Sur, to see if the macOS version also affects this intermittent issue.

[loukash]

1 minute ago, Dan C said:

we're going to need some more information here

In my case it was very rare, random, and not replicable. The next time I'd encounter it I'll try to remember to record a screencast.

[loukash]

Thinking of it some more, it felt as if the cmd modifier (which enables the Straighten mode) were stuck.
That's something which happens on my system every now and then in other apps or with other modifiers as well, including in Finder. I haven't found the exact cause yet. I always thought it may be one of Karabiner's quirks, as it can also occasionally (but very rarely) crash the USB bus or something, leaving me temporarily without any keyboard input at all.

Speaking of the Straighten mode:
There's a UI inconsistency because the Straighten button doesn't give any visual feedback when active.
But it should, because it's not really a "one-off" action button (like the Rotate button), but actually more of a mode switch. It's simply confusing.

[Dan C]

3 minutes ago, loukash said:

Thinking of it some more, it felt as if the cmd modifier (which enables the Straighten mode) were stuck.

That could certainly explain things, as when the CMD modifier is used in the Crop tool, the Straighten mode hides the grid for the crop tool.
Equally, the Spacebar modifier would have similar results, as this brings the Pan (Hand) Tool into use and hides the crop grid.

@BGMALC do you happen to have any similar keyboard customiser installed, or similar issues with the cmd / spacebar key 'sticking' in other apps?

5 minutes ago, loukash said:

There's a UI inconsistency because the Straighten button doesn't give any visual feedback when active.

I would not expect this UI button to show as 'selected' when using the CMD modifier, however I do agree that selecting the option on the context toolbar should provide visual feedback, as can be seen in Windows -

Therefore I will log this as a bug with our devs now, thanks for bringing this to my attention 

[loukash]

2 minutes ago, Dan C said:

Therefore I will log this as a bug with our devs now, thanks for bringing this to my attention 

Thanks!
Unfortunately it's not the only instance where more visual feedback would be necessary. There are quite a few of those inconsitencies scattered over all three apps. The Picker button in the floating Adjustment being an example off the top of my head: The only clue to see that it's active is that it deselects any previously active tool in the Tools palette.

[Dan C]

3 minutes ago, loukash said:

Unfortunately it's not the only instance where more visual feedback would be necessary. There are quite a few of those inconsitencies scattered over all three apps.

If you'd be willing to create a 'master' list of these and post this in the bugs section of the forums then I am certain our QA team can investigate and report these issues to our devs as required 

4 minutes ago, loukash said:

The Picker button in the floating Adjustment being an example off the top of my head

Again I'm seeing the same feedback as above in Windows and none on Mac, so I'll get this logged separately!

[loukash]

2 minutes ago, Dan C said:

If you'd be willing to create a 'master' list of these and post this in the bugs section of the forums

Yeah, that's an option to consider.
Sadly, not one that would also help to pay my bills… ;)

[BGMALC]

Hi to you thanks for for helping with this. Couple of recent observations which may assist ( or confuse). I usually do my initial cropping in the Dev module and the only way to complete is to click on the crop image ( while I notice the Photo persona has an APPLY button). I do not knowingly have any modifications to either IOS or Affinity especially around the K/B . Not noticed any issues with any other apps.- hope that answers the question asked above . It is as stated intermittent and , sorry , have not monitored actions to get a pattern- will do so moving forward. I have on occasion, when in Photo persona, just clicked on the cropped image rather than use the APPLY button. The crop has taken place but wonder if that may have an impact ( old photoshop action which everyone does use).

 I will be away for a week so will not be able to update until back.  I am happy to do more when back but will need direction to do so. Very new to forums like this. 

Again thanks for everyones help with this. 

 

[Dan C]

On 4/18/2021 at 10:31 PM, BGMALC said:

I usually do my initial cropping in the Dev module and the only way to complete is to click on the crop image ( while I notice the Photo persona has an APPLY button).

That's to be expected, as the space for the 'Apply' button when cropping is instead used for the 'Develop' option.

Interestingly, if you have finished all other develop changes and do your cropping last, you can use the 'Develop' option to both apply the crop and develop the image all in one, but if you are cropping first you will have to double click within the crop area to apply it.

On 4/18/2021 at 10:31 PM, BGMALC said:

I do not knowingly have any modifications to either IOS or Affinity especially around the K/B . Not noticed any issues with any other apps.- hope that answers the question asked above . It is as stated intermittent and , sorry , have not monitored actions to get a pattern- will do so moving forward. I have on occasion, when in Photo persona, just clicked on the cropped image rather than use the APPLY button. The crop has taken place but wonder if that may have an impact ( old photoshop action which everyone does use).

Many thanks for the further information provided here! I have passed this and the info provided by loukash to our QA team for further investigation.

I hope this helps 

[loukash]

9 minutes ago, Dan C said:

if you are cropping first you will have to double click within the crop area to apply it

Yeah, I've noticed this, too. It's the same in Panorama that I'm using quite often. I found it being a rather confusing and inconsistent UI compared to the standard behavior, so eventually I gave up on cropping in the other personas.