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Freehand Selection Tool not working properly? Or am I going crazy?


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I am working on three different multi-layered images in Affinity Photo 1.9.3 and using the Freehand Selection Tool without any issues until, suddenly and only with one of the three images, the FST will only make selections like it is in Polygonal mode. Regardless of what I do with the settings, it will not make any selections in Freehand mode.

This does not happen with the other images I am working on, just this one particular image. I have tried closing/re-opening the file, copy/pasting all the layers into a new document, restarting AP and rebooting the Mac – all without any success. The FST still does not work in freehand mode in that one particular file only.

Am I missing something really obvious?

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Sounds familiar but cant recall what it may have been

The quickest way to get an answer would be to upload the affected document to the forum

To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time.

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8 hours ago, carl123 said:

Sounds familiar but cant recall what it may have been

The quickest way to get an answer would be to upload the affected document to the forum

Thanks for replying.

I didn't have the time or patience to troubleshoot it any further, so worked around it by using the Pen tool to make the selection instead.

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On 5/2/2021 at 6:29 PM, EddCh said:

suddenly and only with one of the three images, the FST will only make selections like it is in Polygonal mode. Regardless of what I do with the settings, it will not make any selections in Freehand mode.

This sounds as though you may have been holding down the Shift key when using the Freehand Selection Tool, as this will constrain it to straight lines only regardless of the current mode set on the Context Toolbar - however it's very strange this was only happening for one document.

20 hours ago, EddCh said:

I didn't have the time or patience to troubleshoot it any further, so worked around it by using the Pen tool to make the selection instead.

Thanks for letting us know of the workaround used, I've been unable to replicate the bug reported here, so should this occur again please provide a screen recording of the issue and a copy of the Affinity document where this occurs.

Many thanks in advance :)

Please Note: I am now out of the office until Tuesday 2nd April on annual leave.

If you require urgent assistance, please create a new thread and a member of our team will be sure to assist asap.

Many thanks :)

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1 hour ago, Dan C said:

This sounds as though you may have been holding down the Shift key when using the Freehand Selection Tool, as this will constrain it to straight lines only regardless of the current mode set on the Context Toolbar - however it's very strange this was only happening for one document.

Thanks for letting us know of the workaround used, I've been unable to replicate the bug reported here, so should this occur again please provide a screen recording of the issue and a copy of the Affinity document where this occurs.

Many thanks in advance :)

Yes, at first I thought I had a problematic Shift key as I didn't have it pressed when making the selection. I even swapped to a different Mac and it still happened.

A little further investigation today has revealed that it is something related to the number of layers in the document. I have been testing the issue with some older documents and those with more layers displayed a similar problem. Documents with few or no layers either had no problem or it was less severe. Reducing the layers, or even completely removing them either diminished or eliminated the problem.

I have attached a screen recording that demonstrates the issue coming and going depending on the amount of layers in the document.

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Thanks for your screen recording! This is certainly strange behaviour that I haven't encountered before - I've escalated this to our QA team for further investigation but in the meantime can you please navigate to Affinity Photo > Preferences > Performance and provide a screenshot of your settings here for me? :)

Please Note: I am now out of the office until Tuesday 2nd April on annual leave.

If you require urgent assistance, please create a new thread and a member of our team will be sure to assist asap.

Many thanks :)

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3 hours ago, Dan C said:

Thanks for your screen recording! This is certainly strange behaviour that I haven't encountered before - I've escalated this to our QA team for further investigation but in the meantime can you please navigate to Affinity Photo > Preferences > Performance and provide a screenshot of your settings here for me? :)

Here's a screenshot of the Performance settings on the Mac Pro.

645281751_Screenshot2021-05-05at18_51_22.jpg.c17b426b8756264d04004c71529e1e43.jpg

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Many thanks for this and my apologies for the delayed reply here!

Myself and a colleague have been testing this issue and we've been unable to replicate it on our machines thus far.

Can you please confirm, the Affinity app seems to indicate you have 2 different AMD GPUs available to you (possibly in Crossfire?) - is this the case, or does your Mac only have 1 GPU and is incorrectly reporting this here?

Can you also please try disabling Metal Hardware Acceleration, restart your Affinity app and then try creating a selection with all your layers active - does this now work as expected please? :)

Please Note: I am now out of the office until Tuesday 2nd April on annual leave.

If you require urgent assistance, please create a new thread and a member of our team will be sure to assist asap.

Many thanks :)

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12 minutes ago, Dan C said:

Many thanks for this and my apologies for the delayed reply here!

Myself and a colleague have been testing this issue and we've been unable to replicate it on our machines thus far.

Can you please confirm, the Affinity app seems to indicate you have 2 different AMD GPUs available to you (possibly in Crossfire?) - is this the case, or does your Mac only have 1 GPU and is incorrectly reporting this here?

Can you also please try disabling Metal Hardware Acceleration, restart your Affinity app and then try creating a selection with all your layers active - does this now work as expected please? :)

My Mac Pro (2013) does have DUAL AMD Radeon D300 GPUs, so the app is reporting correctly.

Turning off MHA was one of the first things I previously tried but the issue still happens. It also happens on my 15" MacBook Pro 2014 and 11" MacBook Air 2011 (again, regardless of MHA).

On all three Macs, the issue only happens when there are lots of layers in the document and gets progressively worse as more layers are added. As more layers are removed, then the issue progressively improves. 

With the exception of the File Recovery Interval setting, I have tried adjusting ALL the other settings (on/off, least/most etc) in the Performance tab but none had any effect on resolving the issue.

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If you can supply a document it happens in, we may be able to eliminate all your specific hardware and software, if it's recreatable outside your "bubble"

 

To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time.

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6 minutes ago, EddCh said:

My Mac Pro (2013) does have DUAL AMD Radeon D300 GPUs, so the app is reporting correctly.

Many thanks for confirming that for me!

As Carl has mentioned, we'd like to request a copy of your file used in your screen recording, as a colleague of mine put together a test file using around 100 Adjustment layers and we could not replicate the issue directly.

If you'd like to upload this file privately, please use the below Dropbox link and let us know once it has been uploaded -

https://www.dropbox.com/request/LIDlhi33xzCcDts6iOmZ

Thanks in advance :D

Please Note: I am now out of the office until Tuesday 2nd April on annual leave.

If you require urgent assistance, please create a new thread and a member of our team will be sure to assist asap.

Many thanks :)

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50 minutes ago, Dan C said:

Many thanks for confirming that for me!

As Carl has mentioned, we'd like to request a copy of your file used in your screen recording, as a colleague of mine put together a test file using around 100 Adjustment layers and we could not replicate the issue directly.

If you'd like to upload this file privately, please use the below Dropbox link and let us know once it has been uploaded -

https://www.dropbox.com/request/LIDlhi33xzCcDts6iOmZ

Thanks in advance :D

OK. I'll drop a few files in there shortly – the one used in the screen recording, as well as a couple others worked on prior to v1.9 (but they now also display this particular issue, when they didn't before).

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Many thanks for your files and my apologies for the delay here!

I have been testing this here in conjunction with our QA team, thus far I have found this issue easier to replicate on Windows than on Mac (with Hardware Acceleration OFF in Windows) - whereby the Freehand Selection Tool seems to 'skip' points in the selection I'm drawing and appears to only create straight lines. This seems to get worse for me the further I zoom into the canvas, and as you've mentioned previously the more adjustments and other layers, the worse it becomes also.

I am therefore logging this as a bug with our developers now, and I will include all of the information you have provided here - so that we can improve the Affinity apps in the future.

I note you've already tried disabling/enabling Metal Hardware Acceleration, without much change in performance. In my testing I did find that reducing the View Quality to Nearest Neighbour and the Retina Rendering to Low Quality (Fastest) did improve things somewhat, so you may wish to try these settings on your machine.

Many thanks once again for your report :)

Please Note: I am now out of the office until Tuesday 2nd April on annual leave.

If you require urgent assistance, please create a new thread and a member of our team will be sure to assist asap.

Many thanks :)

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23 minutes ago, Dan C said:

Many thanks for your files and my apologies for the delay here!

I have been testing this here in conjunction with our QA team, thus far I have found this issue easier to replicate on Windows than on Mac (with Hardware Acceleration OFF in Windows) - whereby the Freehand Selection Tool seems to 'skip' points in the selection I'm drawing and appears to only create straight lines. This seems to get worse for me the further I zoom into the canvas, and as you've mentioned previously the more adjustments and other layers, the worse it becomes also.

I am therefore logging this as a bug with our developers now, and I will include all of the information you have provided here - so that we can improve the Affinity apps in the future.

I note you've already tried disabling/enabling Metal Hardware Acceleration, without much change in performance. In my testing I did find that reducing the View Quality to Nearest Neighbour and the Retina Rendering to Low Quality (Fastest) did improve things somewhat, so you may wish to try these settings on your machine.

Many thanks once again for your report :)

Thanks for the update. Whilst it is not a seriously bad issue, as there are workarounds, it is irritating so an eventual fix will be greatly appreciated.

During my course of testing I had also tried various configurations of the View Quality, Retina Rendering and Metal Hardware Acceleration settings – but all without any noticeable improvement.

Additionally, I don't know if I have mentioned this before or if it helps, this problem happens in MacOS Catalina, Mojave and High Sierra – but I haven't tried in Big Sur as I am not yet running it on any of my Macs.

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21 hours ago, EddCh said:

Thanks for the update. Whilst it is not a seriously bad issue, as there are workarounds, it is irritating so an eventual fix will be greatly appreciated.

Of course, I certainly understand and we of course hope to have this resolved as soon as possible :)

21 hours ago, EddCh said:

During my course of testing I had also tried various configurations of the View Quality, Retina Rendering and Metal Hardware Acceleration settings – but all without any noticeable improvement.

I appreciate the further information, I'll be sure to add this to the development report now!

21 hours ago, EddCh said:

Additionally, I don't know if I have mentioned this before or if it helps, this problem happens in MacOS Catalina, Mojave and High Sierra – but I haven't tried in Big Sur as I am not yet running it on any of my Macs.

I can confirm that I have been testing on Big Sur and I'm seeing the same issue but at a slightly reduced rate, so although it doesn't appear to be specific to one macOS version, I'll absolutely make this clear to our developers.
A Big Sur change may have improved this unbeknownst to us (perhaps the document is being rendered differently in relation to the selection for Big Sur, I'm not certain).

In either case, we really appreciate the information and time taken to test this here and we hope to have this improved shortly!

Please Note: I am now out of the office until Tuesday 2nd April on annual leave.

If you require urgent assistance, please create a new thread and a member of our team will be sure to assist asap.

Many thanks :)

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