Some frustrating things I struggle with, am I doing it wrong

[Chillr2021]

I really like Affinity Photo but like to get more into it, just some frustrating things I've come along, or maybe its just me not understanding it right but here's the things I found frustrating.

- Moving layers, it seems obsessed with putting them in a folder, it so hard to move layers up and down for me, I know you look for the blue line to go fully left but putting the layer above or below something without it putting it into a new folder as something else, really fiddly in my opinion.

- Snapping sometimes it just doesn't snap at all, I want to snap to document boundary, I have snapping enabled and snap to object boundary boxes but doesn't work for me.

- Guides can be frustrating too, I can't get them to show the full length of the screen like photoshop it just shows on the boundary edges, I tried to change the colour but even that didn't do anything, I'd prefer to know better where the guides where and have it the full length.

- Also speaking of boundary boxes the handles in the centre to move the object layers, why does it only do it using the middle circle handle, I'm sure in Photoshop you can change the edges anywhere along the edge line, if you're zoom in it becomes almost impossible to find this centre circle handle to change it.

- Another thing just found, I open a background texture its portrait rectangle shape and I want it a square so I use the cut tool and cut it easy to a square so its background pixel layer now a square, then move it to my main design I'm working on and its somehow gone back to being a portrait shape and not the square it was, what's that about. I did notice this a bit ago that when you cut things it doesn't cut them, in photoshop it cuts all layers to be the shape of the design file not with affinity it leaves them as their original sizes, why?

 

Anyone else struggle with these things or am I doing it wrong.

Edited July 24, 2021 by Chillr2021
just found something else to add.

[Brian_J]

@Chillr2021 The four things you mentioned are among my top frustrations with Photo.

I've been using the Affinity apps for four months now. It takes time to adjust to a new app — I'm adjusting, am getting comfortable in Affinity, and am overall happy with the apps. But each of the four things you mentioned are a source of frustration.

• Moving layers — totally with you on that. I'm getting a little better at dragging layers where I want them, but it can be a challenge.
• Snapping — I don't understand sometimes. You'll find that changing the snapping Candidates (Candidate List, Immediate layers, Immediate layers and children, All layers) or increasing the Maximum for Candidates list will often get things snapping to what you want, but not always, in my experience. Sometimes I have to select the layer an object is on before snapping an object on another layer to it. Other times I have to temporarily move a layer into the same group as an object I want to snap to it. Sometimes an object won't snap, but after continually moving the object around snapping does work without changing any snapping settings. I guess I don't understand snapping well enough yet.
• Ruler Guides — I wish they extended the full length of the document view too. Sometimes guides are easier to see when they're the full length of the screen. Sometimes I want ruler guides outside the canvas.
• Bounding boxes — Having to zoom out to find the center handle is a hassle ... for objects and cropping.

[Chillr2021]

After working with Affinity designer and photo lots more I'm warming much more to it, going to be investing in some brushes when black friday comes along.

One thing I discovered today was importing an image as place image gives you the option to add a fill tint to it, kind of discovered by accident when experimenting and clicked the color picker tool and it just turned my image into this one toned cool tint which is I was amazed at, couldn't work it out it didn't work on a background image opened though, it only works on image layers for some reason but very useful I found when working with my current project.