Designer Help - Excluding Layers From Selection

[Kazamania]

I have a background image rough draft that I'm working over. How do I prevent it from being selected? I would like to remove selection of anything not on the currently selected layer, if possible; that feature usually just gets in the way because sometimes when I make a new object, I have to drag it over to the layer I want it to be in because some other layer was accidentally selected while I was making the object.

[GarryP]

If you Lock a layer it cannot then be selected via drag-selecting on the canvas but it can still be selected via the Layers Panel – go to the Help and search for “lock” (without the quotes), then select the link for “Arrange/Manage layers”.

(Note: Locking a layer does not prevent it from being altered in various ways – see various other forum threads about this.)

If that doesn’t do what you need then you may need to be more precise about what you have, what you want to do, what’s happening, and what you don’t want to happen. (Words such as “over”, and “in” can be interpreted differently by different people.)

[Kazamania]

Locking was the first thing I tried, and that didn't prevent me from selecting that image by accident. However, I found a work-around: This image I'm using on the bottom of the stack as a rough draft is a raster image with the tag (Pixel) rather than (Layer). I put the image in a group, and then locked that group, and now I can't select the layer by accident when I'm using move tool/node tool. That's good, but now my question is: Why does locking have that distinction for vector layers and groups, but not for pixel/raster objects that are not in groups?

[GarryP]

Locking your layer should have prevented you from selecting it on the canvas unless it’s a Pixel layer rather than an Image layer.
For some reason that I’m unaware of, Pixel layers work differently in this respect to Image layers.
As you say, putting a Pixel layer in a Group and then locking the Group should work as you expect.
Maybe someone else can shed some light on this – I don’t use locking often.

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, Kazamania said:

That's good, but now my question is: Why does locking have that distinction for vector layers and groups, but not for pixel/raster objects that are not in groups?

There is a specific override built into the lock functionality to allow selection of a locked pixel layer at the bottom of the layer stack. Grouping it may disallow that override, and make the lock active.

[GarryP]

4 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

There is a specific override built into the lock functionality to allow selection of a locked pixel layer at the bottom of the layer stack.

Would that be something to do with how Photo (and Designer) works – e.g. an opened image is automatically made into a Pixel layer at the bottom of an otherwise empty stack?
If so, do you know what the advantage is of doing so?

[walt.farrell]

37 minutes ago, GarryP said:

If so, do you know what the advantage is of doing so?

I don't recall the rationale, but it's been mentioned by the Serif staff on occasion.

[GarryP]

It seems specific enough to probably have a good reason for it.
I suppose that if you open an image file and can’t select the only Pixel layer which exists, it greatly reduces the types of editing you can do before unlocking that layer.