Disappearing marque while drawing rectangular selection

[B0R10N]

Hello!

Since I started using Affinity Photo on new machine (specs on the bottom of this message) I got a problem. When I try to draw rectangular selection, nothing gets drawn or selected. It happens randomly, sometimes this bug doesn't appear for good 10-20 selections. It never happens the first time I use rectangular selection tool after opening program, always at further attempts. I tried to observe if it is happening with certain tools combination, kind of file that I work with or other specific circumstances. But it seems to happen randomly. Sometimes this bug goes away if I choose lasso selection, do whatever with it and get back to rectangular selection. But very often it stays like this. I hope devs can look into this, rectangular selections are one of essential tools for me. If I can provide any extra info, like logs or anything else let me know.

One more thing, I use OpenGL acceleration, because I had performance & precision issues with selections on Metal. Often rectangular selection was not starting exactly below cursor, but offset to the right side - very frustrating. And I also had same problem with rectangular selections on Metal, as I described above.

It is not caused by some stupid mistake like trying to draw selection on locked layer, I got pretty good idea what I do

Thanks in advance for looking into this issue.

My machine: MacBook Air m1 16 GB, macOS Big Sur 11.6.2, Affinity Photo 1.10.4

[MEB]

Hi @B0R10N,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Check if you have the Feather set to a high value in the context toolbar. If it's too high and your selection is relatively small you may not see any selection being drawn at all since most of the selection will be feathered (and thus mostly transparent) and the marching ants are only rendered when the transparency is above 50%.

Also check if you have the mode set to Subtract in the context toolbar (the four buttons on the top left). If you haven+t drawn any selection and the Mode is set to Subtract Affinity will not render anything (marching ants) on screen since there's no selection to subtract from.

[B0R10N]

Hello MEB!

Feather is 100%, always.

About switching modes, I only use keyboards shortcuts modifying mode (lmb+ctr, lmb+alt). Your suggestion makes me think that maybe I'm unknowingly permanently switch mode with some shortcut that I don't know of or there is a bug switching modes once every few selections. I will keep an eye on modes buttons next time it happens, I really hope it was just my mistake or "fat fingers syndrome"  If that will be some bug indeed, I will report it here.

Thanks for replying so fast, much appreciated!

[MEB]

Set the feather to 0 (zero) which is the default value. You should only set it to a higher value if you need to feather the selection. To "smooth out" the selection's edges just a bit (to avoid a hard cut) use/tick the Antialias checkbox in the context toolbar.