How to cut, copy, paste pixels in a rectangular Marquee select?

[bezster]

MacOS Ventura / Affinity Photo 2.0.3

I want to achieve something profoundly simple in Affinity Photo:

    a) Use the Marquee tool to drag out a rectangular selection (No problem there)

    b) Cut, Drag, Copy, Drag-copy, or Paste the selection to the same layer, to a different layer, or to a different document. In other pixel/raster editors I‘ve accomplished this without confusion or effort. (For instance, to drag-copy I simply make a selection, and then (on MacOS in other editors) option drag.

In Affinity Photo the closest technique I’ve found is:

• select a portion of my single layer
• Copy Merged (Copy does work ... why is that?)
• Paste

This results in Affinity Photo placing a copy of the pixels on a new child layer. I can work with this, but I’d like to find an easier way to:

a) using the existing canvas (of a particular layer) as a place to copy-dragged selections from the original pixel image. 

b) to copy-drag a portion of a layer onto the image itself so that they replace (merge into) the area I've dragged it to. 

What am I missing?

bezster
 

Edited January 8, 2023 by bezster

[Brian_J]

Are you trying to copy from an Image layer? In order to copy a selection, the layer needs to be a Pixel layer. If it's an Image layer, rasterize it, then you can copy or cut a selection.

[loukash]

6 hours ago, bezster said:

What am I missing?

You're missing that you don't necessarily need to work destructively in Affinity. You can create as many layers as you want, edit non-destructively and merge them later when you're satisfied with the result.

Here a quick'n'dirty example of using the Inpainting Brush tool to hide a part of the placed non-editable "Image" type of layer (aka "smart object" in Photoshop):

To make a single pixel layer out of this, I can then do either Document > Flatten, or Layer > Merge Visible/Selected.
Easy.

[thomaso]

7 hours ago, bezster said:

b) to copy-drag a portion of a layer onto the image itself so that they replace (merge into) the area I've dragged it to. 

41 minutes ago, loukash said:

You're missing that you don't necessarily need to work destructively in Affinity. You can create as many layers as you want, edit non-destructively

Although we can use copy-drag & modifier key for layer selection this workflow is impossible for a marquee selection. Instead this seems to must work destructively, AND in an unexpected way: it cuts out image parts without leaving a copy of the displayed selection.
(in this video the increasing offset of the selection bounding box is a different pair of shoes)

If copy-drag is coded to create holes why not to create copies of the displayed selection? – "Easy"?

[loukash]

1 minute ago, thomaso said:

If copy-drag is coded to create holes why not to create copies of the displayed selection? – "Easy"?

Yes, I know it's been requested since years.  
Don't ask me why it hasn't been implemented yet.

But that's also one of the reasons why it's literally easier to adjust your mindset to non-destructive workflows instead.

Vice versa, after two intensive years with APh, today I find Photoshop's workflows clunky and counterintuitive although it was "alright" for me since the mid-1990s. 
Your mileage may vary.