Crop Tool improvements

[Ash]

Apps: Photo
Platforms: Windows, macOS and iPad

A number of improvements have been made to the crop tool based on customer feedback:

• Crop to selection. If you have a pixel selection active the crop tool will now initiate to be a min fit around the selection you have.
• After a crop the current zoom level will be maintained (rather than automatically zooming to fit as previously). From various feedback this was considered preferable behaviour and leaving it to the user to choose if they want to zoom to fit after (cmd-0 or hitting zoom icon in the top toolbar of iPad).
• The Crop tool now remembers the last setting globally, so if you wish to apply the same ratio crop to a number of images it's much easier.
• You can now drag anywhere on the bounding box edges to resize the crop, rather than having to drag from a handle.
• Enter as well as Return will now commit a crop
• Escape will reset the current crop
• In unconstrained mode, holding Shift will constrain the current aspect ratio and Cmd (Ctrl on Windows) will resize around the centre
• When you rotate / use straighten feature in crop tool it will now automatically adjust crop box to fit.

Please let us know what you think or if you spot any issues or have any feedback on this new behaviour.

[Patrick Connor]

Known Issues

• AFP-5951 - Crop Tool: Offset when cropping from selection
• AFP-6025 - Crop Tool - corner drag hit area now too small

Further known issues will be added to this list as they are reported to us by customers in this thread.

[NotMyFault]

Does crop respect whole pixel snapping? (It wasn‘t in the past, which could lead to (a) unwanted extra edge pixel by rounding for export, or (b) unwanted blurriness when rasterizing pixel layers any time later after the crop action which introduced fractional positions as side effect). 

Does crop allow to set an anchor point (similar to resize canvas)? Important when entering numeric values instead of using mouse / pen / touch. Crop and resize canvas have some overlap in functionality, but differ is some details.

[Hangman]

On 2/7/2023 at 3:46 PM, Ash said:

Crop to selection. If you have a pixel selection active the crop tool will now initiate to be a min fit around the selection you have.

@Ash, It would be incredibly useful and a massive time saver if this also applied to vector selections, e.g., draw an ellipse or select a group of vector layers, select the crop tool and the crop will now initiate to be a min fit around the selection...

Use Case

On a daily basis I have a project that involves making lots of screengrabs which then require cropping in Photo prior to copying and pasting as a clipped layer in Designer. The crop is alway circular (or roughly circular) and quite often the item to be cropped isn't central on the screengrab so the current process involves drawing a circular ellipse with the ellipse tool in Photo, positioning the ellipse over the circular element to be cropped, expanding the size of the positioned ellipse to add a border to the crop (this allows for a little flexibility of movement when clipped in Designer in case the crop isn't perfect) dragging guides to the four edges of my circular shape's bounding box so I can then use the crop tool to snap to those guides prior to initiating the actual crop...

Having the ability to simply drag an ellipse using the ellipse tool to the size required, and then have the crop tool auto crop to the bounding box of the selection would save so much time...

It would be an added bonus if in doing so with a vector selection there was also an option in the context toolbar which allowed for a crop offset, both positive and negative, so you position you vector shape or make your vector shape selection and then enter a setting in the context toolbar, e.g., 5mm, 20px or whatever, based on the units of your document, so that when you select the crop tool it crops as a min fit around the selection + or - the value set in the context toolbar, that would then remove the additional step of needing to expand the size of the ellipse (in the example above) after positioning it to add the additional border prior to cropping the image...

While this may be a relatively unique case scenario I could see it being extremely useful in many other situations...

[Frozen Death Knight]

Finally the Crop Tool will start to feel feature complete and work as it should. Looking forward to the coming patches with the additional changes.

[smadell]

Crop to selection is wonderful. But… only tested on my iPad Air 4 so far, but cropping with an active selection did make the proper crop, bit the selection was shifted. On first blush, it looks like the selection was placed with the original x,y offset (presumably from the upper left corner?). Thus, after cropping, a different portion of the image was selected.

[Chris B]

@smadell I cannot reproduce this - any other clues?

[smadell]

Good morning, @Chris B. Does this help?

 

 

[Chris B]

I'm not sure what I did differently but I got it this time - thanks. I'll get that logged.

I think it's due to it shifting after you commit the crop. If I pan the image it redraws correctly. 

[captain13chris]

 

On 2/7/2023 at 4:46 PM, Ash said:

• Crop to selection. If you have a pixel selection active the crop tool will now initiate to be a min fit around the selection you have.

I would love if this also applied to straightening photos within the crop tool. I would like an option for the crop tool to automatically adjust to the picture while straightening it - just like in Apple Photos. Right now it is extremely difficult to exactly match the borders of a straightened picture with the crop tool.

 

 

[smadell]

@Chris B - a bit more testing. It seems that the area selected is correct, but the on-screen representation of the selection (the marching ants) is not uodated properly. To wit…

 

 

[Ash]

1 hour ago, Hangman said:

@Ash, It would be incredibly useful and a massive time saver if this also applied to vector selections, e.g., draw an ellipse or select a group of vector layers, select the crop tool and the crop will now initiate to be a min fit around the selection...

Just to say it (and I could be way off here in terms of your use case) but my immediate thought on reading that was whether using picture frames in Publisher might be a better solution for what you are doing there?   

 

[loukash]

MacOS Catalina, with "Use keyboard navigation to move focus between controls" active (System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts)

1. activate Crop
2. in Unconstrained mode, click into the X size field and enter a value
3. press Tab to commit and to move focus to the Y size field
4. focus totally lost…

It happens only on first use after the Crop tool has been activated. On a subsequent click into one of the fields, the focus is then kept, incl. Apply/Cancel buttons.

This issue already exists in v2.0.4 (don't remember 2.0.0 and 2.0.3)
It works as expected in v1.10.6, although it needs two tabs to move from X size field to Y size field. But at least it doesn't lose focus.

It also works as expected "Use keyboard navigation to move focus between controls" turned off, but then it simply toggles between the X/Y fields, without having Tab access to the other checkboxes and buttons.

[Hangman]

2 minutes ago, Ash said:

Just to say it (and I could be way off here in terms of your use case) but my immediate thought on reading that was whether using picture frames in Publisher might be a better solution for what you are doing there? 

Technically it sort of could but the reason that wouldn't work in this instance (which isn't explained in my post, so understandable you had no way of knowing) is that I have several hundred templates set up in Designer, all with several different Snapshots settings (imagine same design, numerous different colour options) and the cropped images are multi-layered (again, imagine same cropped image, different variations of the same image)...

The main reason for cropping in the first place is because...

1. It keeps the file size down and
    
2. I don't have all the extraneous parts of the image from the original 1.6 : 1 screen grab that isn't needed

I'm basically making a square crop of a circular ellipse to use in a circular clipping mask in Designer...

Even though I could obviously open the Designer Files in Publisher, that...

• Initially negates a double click to open without first resaving all the Designer templates as Publisher files.
   
• Would mean reworking around seven hundred Designer templates to replace the existing clipping mask layer with a circular Frame.
   
• Publisher itself currently lacks the Snapshots feature so it would mean having to jump into Designer via StudioLink just to select the relevant Snapshot and then jumping back to Publisher to complete the artwork.
   
• I would have to physically Save the files cropped created in Photo to allow them to be Placed in Publisher if I wanted to make use of Picture Frame Image Scaling rather than the simple copy/paste routine used at the moment.
   
• Placing a layered Photo file into a picture frame would then result if having to Edit the Document each time I needed to change the current layer displayed in the Publisher artwork, I could of course just use Paste Inside the picture frame to avoid the need to edit the file but that's effectively what I'm already doing in Designer.

All in all, this would make what is a currently a finely honed exercise which is super quick as a Designer/Photo combo a lot more laborious in Publisher.

The current workflow is to open the Designer template, use Snapshots to instantly update the source artwork to the correct colour variation and layout then open multiple variations of the same screen grab in Photo, copy and paste the variations into a single Photo document, apply the crop, copy and paste into a Designer clipping mask layer without the need to save the file Photo file first. Then it's simply a matter of turning on and off the various different iterations of the screengrab in the layers panel to generate different versions of the file and export accordingly...

The slowest part of the process at the moment is cropping the screen grabs which is where the new Crop to Selection would save a lot of time... and whilst this workflow could technically be adapted to use a marquee selection, the lack of marquee snapping again slows the process down when creating the crop. Using a vector shape as a guide for the crop works well as I can simply drag the shape from the centre using snapping, nudge the shape to adjust its position, resize as required which is perfect and much easier than using a marquee selection.

Having to add guides that snap to the shape borders and then having to drag and snap the crop handles to those guides prior to applying the crop is where the addition of a Crop to Vector Selection would save a couple of minutes per artwork which when creating several hundred at a time is a massive time saving...

That's why I was excited to see Crop to Pixel Selection and thought Crop to Vector Selection would be the perfect companion...

Anyway, as mentioned previously, this may be a bit of a unique use case but it would still be a great feature to have and I can imagine it would be useful in many other scenarios as well...

[Ash]

Another suggestion then is to try Select -> Selection from layer (which will get you a pixel selection to the size of the shape you have drawn) and then crop to that? Could record the select from layer -> crop -> deselect or whatever as a macro too.

[Hangman]

2 minutes ago, Ash said:

Another suggestion then is to try Select -> Selection from layer (which will get you a pixel selection to the size of the shape you have drawn) and then crop to that? Could record the select from layer -> crop -> deselect or whatever as a macro too.

That actually works well and only involves a minor tweak to the workflow. so I think that is a good solution... many thanks

[gridref]

Might be cheeky to add this here but I would like magnifying lenses to be added to the ends of the straighten tool.  Handy for precision work on straightening a wide horizon without lots of zooming about.

[MxHeppa]

few feature dreams:
Cropping given coordinates also feels nice to add. and saving custom ratio presets.
 

[Hangman]

On 2/7/2023 at 3:46 PM, Ash said:

The Crop tool now remembers the last setting globally, so if you wish to apply the same ratio crop to a number of images it's much easier.

@Ash, while this works really well and is a great improvement when using crop ratio presets would it not be better, when unconstrained is the default setting, to set the default crop to fit the image as it currently does in 2.0.4?

When using unconstrained and jumping between differently sized images you now find yourself having to hit Reset everytime to get to a useable starting point. Having the Esc Key shortcut in a future release will be helpful but it feels like an unneccessary additional step and looks a bit messay for unconstrained images in its current form.

Unconstrained Crop V1 vs V2

[ATP]

Crop to selection is a fantastic feature.

I did get my hopes up for cropping individual layers when I first read the 2.1 feature list though. If I may ask, why isn't cropping individual layers implemented in the Affinity Suite? Is this a philosophical choice or is there a simply a prioritization to implement other features?

Currently I crop my layers in Windows Photos before importing or in a separate Affinity document and it's just a bit cumbersome.

[TomAng]

Hi Ash
Remembering last settings is a much appreciated addition.

Please could we have regular tab behaviour? Ideally when Crop tool is called up, the first value entry box is ready to receive input, then Tab to move to next box to receive input. At present, behaviour is not regular.

Also: if you're going to offer grids for crop, you really ought to offer Golden Section/Golden Mean. Rule of Thirds is going out of fashion (and is only a innumerate approximation for Golden Section.

Cheers

[loukash]

1 hour ago, ATP said:

cropping individual layers

Draw a blank vector shape of your choice and clip (not mask) any layer(s) you want with it.

[ATP]

2 hours ago, loukash said:

Draw a blank vector shape of your choice and clip (not mask) any layer(s) you want with it.

That's very smart and gives some artistic freedom, I appreciate it a lot 😄

[loukash]

3 minutes ago, ATP said:

gives some artistic freedom

Also, don't forget to make use of the often-overlooked Lock Children checkbox, either on or off, depending on if you want to move either the clipping rectangle alone or with its children.

[Ash]

Hi All - the Enter and Escape shortcuts have now been added in this week's build (1709). More info here.