Crop Tool improvements

[Hangman]

Unsure if this is expected behaviour but in .1742, Cmd Drag on an Original Ratio crop works as expected when dragging the sides of the crop but it doesn't maintain a centred position when dragging from the corner handles, i.e., the crop position changes based on where you drag your mouse on the canvas which doesn't feel right...

Cmd Drag for an Original Ratio Crop

[captain13chris]

2 hours ago, Ash said:

We have now added this functionality in the latest build if you want to give it a go...

Firs of all, thank you for implementing this feature! It's a great step in the right direction. However, I found several problems with it:

1.) When selecting a new crop after using the "straighten" tool, the rotation gets reset (this seems to only occur sometimes, not reliably reproducible): 

 

2.) The "straighten" tool only allows the crop area size to be decreased, not increased (as I would expect it):

 

3)There is quite a big margin at the edges, the crop area is not as big as it could/should be. This seems to be proportional to the rotation angle; the bigger the rotation the bigger the margin towards the image boundary (the result is the same when either rotating the crop area or using the straighten tool):

 

4) The rotation sometimes gets randomly reset while working with the crop tool (might be the same issue as (1), not reliably reproducible):

 

And then I have three more feature requests related to this new functionality (in order of importance to me personally):

5) I would like to see the "straighten" too to remain selected until manual deselection in order to continuously fine-tune the rotation. Right now it automatically gets deselected after a single operation. I often times start with a rough straightening and then zoom into the image to refine the rotation with the straighten tool. When I forget to select the straighten tool again I accidentally resize the crop area instead. This happens to me quite often, maybe I'm not alone.

6) This is a related feature-request that would tremendously improve the crop tool: I'd love it if the crop area could snap to the edges of a rotated photo. Right now it is very hard to crop a rotated photo exactly keeping as many pixels as possible.

7) Maybe (for a future update) include the option to automatically fill in missing areas after a crop, just like the panorama tool offers?

Cheers, Chris

[Hangman]

@captain13chris

2 hours ago, captain13chris said:

1.) When selecting a new crop after using the "straighten" tool, the rotation gets reset (this seems to only occur sometimes, not reliably reproducible): 

So far I've been unable to replicate this but I'll keep testing...

2 hours ago, captain13chris said:

2.) The "straighten" tool only allows the crop area size to be decreased, not increased (as I would expect it):

Same behaviour in V1, I think likely by design but I'm sure someone from the moderation team can confirm...

2 hours ago, captain13chris said:

3)There is quite a big margin at the edges, the crop area is not as big as it could/should be. This seems to be proportional to the rotation angle; the bigger the rotation the bigger the margin towards the image boundary (the result is the same when either rotating the crop area or using the straighten tool):

This seems to be specific to an Original Ratio crop as it works correctly for an Unconstrained crop. I was trying to work out if it's just because it's honouring the crop ratio but that's not the issue as you can clearly have a bigger crop while maintaining the Original Crop ratio as shown in your screen recording...

2 hours ago, captain13chris said:

4) The rotation sometimes gets randomly reset while working with the crop tool (might be the same issue as (1), not reliably reproducible):

Again thus far I've not been able to replicate this but will keep testing...

2 hours ago, captain13chris said:

5) I would like to see the "straighten" too to remain selected until manual deselection in order to continuously fine-tune the rotation. Right now it automatically gets deselected after a single operation. I often times start with a rough straightening and then zoom into the image to refine the rotation with the straighten tool. When I forget to select the straighten tool again I accidentally resize the crop area instead. This happens to me quite often, maybe I'm not alone.

Hold the Cmd (assume Ctrl on Windows) Key when using the Straghten tool and it remains active and will allow you to do what you want...

2 hours ago, captain13chris said:

6) This is a related feature-request that would tremendously improve the crop tool: I'd love it if the crop area could snap to the edges of a rotated photo. Right now it is very hard to crop a rotated photo exactly keeping as many pixels as possible.

Agree, that would be a very handy addition...

2 hours ago, captain13chris said:

7) Maybe (for a future update) include the option to automatically fill in missing areas after a crop, just like the panorama tool offers?

Content Aware AI... again would be a great feature for a future release...

[MT_AZ]

Regarding changes to  the crop tool in beta vXXX.1742, I prefer the old straighten behavior. Automatically setting the crop to exclude the transparent edges severely reduces the image area. Photography from a helicopter give a  lot of angled horizons. Also, this avoids using inpainting which is one of the unique and powerful features of Affinity Photo.
I notice that after the  straighten operation, if I select the custom ratio in mode, the crop selection expands to the edges which includes the transparent corners. If custom ratio is already selected, that doesn't happen. I must first select one of the other modes (unconstrained, for example) and then select custom ratio. At that point I can proceed as before by selecting the transparent corners and inpainting.
I see this may be easier for some users but rejects the powerful inpainting feature. Making this behavior an option might be possible. Or maybe a built-in macro to do the straightening might be possible.

[Hylpass]

Can we select this as an option? Sometimes I don't want to crop out the transparent areas. I need to keep my original size, and prefer to fill in the alpha areas with inpainting. (I have created a macro for that)

Also, one more vote for an object crop tool in Photo. I often find myself opening the document in Publisher (edit in...), just to use that nifty vector crop tool.
That and the transparancy tool. I wish those two would make it into Photo.

[ronnyb]

On 4/14/2023 at 10:49 PM, Hylpass said:

Can we select this as an option? Sometimes I don't want to crop out the transparent areas. I need to keep my original size, and prefer to fill in the alpha areas with inpainting. (I have created a macro for that)

Inpainting should be an option for expanding canvas size and in the crop tool. It’s been requested years ago…

[arcnor]

Not sure if I'm missing something, but should pressing "Enter" to commit the crop part of the Photo persona on Publisher? Because right now it does nothing, unless there is something I need to activate first...

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, arcnor said:

Not sure if I'm missing something, but should pressing "Enter" to commit the crop part of the Photo persona on Publisher? Because right now it does nothing, unless there is something I need to activate first...

You're missing something. 

The Crop Tool in Designer, and in the Designer and Photo Personas of Publisher, is an object crop tool, not a canvas crop tool. It works as though you are clipping an object into a rectangle, and does not need to be committed.

The Crop Tool in Photo is normally a canvas crop tool, and requires the Apply action, unless you are working (in Photo) on a document with Artboards or Pages instead of a Canvas. In those cases you'll also have the object-based crop tool.

[loukash]

13 hours ago, arcnor said:

Not sure if I'm missing something, but should pressing "Enter" to commit the crop part of the Photo persona on Publisher?

11 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

You're missing something. 

The Crop Tool in Designer, and in the Designer and Photo Personas of Publisher, is an object crop tool, not a canvas crop tool. It works as though you are clipping an object into a rectangle, and does not need to be committed.

Er… it's a bit more complex though:

• If you have only one page in Publisher, the Photo persona Crop tool will behave as expected from the Photo app.
• If you have multiple pages, the canvas Crop tool automagically becomes the vector crop tool.

Correspondingly, if you open a multipage document in Affinity Photo, its Crop tool will be the vector one.

I suspect this is "by design" although frankly I find it a bit weird.
And it's already in v1 like that.

[Petar Petrenko]

15 minutes ago, loukash said:

Er… it's a bit more complex though:

• If you have only one page in Publisher, the Photo persona Crop tool will behave as expected from the Photo app.
• If you have multiple pages, the canvas Crop tool automagically becomes the vector crop tool.

Correspondingly, if you open a multipage document in Affinity Photo, its Crop tool will be the vector one.

I suspect this is "by design" although frankly I find it a bit weird.
And it's already in v1 like that.

They must change it to work as in Publisher and Designer because, this way, it is used no more than once if you need to crop the canvas. Totally useless. If you plan wisely i.e. by defining the canvas size at the very start, you will not use it at all.

[Chris B]

We  logged this yesterday because it's currently wrong on iPad.

[davidkuri]

Just here to say thank you for these fantastic changes!

[Antricion]

• Quote

  When you rotate / use straighten feature in crop tool it will now automatically adjust crop box to fit.

  While this works great when rotating a full image, I have some issues with that if I try to rotate after cropping. As the cropped away part still exists, I sometimes want to re-adjust the rotation after cropping, e.g. when I didn't see it before, or didn't get it exactly. Now rotating re-crops the image, even though it is not needed, since enough of the previous image exists to perform the rotation without additional cropping. Could that autocrop on rotation be made optional?

[yeffdaley]

On 5/23/2023 at 6:08 PM, Antricion said:

• While this works great when rotating a full image, I have some issues with that if I try to rotate after cropping. As the cropped away part still exists, I sometimes want to re-adjust the rotation after cropping, e.g. when I didn't see it before, or didn't get it exactly. Now rotating re-crops the image, even though it is not needed, since enough of the previous image exists to perform the rotation without additional cropping. Could that autocrop on rotation be made optional?

Here to second this. Pretty unfortunate bug.

 

Edited May 28, 2023 by yeffdaley
quote already provided context

[Chris B]

I have logged this issue with the developers.

[eric4758]

What drives me crazy is that when I want to straighten a photo, I have to go into the crop tool first and it'll then automatically draw a crop outline that is smaller than the actual photo before I've even touched any adjustments. I'd like to straighten the image first and then start cropping in either one or two dimensions/ratios of my liking but no, Affinity Photo will first draw crop lines around the photo in a smaller size than the actual photo. There is no auto-alignment with the outer lines of a photo like I can do on my Galaxy S20 Photo Editor app. So whenever I crop a pic, I get white areas in a cropped photo because I've adjusted the line outside of the actual photo (happens in a scenario when I'm using a crop ratio that is different from the photo's original ratio).

[AltoTajo]

Hi,

I find that my macro to infill after a straighten image does not work as expected after the upgrade to V2.1

The macro is from the video for straightening " Straightening Images (Affinity Photo) - YouTube "

To get around this problem I have to take the extra step after straightening BUT do not accept yet, instead open out the crop edges to include the transparent / area for infilling. Then accept and run your macro. 

Hope this helps others. [ is there a better way ]

 

[Batbel258]

On 6/11/2023 at 6:48 AM, AltoTajo said:

Hi,

I find that my macro to infill after a straighten image does not work as expected after the upgrade to V2.1

The macro is from the video for straightening " Straightening Images (Affinity Photo) - YouTube "

To get around this problem I have to take the extra step after straightening BUT do not accept yet, instead open out the crop edges to include the transparent / area for infilling. Then accept and run your macro. 

Hope this helps others. [ is there a better way ]

 

I noticed that too 😒 and I'm going manual as you are or I use the old v1.0

beside the fact that I need to click the macro few times before it works

Please fix it or tell us how to downgrade to a previous version where it was working. It's an essential tool! Thanks

[ronnyb]

On 4/6/2023 at 4:54 AM, Ash said:

We have now added this functionality in the latest build if you want to give it a go...

@Ash It would also be great if the crop tool could remove perspective with independent horizontal and vertical keystone sliders, as well as freeform like this: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CtorBHTKDKT/?igshid=MWQ1ZGUxMzBkMA==

[ATP]

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

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).

Would you consider a checkbox to enable/disable the old behavior? I've used 2.1.x for some time now and it has begun to grind my gears a bit, having to hit Ctrl+0 every time. I understand this was changed based on feedback, but I've never experienced a scenario where I wanted to keep the original zoom level.

[Batbel258]

3 hours ago, ATP said:

Would you consider a checkbox to enable/disable the old behavior? I've used 2.1.x for some time now and it has begun to grind my gears a bit, having to hit Ctrl+0 every time. I understand this was changed based on feedback, but I've never experienced a scenario where I wanted to keep the original zoom level.

I would really appreciate an on an off checkbox too

Right now when I have to straighten a photo and fill the empty areas I have to use A.Photo 1 or another program I have because the version 2.1 doesn't let me do it.

I'm not sure if I will upgrade again: for me that function is the one I use the most and I really miss it.

 

 

[walt.farrell]

14 hours ago, Batbel258 said:

I would really appreciate an on an off checkbox too

Right now when I have to straighten a photo and fill the empty areas I have to use A.Photo 1 or another program I have because the version 2.1 doesn't let me do it.

Can you explain that further?

I don't see any changes that would prevent straightening and filling the empty areas. In that regard, for me, V1 and V2 seem identical, so I'm probably not understanding exactly the method you're using.

[Batbel258]

On 7/17/2023 at 7:45 AM, walt.farrell said:

Can you explain that further?

I don't see any changes that would prevent straightening and filling the empty areas. In that regard, for me, V1 and V2 seem identical, so I'm probably not understanding exactly the method you're using.

Please watch this short tutorial by James-Affinity Photo Macro  

It's one of my favorite macros and I use it often. It works if after straightening the cropping area stays wide and doesn't shrink 

It would be very useful to have a pref/ check box where you can choose to keep the area wide instead of shrinking and loosing part of the photo as it 's happening in V.2

Many others in this thread are also requesting it. 

See my example below

 

This image has been cropped unpainted and straightened using Photo v1: no details have been missing

 

The last one has been straightened  using the new cropping tool in Photo v2.1

You can see it's much smaller and lost several details

[Return]

Something like this?
 

 

 

[ATP]

57 minutes ago, Batbel258 said:

Please watch this short tutorial by James-Affinity Photo Macro  

It's one of my favorite macros and I use it often. It works if after straightening the cropping area stays wide and doesn't shrink 

It would be very useful to have a pref/ check box where you can choose to keep the area wide instead of shrinking and loosing part of the photo as it 's happening in V.2

Many others in this thread are also requesting it. 

I think this is another great example of different workflows benefiting from an option to enable/disable the old behavior. I myself think the old behavior is better, but a checkbox would make everyone happy.