Crop Tool improvements

[ronnyb]

4 hours ago, Ash said:

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

Great to hear Ash. Also, a secondary press on Esc after the initial resetting should Cancel out of the Crop tool setting modification/mini-persona view. 

Esc key should ALWAYS equate with pressing the Cancel button out of the currently open window/panel/dialog /studio panel. This consistency is not the case currently in many areas, previously noted by myself and others.

Thanks for all you do!

[loukash]

1 hour ago, ronnyb said:

Esc key should ALWAYS equate with pressing the Cancel button out of the currently open window/panel/dialog /studio panel. This consistency is not the case currently in many areas, previously noted by myself and others.

!!!

[Ash]

2 hours ago, ronnyb said:

Also, a secondary press on Esc after the initial resetting should Cancel out of the Crop tool setting modification/mini-persona view. 

Erm, yeah perhaps - back to previous tool? It's a slightly strange one as crop does kind of have its own mode I guess, but also still a tool - and escape doesn't switch other tools back to previous. But I get what you mean. 

TBH agree with your general point. We won't have time in this cycle but perhaps in next update we can have a general return / escape key behaviour review and make sure we are always doing something sensible.

[Hangman]

6 hours ago, Ash said:

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

@Ash, this is a great addition, thanks for that... I would still like to address one question raised earlier regarding whether, when using an unconstrained crop, the default for that crop should default to fit image.

The addition of esc is great as a method of resetting the crop when jumping between images of different pixel dimensions but it makes no practical sense, when using an unconstrained crop, that the crop uses the pixel dimensions from the previous crop as you are never going to want to honour that particular crop unless you are cropping multiple images with matching pixel dimensions... hopefully the video in my previous post demonstrates the issue (post 20 on page 1 of this thread).

It works perfectly for images with different pixel dimensions when using common ratio presets but zero sense when using an unconstrained crop.

[Old Bruce]

1 hour ago, Ash said:

in next update we can have a general return / escape key behaviour review and make sure we are always doing something sensible.

Include the increasingly erratic behaviour of the Tab key in the various fields of various panels. Each update seems to degrade the usability of the Tab, Return, Enter, and Escape keys. It has become a chore to use the suite.

[loukash]

1 hour ago, Ash said:

Erm, yeah perhaps - back to previous tool? It's a slightly strange one as crop does kind of have its own mode I guess, but also still a tool - and escape doesn't switch other tools back to previous.

Yeah, that "Cancel" button always seemed the odd thing about the Crop tool to me. In fact, I'm simply using "H" (Hand tool) as the "cancel" shortcut.  

[loukash]

@Ash, speaking of the Crop tool in general…
I still don't understand why the regular Crop tool in the main persona doesn't have the Crop To Bounds and Crop To Opaque options while the Panorama persona does:

[Sonny Sonny]

Crop bounding box transformation could be much more better if we can do that by hover the mouse and drag wherever along with the bounding border instead of hovering the center point of the vertical/horizontal bounding border.

[bures]

2 hours ago, Sonny Sonny said:

Crop bounding box transformation could be much more better if we can do that by hover the mouse and drag wherever along with the bounding border instead of hovering the center point of the vertical/horizontal bounding border.

I totally agree. I often need to have this option. E.g. at high magnification, when shifting the view, etc.

 

The resizing of the shapes would need similar improvements:

 

[Ash]

18 hours ago, Hangman said:

The addition of esc is great as a method of resetting the crop when jumping between images of different pixel dimensions but it makes no practical sense, when using an unconstrained crop, that the crop uses the pixel dimensions from the previous crop as you are never going to want to honour that particular crop unless you are cropping multiple images with matching pixel dimensions... hopefully the video in my previous post demonstrates the issue (post 20 on page 1 of this thread).

Yeah, think I agree - there are some rare circumstances where it might be useful, but in the main we've probably introduced something which is annoyance most of the time in unconstrained mode. We'll change it!

[ronnyb]

21 hours ago, Ash said:

Erm, yeah perhaps - back to previous tool? It's a slightly strange one as crop does kind of have its own mode I guess, but also still a tool - and escape doesn't switch other tools back to previous. But I get what you mean.

@Ash exactly, it’s the only tool set up like a mini-persona…

Perhaps the Cancel button can be renamed to Reset, as there is nothing to cancel out of? And pressing Esc after the Crop tool is selected would reset all of the tools’ parameters/settings changed in the Context toolbar since the last time the user selected the tool or pressed Esc to reset?

[loukash]

47 minutes ago, ronnyb said:

Perhaps the Cancel button can be renamed to Reset

There is already a Reset button: It resets the crop dimensions to full canvas without leaving the Crop "halfpersona". That's a Good Thing™.
I think Cancel is OK here.

[Hangman]

55 minutes ago, ronnyb said:

Perhaps the Cancel button can be renamed to Reset, as there is nothing to cancel out of?

I may be missing the point here but obviously Cancel literally cancels the crop action and the Reset button on the context toolbar Resets the crop (as now does the esc key) which both make perfect sense, so I see these as two completely different functions.

1. I've clicked the crop tool but then decide I want to do something else first so I simply hit Cancel and that removes the crop function completely.
    
2. I've clicked the crop tool, made some adjustments to my crop but then decide I'm not happy with those adjustment so Reset keeps me in crop mode but takes me back to the start so I can make a new set of adjustments.

 

4 minutes ago, loukash said:

There is already a Reset button: It resets the crop dimensions to full canvas without leaving the Crop "halfpersona". That's a Good Thing™.
I think Cancel is OK here.

I'm likewise happy with how both currently work... I appreciate that the norm is for esc to cancel an operation which you could argue it isn't technically doing in this instance but you could equally argue (or politely suggest) it is cancelling the prior crop adjustments made when dragging the crop handles...

[ronnyb]

1 hour ago, Hangman said:

1 hour ago, loukash said:

There is already a Reset button: It resets the crop dimensions to full canvas without leaving the Crop "halfpersona". That's a Good Thing™.
I think Cancel is OK here.

I'm likewise happy with how both currently work... I appreciate that the norm is for esc to cancel an operation which you could argue it isn't technically doing in this instance but you could equally argue (or politely suggest) it is cancelling the prior crop adjustments made when dragging the crop handles...

True, perhaps then the first Esc resets (as current behavior) and a secondary press on Esc key within a sensible time frame (~1 sec?) pops out of the Crop mini-persona and selects the prior tool, NOT the Hand tool…?

[ronnyb]

@Ash BTW, the industry standard convention for Resetting  dialog boxes/filter settings is pressing Option key —momentarily changing the Cancel button’s name to Reset— and NOT Esc key which is used to back out of the currently open window/dialog/menu/etc.

Apple sanctions this UI behavior in the Finder, where holding down the Option key with the Go menu open, reveals secondary menu commands (Go to Library folder) and elsewhere.

This is why I suggested getting rid of Reset button and current Esc behavior, as it ought to be standard Reset mechanism used, not a new Esc-key linked reset mechanism. My 2 cents…

[gw_westdale]

I am being dim here .... beta 1709     I don't see the crop tool in the Designer Pixel Persona as mentioned in OP.
I do see it in the Designer persona where it does size to the selection (and works for an export selection) - but does not have an 'activate' button to carry out a crop

confused of Macclesfield.

[gw_westdale]

"If you have a pixel selection active the crop tool will now initiate to be a min fit around the selection you have. "
I misread this slightly and used a selected pixel layer, the crop was then set to the whole page.   beta 1709
It's probably the intended behaviour but thought I would mention this........
I was creating a framing layer and intending to crop to it - without having to make a subsequent exact alignment of the crop tool or the selection tool.

[Ash]

17 hours ago, gw_westdale said:

I don't see the crop tool in the Designer Pixel Persona as mentioned in OP.
I do see it in the Designer persona where it does size to the selection (and works for an export selection) - but does not have an 'activate' button to carry out a crop

Yes sorry, by OP was incorrect. The crop tool we are talking about here is the tool within Affinity Photo. The crop tool in Affinity Designer and Publisher are different. In effect the tool in Photo is a canvas crop, and the too in Designer / Publisher are a object crop. Apologies for the confusion - I have updated the original post.

[Ash]

17 hours ago, gw_westdale said:

I misread this slightly and used a selected pixel layer, the crop was then set to the whole page.   beta 1709
It's probably the intended behaviour but thought I would mention this........

You could go Select -> Selection from layer which will give you a pixel selection to the layer you have selected. Then the crop tool will initiate to that if that helps....

[Ash]

Couple of bits added from your feedback in the latest build available now:

• We do not remember last setting for an unconstrained crop as suggested
• You can now drag anywhere on the edges of the bounding box rather than needing to be over a handle.

[Frozen Death Knight]

I just had a thought about a feature that could be ported over from the Move Tool; double clicking an edge will resize the edge to match the length of the two sides adjacent to it, thus creating a square crop. Could be handy if you already have the metrics you want for a square and want to quickly get the correct shape without affecting the corner positioning on the opposite side.

[Hangman]

18 minutes ago, Ash said:

We do not remember last setting for an unconstrained crop as suggested

Hi @Ash, this is a huge and very welcome improvement, thank you...

[Petar Petrenko]

Hi,

when you select the crop tool in Designer or Publisher it matches the selected object(s), but in Photo it selects the whole canvas. Why it doesn't work the same way as in AD or APub?

When you create a new document it should be the size you wanted for that document. And if you want to change it later, you can do it by changing the size of the document. The same way you change the size of the artboard in AD or the size of the page in APub.

[Ash]

The Photo crop tool is specifically set up to crop images. In that case you are not starting with a specific document size, but the size of the source photo. And you really want / need to be able to crop that to suit visually to your image, not from changing some settings in a dialog.

That said there is a certainly an argument that Photo should also have the object crop tool from Designer and Publisher!

[Petar Petrenko]

22 minutes ago, Ash said:

you are not starting with a specific document size

Of course I start with a specific document size in Photo, just as in Designer and Publisher. After that I place images and adjust them except that I can't crop them.