Right Click Menu — Please add: Lock and Unlock to speed up design process by an order of magnitude

[Norway4T]

So, you have a design with a multitude of objects, and you accidentally move an object you weren't supposed to move. Maybe you discover it way down the line, and then you've got a real headache trying to reconstruct the original design.

You can of course click the object, then use lots of time finding it in the Layers Panel, lock it, do the work in the area, safe in the knowledge that the object(s) won't accidentally be moved when you select and manipulate other object on or around the locked object(s). Then comes the time when you need to unlock the locked. Back to the Layers Panel, spend a whole lot of time locating it/them and unlocking said object(s) for editing.

HOW ABOUT adding two menu items in the 'right click on object(s) menu'?

You select the object or objects you want to preserve from your butter fingers, you right click, select LOCK in the menu that pops up, and Robert's your Father's Sister's Brother! And when you need to edit the object(s) again… Hey presto! Just right click and hit the UNLOCK item in the popup menu, and you have saved SEVERAL METRIC TONNES OF SWEAT for your Designer Customers, yours truly included! 

I spend an awful amount of time looking up objects in the Layers Panel in order to lock them from editing. And I spend an almost equal amount of time finding them again, in order to unlock them.

Im locked in the unlucky locking and unlocking unluckiness…

This Quick-Lock / Quick-Unlock system on the right click menu is so basic that I have expected that they'd be added at any new update of Affinity Designer, Photo and Publisher, but here we are — way into Version 2 of these brilliant Graphic Design Tools, and we're still sweating over this locking lack, quite unnecessarily. I imagine it would be a breeze writing this functionality into the Right Click Menu.

I also imagine that if you at Affinity are afraid of cluttering, you could offer a toggle in the settings menu, so that those of us who wants it, may have lock/unlock in the right click menu, and those who wants to take the detour via the Layers Panel may still do so?

So, how about it, you Cracking Brilliant Affinity Team? Is next update the lucky number?

Hope so! Thanks! 👍

[MikeTO]

FYI you can also lock the selected layer(s) with Cmd+L (Ctrl+L on Windows) and unlock with Shift+Cmd+L (Shift+Ctrl+L) on Windows. You can customize these keyboard shortcuts in Settings (Preferences) so if you spend all day drawing and not typing you could even change them to something as simple as L and U, whatever works for you.

[Norway4T]

MikeTO, I do use shortcuts whenever available, but for some reason Cmd+L / Shift+Cmd+L didn't work on my mac. I looked to see if one of my many other apps used them already, but no luck. BUT…!!! When I gave it another try right now, it worked!!!

Thank you for the nudge! If you hadn't suggested it, I wouldn't have bothered to try it again — PROBLEM SOLVED! Thanks buddy! 😊 👍

[anto]

3 hours ago, MikeTO said:

you can also lock the selected layer(s) with Cmd+L (Ctrl+L on Windows) and unlock with Shift+Cmd+L (Shift+Ctrl+L) on Windows

But you cannot do the same with objects on page. You cannot select any locked object.

In Indesign you have 2 possibility to unlock objects: on panel and on the pad icon on the objectsignt.

It will be useful also for Affinity.

 

 

[fde101]

4 hours ago, anto said:

But you cannot do the same with objects on page.

You can select them in the Layers panel, but I agree, an option to select a locked object by holding a modifier while clicking on it (or perhaps by double-clicking on it) would be useful at times.

[Pšenda]

10 hours ago, Norway4T said:

You can of course click the object, then use lots of time finding it in the Layers Panel,

10 hours ago, Norway4T said:

I spend an awful amount of time looking up objects in the Layers Panel

 or