photo - freehand tool

[Scoot]

I'm trying to use the freehand tool like I've always used it to select an area in a photo or picture to cut that out, but for some reason after making a selection and cutting or copying when I go to paste it pastes the entire photo or picture as if I didn't have a specific area selected with the freehand tool. What am I doing wrong?

[walt.farrell]

You are probably trying to select pixels from an Image layer, not from a Pixel layer. Check the Layers panel to see which you have, and if it's an Image layer you need to Rasterize it. You can do that from the Layer menu or by right-clicking the entry in the Layers panel and choosing Rasterize.

[Scoot]

Thanks Walt, I would have never guessed. Why can't Affinity Photo just rasterize what's selected instead of requiring every image that's brought in to be rasterized first before the marquee tool will work? Also is it possible to check something in the settings to automatically rasterize all pasted items?

[walt.farrell]

7 minutes ago, Scoot said:

Why can't Affinity Photo just rasterize what's selected instead of requiring every image that's brought in to be rasterized first before the marquee tool will work?

You're welcome, Scoot.

There are benefits in some (many?) workflows to having Image layers. You may not appreciate them yet

7 minutes ago, Scoot said:

Also is it possible to check something in the settings to automatically rasterize all pasted items?

No.

But you are not the first user to complain that there should be something more automatic done in this area.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

There are benefits in some (many?) workflows to having Image layers. You may not appreciate them yet

About that, from the Image layers help topic, there is this:

Quote

 

Image layers retain all of the data from the original image, which remains intact when the document is exported.

An image layer has a container which retains the placed image's original color space, resolution and physical dimensions (when placed at native resolution).

Image layers can be recolored much like an opened image or a pixel layer. If an image layer is drawn on, the layer will be rasterized and will adopt pixel layer properties. Rasterization is required to convert the image to the document's color space.