Rendering of selections (invisible selections)

[NotMyFault]

Pixel selection in Affinity Photo can reach „invisible“ state if you have small area selected (e.g. 1 px in a large document, zoomed out), or the opacity is extremely low (e.g. using quick mask mode and a very soft brush).

We have many users reporting issues and bugs with symptoms like brush not working (including erase brush), or filter and adjustments not working (by accidentally inheriting the active selection).

Whenever the opacity is below 50%, no „marching ants“ are shown and the user has almost none visual indication of the selection.

Please add a clearly visual indication whenever a selection is active, in addition to „marching ants“. The indication should be visible no matter which tool is active.

[GarryP]

Sounds good to me, as an option for people to switch ON/OFF as required, but I’m wondering what the visual indication would look like.

Would it be something displayed on the canvas as some kind of ‘coloured area of influence’, or an icon on the Context Bar (which isn’t always visible), or something in the Status Bar, or something else?

[NotMyFault]

Intentionally I did not give a fixed target, as Affinity developers seems loving to be creative on their own.

Some ideas:

• Having marching ants in multiple colors, or different line patterns
  • one line as today: showing 50% line
  • one line showing zero to non-zero line (lowest value above zero)
  • one line showing one to below-one line (largest value below one).
• getting an indicator in status line (first line below menu)
• Whenever you try to apply a brush in an area where the combination of brush settings (e.g. opacity) and selection leads to no change of pixel layer is possible: give temporary message (configurable), audio or visual warning "brush is used outside selected area" 

Looking forward to your suggestions.

 

A similar warning would be great if you can click non-working UI elements (e.g. blend modes for mask layers).

[GarryP]

I was thinking of something like a ‘toggle’ where the user could switch between three ‘modes’ of marching ants...

For example:
‘normal mode’ = as now, black and white ants, showing the 50% line;
‘exhaustive mode’ = red and black ants, showing every pixel that is selected, even if ‘partially’;
‘minimal mode’ = blue and white ants, showing only the pixels that are ‘wholly selected’.

...with maybe a clickable icon on the Status Bar which shows which mode is active and whether a pixel selection is active. (Maybe the icon changes depending on the mode and it has an outline if there is a pixel selection and no outline if there isn’t, or something like that.)

I think this is pretty close to what you have suggested.

(I’m not bothered about the exact colour schemes as long as they are easily distinguishable.)

Now to just sit back and wait and see...

[walt.farrell]

Is the issue that it's not clear which pixels are selected when the marching ants are visible, or that with a tiny selection somewhere in the image it's confusing when (a) the user has forgotten the selection and (b) brushes, etc. don't seem to be working correctly?

I think it's the latter, and for that a simple (but highly visible) flag in the Context Toolbar might suffice. Just changing the colors of the selection or the ants probably wouldn't work, especially for a very small pixel selection.

[Alfred]

24 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

I think it's the latter

It’s also the former:

24 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

it's not clear which pixels are selected when the marching ants are visible

As stated in the OP to this thread:

On 3/6/2024 at 10:57 AM, NotMyFault said:

Whenever the opacity is below 50%, no „marching ants“ are shown and the user has almost none visual indication of the selection.

 

[NotMyFault]

20 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Is the issue that it's not clear which pixels are selected when the marching ants are visible, or that with a tiny selection somewhere in the image it's confusing when (a) the user has forgotten the selection and (b) brushes, etc. don't seem to be working correctly?

ad: it's not clear which pixels are selected

• yes, that is the major part of the issue. Would be great to see all pixels that are partially selected

It falls into 2 sup-parts:

• pixels selected below 50% opacity
• pixel selections becoming invisible by zoom factor

ad:

 think it's the latter, and for that a simple (but highly visible) flag in the Context Toolbar might suffice.

yes, that would be a great solution.

What increases the confusion if having a "low opacity" selection active, then activate the move tool. Now you will see a bounding box of the selection, but absolutely no indication that it is a pixel selection and not the layer itself you are modifying. Most user will be unable to interpret the UI at this time.