selection tool will not cut and copy

[jefferis]

I am trying to use the rectangular selection tool to copy and paste a portion of a graphic image, but when I select cut or copy, it copies the ENTIRE image, not the selection !!!!   PAIN IN THE #O*#&    

[AffinityJules]

Sounds like you're trying to copy & paste an image layer.

Try rasterising it first.

Then it should work fine.

[R C-R]

See for example https://affinity.help/designer2/en-US.lproj/pages/Layers/layerImage.html for more about this special layer type.

[emiliog]

I created an account to chime in on how jaw-droppingly unintuitive this behavior is.  Virtually every editing software out there (raster, vector, text, video) has one expected behavior:  if you see a selection on screen and use any of the standard cut/copy/paste commands, it will operate on the selection.

Affinity has decided that an an unmarked selection (the layer object with no visible blue bounding box) overrides a visible selection (the marquee's "crawling ants").  I don't care what the layer type is, this is raster editing software.

Please make the "copy" command always operate on the visible selection, no matter what it is.  If necessary, add a separate, explicit "Copy layer" command.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, emiliog said:

Affinity has decided that an an unmarked selection (the layer object with no visible blue bounding box) overrides a visible selection (the marquee's "crawling ants").  I don't care what the layer type is, this is raster editing software.

That is not quite right. It is just that Affinity supports the Image layer type of container object that, to quote the help topic, retains the placed image's original color space, resolution and physical dimensions (when placed at native resolution). Because it is not a Pixel layer, you cannot select its pixels to copy them, but you can easily change it into a Pixel layer if you need to do that.

[walt.farrell]

9 minutes ago, R C-R said:

but you can easily change it into a Pixel layer if you need to do that.

Or you can use Edit > Copy Merged (or Flattened, depending on OS).

 

[emiliog]

32 minutes ago, R C-R said:

That is not quite right. It is just that Affinity supports the Image layer type of container object that, to quote the help topic, retains the placed image's original color space, resolution and physical dimensions (when placed at native resolution). Because it is not a Pixel layer, you cannot select its pixels to copy them, but you can easily change it into a Pixel layer if you need to do that.

I can't select the pixels to copy them, but I can select the pixels.  That's the UX incongruence here:

If these aren't actually "pixels" (uh, OK), then when I attempt to select them I should be notified that they are not things I can select.

Or, this raster editing software can actually favor editing images - rather than vaguely-defined object interactions - and just copy pixels when I make a pixel selection.

[walt.farrell]

30 minutes ago, emiliog said:

I can't select the pixels to copy them, but I can select the pixels.

No. You can draw a pixel selection marquee on the screen, but it is not associated with any specific layer and is not the pixels themselves. It's just an area of the screen, which can contain pixels if a pixel layer is currently active. But if a vector layer is active, for example, then it's just a marquee that doesn't contain anything.

And an Image layer is, in a way, a kind of vector layer.

When you don't have a pixel layer active, and you do Edit > Copy, you get a copy of the complete layer even if you have a pixel selection marquee active. There's no need to warn you, because Edit > Copy is simply context-sensitive, and functions depending on the context.

[thomaso]

37 minutes ago, emiliog said:

If these aren't actually "pixels" (uh, OK), then when I attempt to select them I should be notified that they are not things I can select.

Note that a pixel selection may be entirely independent from a certain layer type but may work rather similar to a colour picker tool. Below it is set to use "All layers" as source and thus it partially includes the vector rectangle layer in the resulting pixel selection. For this pixel selection the layer selection in the Layers panel does not matter, it selects the same green if another layer or if no layer is selected.