Marquee and lasso disappear

[AndyV]

Very odd thing just occurred. First time i've ever seen it. Fwiw I upgraded to 2.6 a couple weeks ago.

I'm doing a LOT of magic wand/marquee/lasso work on hundreds of files to remove the white (paper) background of drawings I have scanned. The steps are simple: I use the wand at tolerance of 10%. Then there are areas that I need to select out bit by bit, either using Marquee or Lasso in "Add" mode. Laborious. And unfortunately the new object selection tool doesn't seem to work well for drawings. (Correct me if I'm wrong. I only tried it once and it failed miserably.)

Anyway, on this particular file, I did the Wand on the background and the ants dutifully appeared. Then I chose the Marquee to select out some areas. But this time I couldn't see what I was doing. I thought I had accidentally unselected the layer, but it is still selected. Clicked caps lock on and off to be sure. Selected another tool altogether and went back to Marquee to be sure.

But even though I couldn't see it, it still made the selection. I just went to another file (I open six at a time) and I COULD see the marquee working fine. I went. back to the troublesome file and i still could NOT see the marquee outline.

Any ideas what could be going on? 50-50 chance it's some idiotic thing I did but i cant figure it out.

 

EDIT: I finished with the selection of the background, removed it (cmd-x). then i tried the marquee again, and I COULD see the outlines again.

Very weird.

EDiT AGAIN: Now i'm using the Clone tool on this same file. It is working, but I can't see the + sign wherever i put it, or wherever it is as i move around on the image.

[GarryP]

If you can record and share a full-screen (whole application UI) video which shows the problem then we can see everything that you can see and be able to advise more easily.

The solution might be something as simple as a Context Toolbar setting, so make sure that we can see that in the video.

[AndyV]

oooh i don't know how to do video. is that built in on a Mac somewhere?

and i just retrace my steps and tried the wand then the marquee and I cOULD see it now.

 

but as my second edit says, now i don't see the + sign of the clone tool.

....

and as for the context tool bar, there really arent that many choices for the marquee that suggest a way to shut off the outlines. and again, it now works all of a sudden.

[AndyV]

I have to keep moving on this work. i finished that file and the next one works fine.

Is it possible that memory gets choked at ONE file like this? i had six files open, each under 1mb each.  Affinity currently using 5% cpu. 1.61 gb of ram. out of 64gb.

[GarryP]

12 minutes ago, AndyV said:

oooh i don't know how to do video. is that built in on a Mac somewhere?

 

[GarryP]

15 minutes ago, AndyV said:

now i don't see the + sign of the clone tool.

Which “+ sign”? What exactly did it look like? Four separate lines with a gap, or two crossed lines?

When using the Clone Brush Tool there are at least two mouse pointers that look like a 'plus' that can be shown at different times for different reasons.

[AndyV]

The plus sign that you mark where the clone tool grabs pixels from. That was not visible ON THAT FILE. I'm on another file now and i can see it.

[GarryP]

When you hold the Alt key down you should get a ‘crosshair’ (two short vertical lines above each other, and two short horizontal lines to the left and right of a gap in the centre of all the lines) which you can use to select the source.

Are you holding Alt down but you don’t see the ‘crosshair’?

If so, I don’t know why you can’t see it but I can’t see what you are working with so I don’t have enough information. I can't see what's on your screen or what you are doing with it.

[AndyV]

Not the cross hair with the empty space, but the cross hair that you place when you click that alt cross hair with empty space.

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, AndyV said:

Not the cross hair with the empty space, but the cross hair that you place when you click that alt cross hair with empty space.

Try temporarily hiding all the layers in your document. When you then alt-click somewhere in the document do you see the crosshair then?

[AndyV]

There is only one layer.

This has become a moot point now. I finished editing and closed that one file. Since then I edited another 10 and they all worked. I'll just have to leave this as a mystery.

[R C-R]

20 minutes ago, AndyV said:

I'll just have to leave this as a mystery.

I suspect it was there all along, just too hard to easily see among the pixels of the document. That has happened to me several times, which is why I suggested hiding the layers.

Anyway, glad it is working fine for you now.