olibclarke Posted August 23, 2016 Share Posted August 23, 2016 Hi, Possibly this already exists and I just don't know the correct key - if so my apologies. I would love to see a modifier key that allows one to cycle through selecting the objects under the cursor (so e.g. 1 click selects top layer under cursor, next click selects the next one down, etc). Would this be possible? At least for the simple things that I do this would speed up my workflow, and save some hunting in the layers panel. Cheers Oliver. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted August 23, 2016 Share Posted August 23, 2016 Try Alt-click (or perhaps Option-click on a Mac). Quote Alfred Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted August 23, 2016 Staff Share Posted August 23, 2016 Hi Oliver, Press ⌥ (option/alt) + click to cycle through overlapping layers on canvas. Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software | Affinity Quick Reference Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
olibclarke Posted August 23, 2016 Author Share Posted August 23, 2016 Ah, figured there was something I was missing! Thanks @Alfred and @MEB Cheers Oliver. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
olibclarke Posted August 24, 2016 Author Share Posted August 24, 2016 On that point - probably I am missing something here also - when a text box is several layers down, and I select it using alt-click, there doesn't seem to be anyway to edit the text without bringing it to the front (or at least double-clicking/double alt-clicking doesn't seem to work) - is this the intended behaviour or is there an easier way? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted August 24, 2016 Staff Share Posted August 24, 2016 I think there's no way to do it but that seems an edge case. Is there any use case where this is needed and you can't select the text directly on canvas? Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software | Affinity Quick Reference Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
olibclarke Posted August 24, 2016 Author Share Posted August 24, 2016 It is a pretty frequent case for me, when I have a figure with multiple layers (which are usually images with some transparent parts) and several labels that I need to edit. I can bring the label to the front after selecting it and then edit it, it just seems like if a label is selectable, double-clicking ought to allow for editing (unless there is some reason this behaviour is undesirable). Cheers Oliver. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Harris Posted August 24, 2016 Share Posted August 24, 2016 Once text is selected, you can switch to the Text tool by pressing T or by clicking on its icon in the toolbar. Either of those should be less disruptive than bringing the text to the front. And once in the text tool with the text object selected, it should stay selected as long as you are working with it. The double-click shortcuts don't work well to switch tools in these overlapping cases, because the first click changes the selection to the upper object. This happens because we can't know it is the first click of a double-click without actually waiting for the second click, and waiting would make the UI less responsive. This isn't text specific; the same issue arises with double-click on shapes and curves too. That said, we have considered a text-specific solution, which is to make the Text tool always prefer to select text. It would be inconsistent for the Text tool to behave differently to all the other tools, but it might be worth it. Even this would only help if you were already using the Text tool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
olibclarke Posted August 24, 2016 Author Share Posted August 24, 2016 Got it. "T" works, thanks Dave! Oliver. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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