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This may seem like an odd question but is there any way to crop 'destructively'? That is to say to make a crop physically erase permanently everything outside its bounds. 

 

I won't bother you with the reasons but there are times I would like to be able to completely remove all the excess material that extends beyond the image border.

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I'm looking for something similar, although I've used the cropping successfully to make a circle into a witch's cauldron, there are times when I would like to use the knife version in other Serif products to cut an item into two- with a freehand cut, not always a straight line cut - and to separate the cut parts and use them independently.

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Hi David ,

In Affinity Photo there's no way to do it permanently directly with the Crop Tool. You have to rasterise the cropped layer to get rid of the cropped data.

Which, if understand correctly, means that I have to go through a complex multi layered image layer by layer and lose any layer masks, effects etc. in the process. 

 

Looks like I'm going to be posting in Feature Requests again ........  ;)

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Yes that’s a very reasonable question Miguel. You are not the first to ask that of some of my images. 

 

I often work huge complex high resolution multi layered images. I think this is easiest explained with an example. So I have attached one. Please excuse the watermark but I have had too much work pirated from the web not be cautious.

 

This image is about 150 MP in size. It prints 150cms square at about 200DPI. This may seem a ludicrously high resolution for a large print that is normally viewed from a distance. But it is an image packed with tiny details, so I want the viewer to be able not only to view from a distance to appreciate the entirety, but to be able to get up really close and enjoy all the fun inside as well!

 

As you can imagine a composite this size, built from scratch, runs into many hundreds of image layers and mask and adjustment layers. Despite compressing huge groups of layers into Smart Objects to reduce the number of layers in current memory (which I can’t do in Affinity) it is incredibly resource hungry. Even on a Mac Pro with 32GB RAM it really stretches things to the limit. 

 

So as a matter of habit I regularly set the crop tool to the image border and ‘re-crop’ to the same size simply to trim any excess ‘fat’ from outside the image area. 

 

Odd maybe …… but that’s how I work …..  ;) 

 

I have yet to attempt an image this heavy in Affinity. Whether, without smart objects, it will be able to cope I have no idea. It’s going to be interesting to find out.

post-9119-0-23538300-1478266504_thumb.jpg

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I often work huge complex high resolution multi layered images. 

Me too. I just had exhibition opening, many works are sized 90cmX140cm or 100cmX120cm @300 dpi. Original images were 16-bit 7000X10000 px, up to 30 of them layered together. I think maximum file size was 15 GB, and 5 GB was common. Of course there was a lot of affinity fluff in this size. Even merged down Photoshop says "Not enough memory" (I have 16 GB RAM). AP worked just fine (occasional spinning ball).

 

I considered cropping layers but it was not necessary (and often not achievable).

 

I may post some online soon but gallery site (without much images) is http://www.papugalleria.fi/

At the moment facebook has some more images.

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Why would a person want to crop destructively?  Rotate the crop tool to straighten an image, do a crop to remove the empty space, then try to use a function such as Perspective or Mesh Warp and watch it fit the grid to the rotation rather than the image.  Those are not the only examples of the need for an Option for a destructive crop.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Why would a person want to crop destructively?

 

Very easy: Imagine you make a screenshot from any site and you only want one detail of it. Why is it useful to hold the complete picture in memory? For me the Crop-function is irritating - in Photoshop Elements it's so that this function erase permanently everything outside its bounds so how DavidMac wrote at first.

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Or how about this situation?  Here's what happens to my carefully straightened and cropped shot when I Resize the Canvas to try (unsuccessfully, of course) to add a white mat-like border around my image!  A snap in Photoshop; endless frustration in Affinity Photo.  This is the point where I throw up my hands, export as a Tiff to freeze the crop, then re-open the Tiff and finish in APhoto.

 

<Large file removed>

Edited by Patrick Connor
Large file removed
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@LilleG:

 

I don't understand you - is this a point for or again the crop-function in Affinity? Of course my understanding problems are also there because english is not my native language.

LilleG is citing examples for destructive crop. I agree. "Crop" even means get rid of, not hide. Masks hide. Crops should get rid of, IMHO.

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Jer has it right.  It was to illustrate a need for a destructive crop.  My original question, which caused the confusion, "Why would a person want to crop destructively?" was a response to an earlier post questioning the need for a destructive crop.  And I was advocating for a destructive crop that should have always been an option.  

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what I find worst is that, although cropping is non destructive, one can not see the area while expanding a crop back to reveal more of the image. The area is only visible after committing that crop.

 

That should be fixed, and there probably should be an option for a destructive crop as well. You can work around this by clipping though, 

 

And there should be an option to reset the crop to the original picture if done non destructively.

 

 

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@LilleG @jer:

 

Ok I understand. So in my view the actually "crop"-function in Affinity photo makes no sense (for me). It's rather irritating. Normally, you already know whether you want to edit the entire image or only a part of it. In general the nondestructive concept is very good but not in this case.

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Another example why the "crop"-function in Affinity is not intuitive:

 

I have a picture like this, with a swan.

 

post-38472-0-33948500-1478988956_thumb.jpg

 

Now I want cut the left part and replace with a (text) box. In Photoshop Elements it's very easy:

 

post-38472-0-63939800-1478989636_thumb.gif

 

post-38472-0-90515700-1478989644_thumb.gif

 

post-38472-0-91336600-1478989650_thumb.gif

 

post-38472-0-14028400-1478989656_thumb.gif

 

How can I get this result in simple steps with Affinity?

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Sorry for the sidestep, but that is seriously awesome work. Can I see more of your work somewhere? :D

 

 

I like the work of DavidMac very much, too. It's fantastic!

 

Thank you both. That's very kind. You can find more of my work (but less ambitious) here www.cambiguities.com  Hope you like it.

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How can I get this result in simple steps with Affinity?

 

Why not just cover the area left with a text box? (Or a box and the text). No need to crop anything.

Actually you just want to make left part of image white, not crop the image, which would not leave any space to text.

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  • Staff

Another example why the "crop"-function in Affinity is not intuitive:

 

I have a picture like this, with a swan.

 

attachicon.gifSchwan.jpg

 

How can I get this result in simple steps with Affinity?

 

Hi MartinK,

The process is similar but there's one more step:

- crop the image as necessary

- right-click on it on the Layers panel and select Rasterise...

- go to menu Resize Canvas to add the empty space.

 

In the beginning there was a checkbox to make the crop destructive, but due to some issues it was removed. I believe all these will be polished/solved and the tools improved as we move forward on both platforms and the application matures. We are aware that a few users are not happy with the Crop Tool. Hopefully this will be looked again later.

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Hi MEB,

 

thanks for your solution, it works fine. But last night I figured out how to do it - so I have to say that the current crop function is not even bad: If I want to cut a picture I just go to the point reduce - voilà! As simple as that. :) And than I can easy add empty space at the picture.

 

A checkbox to make the crop destructive as a matter of fact would be useful but so it's not really bad how I thought before. I'm looking forward to the progress of Affinity software!

 

 

@Fixx:

 

Ok, but what if I already have a cropped picture? And the problem is solved as you can read now. Thanks.

 

 

@DavidMac:

 

Your pictures are fascinating! Really interesting. I like this kind of art.

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You won't see anything unless you decide to resize the canvas (maybe some other operations as well?)  But if you do try to resize, suddenly your original pre-crop but rotated (if you did any straightening )image is back with some really oddly shaped blank space around it where you resized the canvas.

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