Cropping destructively

[Madame]

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.

 

I see. That was not what one would expect. Very awkward indeed! 

[hujikoda]

On 11/14/2016 at 7:38 PM, MartinK said:

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!

Agreed on that

[MCFC_4Heatons]

I've just been playing aorund with Affinity Photo and to me the crop tools is a bit unintuitive - Once I have cropped I have already decided how and which area to crop and the idea of accidently dragging the cropped image area is a  bit weird. The only thing I can see is the raterize and trim option in the layers panel. Compard to the tools I'm used to I do find it confusing.

No, I don't want to use the marquee tool either ...

[MCFC_4Heatons]

.... Just to add also, as a long-time Fireworks user, you can't underestimate how useful these option are in Fireworks, especially if you're creating mockups:

Crops selected bitmap (crops the slection only and doesn't affect canavs size)

Crop document (crops canvas to the selection)

Trim canvas (similair to crop document)

Fit canvas (resizes canvas to fit all layers, including objects outside of the document area)

Used these a zillion times over the years - so simple, yet really useful. Something to think about for Photo and Designer maybe?

[Mann Artt]

It looks to me like there is still no easy way to permanently crop (i.e. crop destructively). If not, IMHO, this needs to be added ASAP. 

From a workflow standpoint (I guess I'm used to the Photoshop tool from many years of use), NOT having a destructive capability actually makes my job harder. 

There ARE times you want to cut away the stuff you don't need!

[Jowday]

2 minutes ago, Mann Artt said:

From a workflow standpoint (I guess I'm used to the Photoshop tool from many years of use), NOT having a destructive capability actually makes my job harder. 

There ARE times you want to cut away the stuff you don't need!

Yes, and in my case almost every time.

All we need is this little fellow:

[Mann Artt]

Yes! It could be so easy... 

I just spent 15 minutes having to do manually what that button could do in a second! 😫

[zwilson]

+1 for a destructive crop option.

[jlritt]

I've been an Affinity user for about a year and wanted to chime in here because I've spent way too much time trying to find a work around for this exact request. My need is related to needing the objects to remain vectors for laser cutting. 

Say I have a pattern I've created and want to put this design in a hexagon for wooden coasters. I can use the clipping mask to hide whatever is outside the hex when in normal view but when I go to Outline View Mode, it shows everything outside of the hexagon shape. Which is exactly what Lightburn or Inkscape sees too. That means more laser time cutting unnecessary things and also the inability to put things in certain spots because even if I can't see it in normal view mode due to clipping mask, the laser programs will see whatever is hidden. 

[TheCryptKicker]

Time warp two years after the last post in this thread and nearly ten years after the original post with several mentions of feature requests in-between, and yet here I sit in 2024 after working appreciatively with Affinity Photo for a year with no destructive cropping ability.

As wonderful as Photo has been to escape the mega-corporation attitude of Photoshop, the lack of this simple feature is costing me so much time, I'm considering giving up my pride and going back. Here's a real-world task in my daily life:

• Collecting hundreds of screenshots (on contract with IP clearance), cropping them down to only the screenshots, and bulk-saving them off as JPGs.

Should be super freaking easy, yes? It is right up until the part where I have to crop and wind up going layer by layer, Select All > Cut > Paste > Select the layer below > Deselect All > Personal Shortcut Key to Delete Layer. Still easy? Not even a little.
 

A topical example file has 201 layers with a width of two monitors. Saving a file with that much unneeded pixel data is enormous and wasteful even at screen resolution. I simply want to crop out the extra screen's worth of pixel data, not hide it and still pay for it on file size. Even if I unplug my second monitor and only take screenshots of the one monitor, I still have to extract the screenshot from the browser border.

I've gone to the extent of trying to use a saved macro that I can (somewhat) quickly apply to each and every layer: creating a marquee of the same size and position, cutting it, pasting it, then deleting the left-over shell layer beneath it, but the automation isn't spry enough to pull this off. Even if it could, it's still a time-consuming work-around.

I'm not interested in other work-arounds either in-program or out. I know I could download untrusted third-party software that only screen-caps a certain portion of the screen. Not interested. What I'd like as a customer is either a) a solution with a proposed date for completion, or b) a definitive, "Not ever going to happen," that I suppose should assume is the unspoken answer. Here's a ridiculous c) let me at a sandboxed version of Photo and I'll code up a destructive crop pro-bono!

I'd register yet another feature request for this issue, but I can't find the feature request area. A search query turns up zero results, so please consider this an impassioned request for a destructive crop tool. Working with Affinity otherwise is a dream, faster and smarter than PS save this MAMMOTH oversight. Does no one at Affinity use the crop tool? Is it just me now bothered by this? Is there some secret destructive cropping ability that I'm not finding in the program or online? Is it not the most frustrating limitation everyone's encountered? Am I just shouting in the wind from a future that never was?

Edited May 19, 2024 by TheCryptKicker

[Catshill]

I have no problem with rasterise and trim after cropping if I want destructive. 
 

[TheCryptKicker]

37 minutes ago, Catshill said:

I have no problem with rasterise and trim after cropping if I want destructive. 
 

Brilliant @Catshill! Please share your process of handling the trimming of 100+ layers in one go.

Edited May 19, 2024 by TheCryptKicker
poor grammar

[carl123]

40 minutes ago, TheCryptKicker said:

Please share your process of handling the trimming of 100+ layers in one go

You can select all 100 layers, at once, and then do just one Rasterise & Trim command.

Is this what you are looking to do?

[TheCryptKicker]

11 minutes ago, carl123 said:

You can select all 100 layers and then do just one Rasterise & Trim command.

Is this what you are looking to do?

Yes! In lieu of a true cropping tool, this effectively does the same thing, provided nothing has been put into folder groups already.
This was the work-around that I could not find anywhere in the forum or in the vastness of the internet.

Thank you so much, @carl123!
 

The offer to code a one-step crop that actually crops by dictionary definition still stands though.