Hide bounding box / transform handles

[matt.baker]

When selecting a font or using a slider to change the appearance of an object, the object transform handles and bounding box disappear so that you can see the changes more easily (especially useful for changes to the stroke). However, changing the fill using a numeric field or dragging the colour point in the spectrum view of the colour chooser doesn't hide it.

Would it be possible to define an operation to allow toggling on/off and/or hide it when its appearance is changed from any palette and only reappear once the mouse has moved back onto the canvas/artboard. If the mouse was already over the canvas, it should wait until the mouse is next moved until showing the bounding box and handles.

At the moment my work around is to select the View Tool [H] before making adjustments.

 

Edit: Already a common feature request under general functionality

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/10410-common-feature-requests-index/

Edited November 22, 2016 by mattb5906

[Stephen_H]

Not sure I follow you completely., but have you tried pressing the space bar to temporarily hide the bounding box?

[matt.baker]

Thanks Stephen. Yes, this works for most cases but not if its in the following view:

 

It instead starts to edit the numeric boxes with spaces.

[Stephen_H]

Ah, right... because the space bar is also a character. Got it.

 

I have the exact same complaint with InDesign – press the spacebar to pan around the page, but if you're typing, you just add dozens of spaces into your text box (it's a layout tool so of course you're going to be typing, duh).

 

Quark has it right: Press the Alt key instead. It's not a character, just a modifier key.

 

Caps Lock would be a good idea to hide/show the bounding box. Perhaps it could hide/show other guide elements like guides, handles, selection marquees, text baseline & frames, margins, bleed etc. all in one go – a temporary preview.

[Frank Jonen]

The hand tool used to work for that but not anymore. Only holding the spacebar still works still for moving items. Which means you have to hold 3 keys now just to move an item. Used to be 1 or 2 keys.

[moefinley]

It's ctrl+h in Photoshop. You don't have to hold it down. Why not do the same (or both if you really want a quick hide key)?

[groomedmonkey]

Has this been implemented at all? Holding the spacebar thing only really works in certain situations. Any time a text input it focused it breaks like when trying to use the Transform palette to adjust dimensions (width/height) precisely. The object handles really get in the way especially with pixel work and small objects. 

[Buffalo]

On 6/29/2018 at 2:24 AM, groomedmonkey said:

Has this been implemented at all? Holding the spacebar thing only really works in certain situations. Any time a text input it focused it breaks like when trying to use the Transform palette to adjust dimensions (width/height) precisely. The object handles really get in the way especially with pixel work and small objects. 

+1

"Hide transform controls" is all that is needed. Simply toggle that needs to be implemented.

[pixeldroid]

Its a very annoying hindrance not to be able to hide the bounding box of the currently selected object in both AF and AP. Such a basic oversight has been hard to fathom all these years...

Finally, I've discovered a workaround: Open the Outer Shadow effect and choose the Offset Tool. You can now select any layer and use the arrow keys to move it and see exactly what your image looks like. Note that you can use the 'v' key to toggle to the arrow and back the Offset Tool. Unfortunately you can't use the Transform Box w/the Offset Tool, (nor can you use it when pressing the spacebar).

[Christoph Werner]

In Affinity Photo 1.9.x you're able to do the following to hide control/transform handles:

1. Press h-key to toggle between the hand tool

2. Press spacebar-key to temporary activate hand tool

3. When adding fx to a layer the handles of an selected object will  be hidden, when adjusting values

4. Click outside your document to deselect all

That are the ways I figured out. Maybe there are more.