How do I hide the "marching ants" of a selection

[R C-R]

40 minutes ago, Lorox said:

But I often also like to add some more "painterly" touches to it using AD's Pixel Persona. This way of doing things can't be so uncommon, I'd guess. So I really thought the marching ants topic in AD might generally be of interest for other users of the app as well...

Of course this is just a guess, but the lack of much interest for this could be because not many AD users think seeing the marching ants is an annoying distraction.

[HR forum]

Really need to be able to hide the marching ants. Also, would be good to be able to see the quick mask for same.Should not have to switch between apps to do things. Affinity should patch things like this, not wait for upgrade. If you want to be adobe you have to fix stuff on a sort of timely manner.

[Guest]

On 1/14/2022 at 2:13 PM, R C-R said:

Of course this is just a guess, but the lack of much interest for this could be because not many AD users think seeing the marching ants is an annoying distraction.

Or we've just resolved ourselves to the fact that there are many, many, more pressing issues that need to be addressed first, and that quality of life improvements such as being able to toggle the visibility of the marching ants is pretty far down our lists of priorities.

I wouldn't mistake silence for a lack of interest.

[PeteBoi]

So here we are in 2024 and I'm a new user of Affinity Photo 2 and need to toggle marching ants off and on, (note: not deselect). I've looked at the previous posts on this and it doesn't seem to have been resolved. Can this really be true? Having come over from Photoshop, this has been an essential tool requirement. The distraction of marching ants when you are trying to see how a change - paint, noise, sharpness, whatever - will effect what is in/outside the selection, and especially right on the edge of the selection, where the marching ants are - is absolutely essential and needs to be quickly executed via the keyboard. All help/comments welcome.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, PeteBoi said:

So here we are in 2024 and I'm a new user of Affinity Photo 2 and need to toggle marching ants off and on, (note: not deselect). I've looked at the previous posts on this and it doesn't seem to have been resolved. Can this really be true? Having come over from Photoshop, this has been an essential tool requirement. The distraction of marching ants when you are trying to see how a change - paint, noise, sharpness, whatever - will effect what is in/outside the selection, and especially right on the edge of the selection, where the marching ants are - is absolutely essential and needs to be quickly executed via the keyboard. All help/comments welcome.

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

This discussion is about Affinity Designer. If you're using Photo, then it's simply toggling View > Show Pixel Selection, as mentioned in (I think) the second post of this topic.

 

[Hangman]

Hi @PeteBoi and welcome to the forums,

1 hour ago, PeteBoi said:

So here we are in 2024 and I'm a new user of Affinity Photo 2 and need to toggle marching ants off and on, (note: not deselect).

View > Show Pixel Selection will hide and show the marching ants without deselecting them, I believe the default keyboard shortcut (on Mac) is Alt H but you can change it to whatever you like...

[walt.farrell]

13 minutes ago, Hangman said:

I believe the default keyboard shortcut (on Mac) is Alt H but you can change it to whatever you like...

There appears to be no default shortcut on Windows.

[Hangman]

38 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

There appears to be no default shortcut on Windows.

It's quite likely I added it thinking about it, more so as there isn't one in the Pixel Perona of Publisher. I think the keyboard shortcut in Photoshop is Cmd H so that may be more appropriate for those Photoshop users with muscle memory...

[thomaso]

8 hours ago, PeteBoi said:

Affinity Photo 2 and need to toggle marching ants off and on, (note: not deselect). I've looked at the previous posts on this and it doesn't seem to have been resolved. Can this really be true?

Apparently not true: It was already resolved/answered in the first reply of this thread:

On 2/15/2017 at 11:45 AM, MEB said:

Go to menu View and untick Show Pixel Selection. You can also set a custom shortcut for this in Affinity Preferences, Keyboard Shortcuts section (set the first dropdown to Photo and the second to View).

[PeteBoi]

On 4/21/2024 at 2:53 PM, Hangman said:

Hi @PeteBoi and welcome to the forums,

View > Show Pixel Selection will hide and show the marching ants without deselecting them, I believe the default keyboard shortcut (on Mac) is Alt H but you can change it to whatever you like...

Many thanks for your welcome.

Alt H (Option H on my M3 iMac) is not the default keyboard shortcut. Nor is Control H. Nor  is the old photoshop 'muscle memory' Command H. It plainly does not exist in Affinity Photo 2 ! Which - given how useful it is - is....well, bizarre and rather worrying.

[Hangman]

You can set whichever shortcut you like for ‘Show Pixel Selection. It doesn’t have a default, I realised I’d set Alt H as a default…

As mentioned above the option appears under the View menu…

[PeteBoi]

On 4/21/2024 at 2:53 PM, walt.farrell said:

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

This discussion is about Affinity Designer. If you're using Photo, then it's simply toggling View > Show Pixel Selection, as mentioned in (I think) the second post of this topic.

 

Hi Walt. Many thanks for your welcome.

And thanks for pointing out I'm in the wrong forum! I imagine that came about because I did a search for 'marching ants' and this is where it took me. I may be wrong, (it's very early days for me here), but this might imply it's not been mentioned on the Photo forum? which would be especially worrying. Toggling the view via a pulldown menu would be akin to wading through treacle! 'Less than optimal' would be the polite way of referring to it, (and 'completely useless', more accurate!) but thanks. It really is something that Affinity need to sort.

[PeteBoi]

21 hours ago, thomaso said:

Apparently not true: It was already resolved/answered in the first reply of this thread:

Thank you Thomaso. I will check out custom shortcuts. I appreciate the heads up.

[PeteBoi]

22 hours ago, thomaso said:

Apparently not true: It was already resolved/answered in the first reply of this thread:

Hi Thomaso. Unfortunately re-assigning a keyboard shortcut remains a mystery. Affinity Photo 2's Help suggests the following:

• To assign (re-assign) a keyboard shortcut:

1. From the Affinity Photo 2 menu, select Settings (or Preferences).
2. Select the Shortcuts tab.
3. From the initial two pop-up menus, filter shortcuts by Persona and then by Ul Element, respectively.
4. From the lower shortcut list, click in the box (containing empty or existing shortcut) at the end of a shortcut entry for the shortcut you want to change.
5. Press your chosen keyboard key(s) to assign. This adds the new shortcut or overwrites the assigned shortcut.

Steps 1 and 2 are fine, but step 3 failed as there are no 'Persona' or 'UI Elements' in the two pop up menus, (or any other menu/pop up) that I can find in the Shortcuts pane. Clearly I must be doing something stupid. All help/suggestions welcome.

[walt.farrell]

21 minutes ago, PeteBoi said:

but step 3 failed as there are no 'Persona' or 'UI Elements' in the two pop up menus, (or any other menu/pop up) that I can find in the Shortcuts pane. Clearly I must be doing something stupid. All help/suggestions welcome.

It should start out looking like this, where Photo is the Persona, and Affinity Photo 2 is the UI element (aka menu item).

You need to change the second one to View.

 

[PeteBoi]

Walt, thank you.

Thanks to your clear explanation, everything worked. Although I have no idea what the abbreviation UI stands for - and still don't, (but now understand it's a menu item), I should have made the leap from 'Persona' to Photo. Hopefully I will get better at this! Thanks again.

[walt.farrell]

8 minutes ago, PeteBoi said:

Although I have no idea what the abbreviation UI stands for

User Interface

You could type UI into the search box in the Help, and this is the first result: 

https://affinity.help/photo2/en-US.lproj/pages/Workspace/uiAppearance.html

Glad you have it working now.

[R C-R]

50 minutes ago, PeteBoi said:

Although I have no idea what the abbreviation UI stands for...

Just type "UI" without the quotes into the search field of your favorite search engine like Google or whatever & you will get tons of hits like this one from Wikipedia.

[PeteBoi]

46 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

User Interface

You could type UI into the search box in the Help, and this is the first result: 

https://affinity.help/photo2/en-US.lproj/pages/Workspace/uiAppearance.html

Glad you have it working now.

Thanks Walt (and RCR). Much appreciated.

[PeteBoi]

17 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Just type "UI" without the quotes into the search field of your favorite search engine like Google or whatever & you will get tons of hits like this one from Wikipedia.

Thanks R C-R

There's nothing like being caught in the headlights! User Interface; (it's so obvious it's painful), but I was so wrapped up in looking for a meaning - that is, meaningful to Affinity - that I skipped the blindingly obvious. I will now go into hiding for a while....