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is Crop to selection possible


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I just downloaded the trial version an hour ago. First thing I tried was "Crop to selection", and after reading several forums on Internet, I learn that it is not possible!!!

Wow, that does not start well for Affinity. Such a basic function, I can't understand why it has been left out. As many, I want to leave the money siphon company, but how would it be possible if the competition is that silly??!!

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12 hours ago, JeffT said:

I just downloaded the trial version an hour ago. First thing I tried was "Crop to selection", and after reading several forums on Internet, I learn that it is not possible!!!

Wow, that does not start well for Affinity. Such a basic function, I can't understand why it has been left out. As many, I want to leave the money siphon company, but how would it be possible if the competition is that silly??!!

Would it be great if Affinity had crop to selection? Absolutely yes.

Is Affinity worthless without crop to selection? Absolutely no. Instead of drawing a selection box, just draw a crop box. It is a change to workflow, which does take some getting used to. But it does the exact same thing.

Affinity is not a 1:1 recreation of Photoshop. It is its own program and it has its own ways of doing things. Some of these are much better, some of these are worse and some of these are just different. If you go in expecting Affinity to be exactly like Photoshop, you'll be disappointed. It is a new program that does take time to learn, but if you put in the time, you will be pleasantly surprised. 

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On 11/10/2019 at 7:05 AM, big smile said:

Is Affinity worthless without crop to selection? Absolutely no. Instead of drawing a selection box, just draw a crop box. It is a change to workflow, which does take some getting used to. But it does the exact same thing.

Affinity is not a 1:1 recreation of Photoshop. It is its own program and it has its own ways of doing things. Some of these are much better, some of these are worse and some of these are just different. If you go in expecting Affinity to be exactly like Photoshop, you'll be disappointed. It is a new program that does take time to learn, but if you put in the time, you will be pleasantly surprised. 

No, it is not the same thing: it is more difficult to be as precise in the cropping with the crop box of Affinity and it is more cumbersome.

Photoshop has been the leader in the photo retouching software market for so many years that any software company that jumps into the photo retouching market will have to reproduce, in some way, the basic functions of Photoshop or they will never succeed. People are too used now to the Photoshop functionalities that any lack in the basic functions in a new software would translate into failure to become the new number one. 

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4 hours ago, JeffT said:

People are too used now to the Photoshop functionalities that any lack in the basic functions in a new software would translate into failure to become the new number one. 

Well, those people can continue to pay the Adobe tax for now, then. Others, like me, are very happy to have the best alternative so far and for a very fair (non-subscription!) price at that.

Yes, Affinitys products doesn't have decades of refining yet and there are even some basic things missing, among the thousands of basic features that already are implemented. Crying that the software "is that silly” just because this one feature is not as convenient as in Photoshop right now is sort of childish.

And this whole ”failure to become the new number one”, who says Affinity has to be the number one? They can thrive just fine being an awesome alternative that keeps getting better and better. Not Affinity, nor any other graphic software company, will dethrone Adobe in the near future. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

There is just no point in redefining or leaving out this workflow tool (crop to selection) when it works for so many in so many programs, when it doesn't add any value or innovation. Sigh.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi, has this feature been implemented yet? It is a very useful workflow tool.

It would be good to be able to do this without fiddling with the crop selection tool.

If your document is high in resolution for example 10,000 of pixels. It's just very fiddly to zoom in to pixel level to make sure your crop borders align with a bleeding edge. Then you have to zoom out and do this 3 times over for all sides.

As someone posted, it doesn't need to be destructive. Better yet, give us both options and the user can decide.

Edited by Svenosky
typo
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  • 2 weeks later...

This option is there, pretty much. 
Select what you want, then file>export and chose export selection under 'area'.

If you want to crop a layer, make the selection you want to crop to, press Ctrl+shift+i (to select inverse) then press delete.

 

Also note you can save the selected area so that you only have to make a precise selection once. Go to select>save selection.

Edited by CaiAllin
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  • 2 weeks later...

Like many others in this thread, my first attempt at using Photo was to locate this time saving feature.

The workflow I'm after is very simple:

  1. Use the magic wand to make a selection (or multiple wand selections holding CTRL).
  2. Crop. This should trim the document borders to include only the pixels within the selection.

It is tiresome to zoom in and pan 4 times to set the crop points. Step 1 alleviates this. The previously mentioned invert+delete method does not work, as it also removes pixels not included in the original magic wand selection process. If anyone knows of an alternate method to make this happen please let us all know. Thank you. =)

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1 hour ago, Switcheroo said:

 The previously mentioned invert+delete method does not work, as it also removes pixels not included in the original magic wand selection process.

First, welcome to the Serif Affinity forum, Switcheroo.

I'm curious about your comment about the Invert method not working as it "also removes pixels not included in the original selection".

If you were cropping "to selection", those pixels outside the selection would be gone after the crop. So in either approach they would be gone.

Can you help me understand what I've misunderstood about your comment?

My suggestion might have been:

  1. Make your selection.
  2. Invert the selection.
  3. Delete.
  4. Document > Clip Canvas
  5. Layer > Rasterize & Trim...

But since that also relies on inverting the selection, I'd like to understand your issue with that process better.

By the way, note that steps 2-5 could be embedded in a macro for ease of use. Such as this one: crop-to-selection.afmacro

-- Walt
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Thanks Walt.

How about a quick example so that you can see what I mean by: "it also removes pixels not included in the original selection"

Let's pretend I wanted to extract my own quote above for use in another app (ie: video editor, or website project, etc..).

After I take a screenshot and open it in Affinity Photo, I will walk through your steps that show the failure (images below):

  1. Select the white area of my post using magic wand with a zero tolerance
  2. Invert the selection to prepare for Delete
  3. Press Delete (checkerboard is transparent) 
  4. Clip Canvas (dark grey is UI frame)

As you can see the initial step to make quick use of the wand tool also removes inner pixel data during step 3. The main topic of this thread "Crop to Selection" would solve this as it negates the need for the Delete key. I use "Crop to Selection" in both GIMP and Photoshop, but would like to migrate this type of workflow to Affinity, especially the batch/macro tool.

Basically, I'm look to see if there is any way of making the crop tool precisely target all four corners quickly.

serif-photo-_0000_1.thumb.jpg.77a99e55dd85221fcdbd97832afec0b5.jpgserif-photo-_0001_2.thumb.jpg.26bbd7f6543d6f9786ae360da94af941.jpgserif-photo-_0002_3.thumb.jpg.07b10de401192b32a7f496ba0efc242f.jpgserif-photo-_0003_4.thumb.jpg.65b776fb74e5238220f8ef4b2f2715c5.jpg

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24 minutes ago, Switcheroo said:

After I take a screenshot and open it in Affinity Photo, I will walk through your steps that show the failure (images below):

  1. Select the white area of my post using magic wand with a zero tolerance
  2. Invert the selection to prepare for Delete
  3. Press Delete (checkerboard is transparent) 
  4. Clip Canvas (dark grey is UI frame)

Thanks.

Your problem is that you used the magic wand, rather than the rectangle marquee tool, and used 0 tolerance. You need to start by getting everything you want to keep selected. Then when you invert the selection, the stuff you want to keep is not selected, and Delete deletes only the unwanted stuff.

 

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

You need to start by getting everything you want to keep selected.

This is a difficulty (or pinch point) presented by Affinity Photo due to the only programmable crop method being Clip Canvas. If there are other methods I am not aware.

My example was to illustrate the desire to go from a variable selection shape down to a crop. ie: Crop to Selection. I could give other examples so we don't get hung up on the magic wand; multiple additive square selections creates the same problem.

On 12/18/2019 at 4:42 PM, CaiAllin said:

Select what you want, then file>export and chose export selection under 'area'.

CaiAllin's post currently gives the closest answer so far:  File > Export > Area > Selection with Background

I tested it, and this does include all of the pixels within the selection boundary (upper left corner through lower right). However, this requires dialog boxes and leaving the program to reimport exported work from disk.

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1 hour ago, Switcheroo said:

My example was to illustrate the desire to go from a variable selection shape down to a crop. ie: Crop to Selection. I could give other examples so we don't get hung up on the magic wand; multiple additive square selections creates the same problem.

 

1 hour ago, Switcheroo said:

I tested it, and this does include all of the pixels within the selection boundary (upper left corner through lower right). However, this requires dialog boxes and leaving the program to reimport exported work from disk.

Once you have your selection copy it and make a new document from the clipboard. Command + Shift + Option + N. Should be cropped to the pixels containing data.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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2 hours ago, Switcheroo said:

My example was to illustrate the desire to go from a variable selection shape down to a crop

But your example used the wrong selection tool. Use one of the Marquee tools, rectangle, ellipse, or freehand.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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17 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

But your example used the wrong selection tool. Use one of the Marquee tools, rectangle, ellipse, or freehand.

 

Yes, I covered the reasoning for magic wand above...

11 hours ago, Switcheroo said:

It is tiresome to zoom in and pan 4 times to set the crop points.

The whole point of requesting Crop to Selection (the nature of this thread) is to make use of the powerful selection tools Affinity provided.

You are suggesting alternate marque tools, but there are a crazy amount of other ways to get an active selection (ie: CMD + click layer icon, selecting ranges, loading selections, etc..) which is why being able to isolate the image down to the bounding box of that selection is so desirable.

I appreciate your continued ideas and seeking clarification on an answer.

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1 hour ago, Old Bruce said:

Once you have your selection copy it and make a new document from the clipboard. Command + Shift + Option + N. Should be cropped to the pixels containing data.

Thank you for pointing this feature out to me. Very handy.

This solution does allow automation, but does not include the missing pixels from the selection, which is what a crop is.

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On 1/2/2020 at 5:30 PM, Switcheroo said:

 

Yes, I covered the reasoning for magic wand above...

The whole point of requesting Crop to Selection (the nature of this thread) is to make use of the powerful selection tools Affinity provided.

You are suggesting alternate marque tools, but there are a crazy amount of other ways to get an active selection (ie: CMD + click layer icon, selecting ranges, loading selections, etc..) which is why being able to isolate the image down to the bounding box of that selection is so desirable.

I appreciate your continued ideas and seeking clarification on an answer.

Affinity Photo does not have the beloved Photoshop Crop to Selection feature. This should be an EASY tool to implement in their software.
BUT, there is a workaround that I use all the time...not that I'm making excuses for Affinity Photo.

1. Make sure image is rasterized first.

2. Make your selection using any selection tool.

3. Copy / Ctrl+C

4. Click "File" > "New From Clipboard"

This will open a new window with only the selected portion of the image. The original image will remain undamaged.

If you don't need the original image, then discard it.

I know, annoying, sometimes I don't care if the original image is damaged because I only need a small snippet of the image, but this is the only way I have found that works for me.

After performing the actions above, I copy the image from the new window created via File > New From Clipboard, and paste into my project.

Not sure if this is what you're looking for or not, but hope it helps either way in some form or another.

We all want a practical 1-step Crop To Selection Tool...which is why this thread is so MASSIVE!

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I apologize if this has been covered already, I did not read the entirety of the four pages of comments, though I did read pages 1 and 4.

I think the people who are saying "just do this it's so easy" aren't grasping a possible use of "Crop to Selection."

Switcheroo is perhaps struggling with the same workflow that I am.  Here's how I've used "Crop to Selection" in other apps:

  1. Zoom way in on the top left corner
  2. Make a rectangular selection where the top-left corner of the selection is the top left corner of my desired crop
    • The bottom right corner of the selection is arbitrary.
    • I'll typically select a 30x30 pixel region of a very large image.
  3. Zoom all the way out
  4. Zoom way in on the bottom right corner
  5. Add a rectangular selection where the bottom right corner of the selection is the bottom right corner of my desired crop.
    • Again, the top left corner of the selection is arbitrary
    • And again, this will be a tiny selection in a large image.

What I'm after is the bounding box of the two selections, or however many I need...the point is to zoom in on what may be the top-/left-/right-/bottom-most pixels of the crop, select, and keep adding selections until the bounding box of all selection is the desired crop rectangle.

To illustrate Switcheroo's visual example, I would select this:

example.thumb.png.e3cdc5dd4316c0c36106b37052a00a5a.png

This allows me pixel precision by zooming in, yet relieves me from having to actually make a large single selection while retaining the precision.

To those of you who will respond that I could...

  1. Enter crop mode
  2. Move top-left corner of crop relatively close to desired position
  3. Zoom way in to same position
  4. Adjust top-left corner of crop to be precise
  5. Zoom out
  6. Move bottom-right corner of crop relatively close to desired position
  7. Zoom way in to same position
  8. Adjust bottom-right corner of crop to be precise

...just count the number of steps. Also, sometimes I need to define, say, the top bound independently of the left bound, and the top-most pixel to include is a third of the way across the top...at this point it becomes cumbersome to use the top handle of the crop tool while zoomed-in.

All of this to say: it seems like a simple enough facade to the existing crop feature. Destructive, nondestructive, I don't care; there was a pseudoish-code example that provided an interface to the existing crop functionality, only it built the crop bounds from selection data. This seems reasonable to me. In UIs, it seems that the more ways there are to accomplish one thing just makes more people more efficient.

 

Edited by Dru Kepple
Grammar
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Virgoram, yep that method (New from Clipboard) works when your selection is a perfect rectangle, and is worth knowing in the current state of this issue.

When that method (New from Clipboard) is applied to Dru's example, the new image is mostly transparent in the middle.

This selection bounding box to crop is the issue to have Affinity chime in on.

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@Dru Kepple

Try the attached macro - just make the 2 selections as shown in your screenshot then run the maco

(Import the macro via the Library panel)

 

Crop to 2 Selections.afmacros

To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time.

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1 hour ago, carl123 said:

Try the attached macro

Perfecto. Thanks Carl!

This will work for now until it is a feature that can have a keyboard shortcut.

The magic happens in the "Apply Image" step where Carl lays the background over the span of the selected area to invent a bounding box one layer up, before the Clip Canvas step. This works with the magic wand and other complex selections too. Nice one.

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  • 2 weeks later...

 

Unzyme's comment is spot on!  as is JeffT's at the very beginning.  It's silly not to have this very, very basic feature.  I keep an old copy of Photoshop around just to easily do this! when I know a project will require it.   Would it be architecturally unsound to have multiple ways of accomplishing a fundamental need?

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