is Crop to selection possible

[lepr]

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[R C-R]

Cropping affects the entire canvas & must be (in its current form) rectilinear, so this "crop to selection" feature would either only work on a rectilinear selection or crop the canvas to (presumably) the smallest bounding box that encloses the selection. I really don't see how this would be much more useful than using the Cropping Tool, which offers presets, ratios, & the ability to drag the crop box freely around on the canvas.

 

BTW, the Photoshop Crop Tool is also non-destructive. See https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/crop-straighten-photos.html.

[jullit31]

16 hours ago, R C-R said:

Cropping affects the entire canvas & must be (in its current form) rectilinear, so this "crop to selection" feature would [...] crop the canvas to (presumably) the smallest bounding box that encloses the selection.

That is, imho, exactly what it should do.

16 hours ago, R C-R said:

I really don't see how this would be much more useful than using the Cropping Tool

When creating a selection in an automated way (i.e. by selecting a Colour / Tonal / Alpha Range or by using the Flood Select Tool), being able to easily crop to said selection would be very useful.

[shushustorm]

17 hours ago, R C-R said:

crop the canvas to [...] the smallest bounding box that encloses the selection

 

Well, that's exactly what we are aiming for, isn't it? At least that's the feature I was missing and using in Photoshop for years.

[oO5Dynasty]

On 9/15/2017 at 9:24 AM, toltec said:

Make a selection first, press Ctrl + J. That copies the selection, and only the selection, to a new layer. copy it, (Ctr + C) then go File > New From Clipboard. It makes a new document exactly to the selection  Plus, the original information is kept in the original file for safety.

This worked perfectly for me. I designed my logo on a huge canvas, because i didn't know how much room i would need etc. After i was done i wanted to crop the selection to export my logo out of affinity designer for use. So thank you for this information.

[Virgoram]

I agree that a "Crop to Selection" feature is a necessity, ....which should be added as a right-click menu (PC)/Ctrl-click (Mac) from within the selection itself to reduce multiple steps to do such a simple thing.

Where are all the right-click/ctrl-click menus???

Even though the New From Clipboard feature works fine, it's still too many steps to achieve the desired outcome.
When there's too many steps involved, it chews up productivity.

 

[cc7]

I need this feature too.

[firstdefence]

Are we talking about Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer or both here? I assume predominantly Affinity Photo as most here are referencing Adobe Photoshop.

I fail to see how moving the mouse to Image > Crop in Photoshop or 'C' + Enter + Enter is significantly quicker to make much of a difference to a workflow than pressing ⌘+C then ⌥+⇧+⌘+N

I concede that 'C' + Enter + Enter is simpler and more elegant in regard to the above mentioned presses but I have New from Clipboard assigned as ⌥+N so (⌘+C then ⌥+N) is just as quick. if you wanted to make it even simpler assigning ⌥+C is also available.

[carl123]

Creating a new document just to crop to selection in an existing document is not a desirable long term workaround

Roll on v1.7, let's see if it's in there

[toltec]

5 hours ago, cc7 said:

I need this feature too.

If you want a very easy, very fast method set a keyboard shortcut for File > New from Clipcoard. I suggest Ctrl + 5 because it falls close to the ideal position after C. For me anyway.

Make a selection, press down the Control key and press C then 5 (don't release the control key between C and 5)

Result, a new file cropped to your selection.

This works in both Photo and Designer.

 

[toltec]

12 minutes ago, carl123 said:

Creating a new document just to crop to selection in an existing document is not a desirable long term workaround

Roll on v1.7, let's see if it's in there

Why would you want to adopt a destructive workflow?

If you load a file and crop it to a selection, do you then save it back to overwrite the original, losing the outside areas forever. If not, somewhere you need to create a new document, why not when you crop to selection?

I'm sure there is a production reason (perhaps macros). 

 

 

[carl123]

Not everything needs to be done non-destructively, especially so with the huge files that Affinity apps can create.

If I just need a 240 x 360 pixel crop from an image that is 2915 x 4252 pixels I really don't need/want to keep those extra pixels.

I have been cropping destructively in Photoshop for years and never had a problem.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, carl123 said:

If I just need a 240 x 360 pixel crop from an image that is 2915 x 4252 pixels I really don't need/want to keep those extra pixels.

OK, but if all you want is the 240 x 360 px image crop from the file, in Affinity Photo you could use Document > Flatten after doing the crop & save the file in the native Affinity format, or export it to your choice of raster formats. It is very destructive & should result in minimal file sizes. You could set a simple keyboard shortcut for Flatten (like maybe Shift+F) to make this very easy to do.

[carl123]

47 minutes ago, R C-R said:

OK, but if all you want is the 240 x 360 px image crop from the file, in Affinity Photo you could use Document > Flatten after doing the crop & save the file in the native Affinity format, or export it to your choice of raster formats. It is very destructive & should result in minimal file sizes. You could set a simple keyboard shortcut for Flatten (like maybe Shift+F) to make this very easy to do.

True, but it makes no sense to flatten the document and then save it in the Affinity format.

I might as well just export to jpg/png etc and get rid of the now no longer needed Affinity document.

 

 

[R C-R]

6 minutes ago, carl123 said:

True, but it makes no sense to flatten the document and then save it in the Affinity format.

I might as well just export to jpg/png etc and get rid of the now no longer needed Affinity document.

There might be some unusual scenario where it would make sense to save the flattened & cropped version as an Affinity format file but I agree that it usually would not. However, it does not add much time to a more typical workflow that involves exporting it to a raster image format anyway, so I am not sure why the need for this feature is so urgent.

[Unzyme]

I realize that there are other ways of doing this, but "crop to selection" should do exactly the same thing as it does in Photoshop. It's just the quickest way of cropping when I want the document size to be adjusted to the size of a certain layer. In my case, it's usually a screenshot or a pasted layer.

[Pixelshifters]

I would also simply like a 'crop' option with a selection. I'm competent enough to make my own decisions as to whether I consider it to be destructive / non-destructive (trying out Affinity Photo with currently 26 years of Photoshop experience).

[R C-R]

10 minutes ago, Pixelshifters said:

I would also simply like a 'crop' option with a selection. I'm competent enough to make my own decisions as to whether I consider it to be destructive / non-destructive (trying out Affinity Photo with currently 26 years of Photoshop experience).

The crop tool in the 1.7 version of Affinity Photo, now in beta development & only available as a customer beta (meaning you must own a copy of the 1.6.x version to try it) includes a "Crop method" option so you can crop non-destructively or destructively.

[Alfred]

4 minutes ago, R C-R said:

only available as a customer beta (meaning you must own a copy of the 1.6.x version to try it)

Strictly speaking, any 1.x.x retail version allows you to try the 1.7.0 customer betas, but I don’t know of any good reason not to upgrade to the latest version 1.6.x if you aren’t already using it.

[Nathan]

I need a crop to selection as I want to crop to specific pixels. So, a crop tool that snaps to pixels would also work, or zoom into a pixel; selecting; zoom out; zoom to other corner; select that (so you have two selections); menu - crop. Used this method in Photoshop since 1993, and never needed it to be non-destructive.

Also, please speed up the drag-zoom function like in Photoshop as it sometimes take several drags to zoom in enough, as apposed to one.

Thanks

 

[NFlourish]

On 8/28/2018 at 5:36 AM, toltec said:

Why would you want to adopt a destructive workflow?

Because:

A) I don't want or need multiple "copies" of a screenshot I'm trying to quickly crop extraneous junk out of to throw in a document

B) Because there is nothing inherently "wrong" with a destructive workflow - your bias against such a workflow suggests a "my way or the highway" approach... there are lots of ways to accomplish tasks which work for different needs and approaches.

A crop-to-selection option seems insanely basic, functionality wise. It should function as described in the earlier comment ... crops to the smallest bounding box around the selection.

I have a screen shot that includes a bunch of extra space around the window I want to focus on. Open in Photoshop, magic-wand select the stuff around the content I want to keep, invert selection, crop to selection, save. No copy and paste from clipboard... no multiple copies. Don't care that it was destructive. And the annoying thing about the idea of "just use the Crop tool" is that it doesn't have the magic-wand edge detection ability. It would require me to zoom in and drag the crop-bound-box to specifically make sure I cropped to the border of the window content I want to keep in my screen shot. Magic wand quickly selected against the board with no deep inspection on my part. 

We don't all use Affinity tools just for perfecting a gallery photo... it is already open on my Mac, so why not use it for the mundane tasks? Well.. apparently I shouldn't use it for mundane tasks because it is not well suited to such basic workflows. Bummer.

I get that there are ways to accomplish my goals in Affinity photo, but really, as a programmer, crop to selection seems fairly easy to implement... so why not help out those who you are trying to woo away from Photoshop-type applications? You catch more flies with honey.

[NFG]

So in every graphics app I use, I can draw a selection (here called a marquee for reasons) and crop to it with a keystroke.  

That I can't do it here astounds me and totally breaks my flow, so I'd like to put my vote in for this 'feature'.  

Not that I expect anyone with this power is reading this thread, but still.  Crop to selection, super simple stuff, and very handy.

EDIT:  Holy crap, this:  "Because there is nothing inherently "wrong" with a destructive workflow".  

 

[Unzyme]

Yeah, sometimes destructive workflow is the ideal approach. For example, when cropping screenshots (which I do all the time).

[Jowday]

On 8/28/2018 at 11:30 AM, carl123 said:

Roll on v1.7, let's see if it's in there

And... it is not.

[Jowday]

On 11/22/2018 at 1:40 PM, Pixelshifters said:

I would also simply like a 'crop' option with a selection. I'm competent enough to make my own decisions as to whether I consider it to be destructive / non-destructive (trying out Affinity Photo with currently 26 years of Photoshop experience).

Bingo. Cropping to any selection is exactly what I want, when I use it. It has NOTHING to do with the crop tool use cases. It is part of an entire different workflow. Selections of all sorts. Fuzzy, round, rectangular, crazy. For use in another program or the same.