Selection-copy (move)

[robertd]

I'm using Affinity Photo, transitioning from Photoshop.  Most of what I do is moving bits around within a single layer.  

 

So I've figured out that you can MOVE bits by selecting with a marquee and then using the cross-tool, while holding the Command key down, to move the bits.  Just like Photoshop.  Kind of.

 

But how do you COPY the bits?  In Photoshop, you'd select with the marquee, then Option-Command-drag.  In Affinity Photo, this just changes the shape of the selection.

 

Is there a way to do this, without getting into masks, creating additional layers, etc?

 

 

 

[Callum]

Hi Robertd,

 

Welcome to the Forums :)

 

To copy something you have selected you need to press CMD + C to paste it you can then press CMD + V.

 

C

[robertd]

Fair enough.  But I'm looking for something more interactive, similar to command-dragging a selected item (which could be argued to be a cut & paste).  The technique I outlined isn't restricted to Photoshop--it dates back to MacPaint.  If it doesn't exist, how does one go about entering a formal feature request?

[carl123]

With the Move Tool selected, you can hold the CTRL key down, click on an object and drag it to make a copy.

 

Is this what you are looking for?

[R C-R]

With the Move Tool selected, you can hold the CTRL key down, click on an object and drag it to make a copy.

On a Mac, to drag out a copy you hold down either the CMD or the Option (Alt) key. (The difference is the Option key overrides snapping, if it is enabled, as it does elsewhere in the UI.)

 

However, this applies to objects, not to pixels selected with a marquee tool on a pixel layer. For that, as far as I know you do need to use copy & paste. That should place the copy on a new layer, where it can be moved, resized, rotated, etc. like any other object.

[andrewsimper]

The copy drag of an area onto another area of a single layer without having to switch from the marquee tool is a very big use case for a lot of possible customers for rough and ready mockups of user interfaces and other situations where speed is more important than the quality of the end result. I recommended some friends try out Affinity Designer / Photo, but because it doesn't have this one feature it's a no go for them as the workaround is too slow and messy.

It seems that the Command modifier is ignored when either the ctrl or alt keys are also pressed, so there are possibly two different sorts of copy drag possible, a copy merged (the visible pixels in the selected are are copy moved) or single layer copy and move. These could be done with the chord of command+control and command+option (for mac, and equivalent variations on win).

I realise that modifiers on iPad throw another issue at this whole thing. Perhaps then another way may be best, have a menu item for what happens on command+drag, and under it you can have move / duplicate / merged duplicate to cover the 3 options. Most of the time people would just pick one of these options and stick with it, and this would default to move so that existing customers would not be impacted, and this will make it easier for those that always want the merged duplicate since they have to hold down fewer keys to get that.

 

[gafvert]

I find this very confusing and I wish there was a setting to change this setup of modifier keys (I've looked but haven't found anything). In my experience using option-drag to duplicate is a convention used by many applications, so that's great the Affinity is adopting. However, them problem is that in Photoshop (and maybe others) command-dragging is for moving selected pixels when using the selection tool. With Command-option moving and copying the pixels.

So I constantly end up making copies of objects unintentionally when I try to just move them, and sometimes I don't realize it's happening as the object I want to move (with command-drag) is moving and I don't notice that a copy is left behind. So please add an option to turn off copying objects on command drag.

[AllAppsUser]

Has there been any head way on this? (On another topic I've not found, perhaps? Does the latest release that I've not bothered downloading yet, solve this?)

- - - - - -

I'm always wanting to do a quick-n-dirty: drag select, drag-copy selected pixels, (repeat) = ta-da, done.

The round-the-houses, no sensible way to do this, is the one thing that makes Photo a 10 out 10 disappointment.

Is Photo's target utterly devoted to photographers, and no one else? If so, then it should not be considered part of a bundle with Designer and Publisher. Doing so, misrepresents what it is.

It should perform efficiently on activities such as cut-outs, and quick-n-dirty modification (tweak) exercises I've described above.

Having to 'rasterise' an already raster image, because it's pasted, in order to drag select + delete, is really not clever either. Just doesn't make sense on any level.

[ashf]

This should have the same behavior as Photoshop.
I don't like to leave empty space.