Cropping in Designer

[Gomasa]

I discovered Affinity Designer while searching for an alternative for Fireworks.

So I was happy when I found designer and still really like the program.

But I ran into the same problem like the topic starter

The crop tool in Fireworks was SO simple. Drag - delete - done!

And Fireworks is/was like designer a tool for both vectors and photos. Because designer comes with the persona feature, I expected at least in the Pixel-Persona a very simple crop toll like in Fireworks. 

 

[MEB]

Hi @Gomasa,
Welcome to affinity Forums
I'm assuming you want to crop pixel layers destructively. Try the following: adjust the crop handles to your linking then right click the layer in the Layers panel and select Rasterise. To speed the process a bit you can set a shortcut for the Rasterise operation in Affinity Preferences, Keyboard shortcuts section (set the first dropdown to Designer and the second to Layer then look for the command in the list below, it follows the same order as the menus in the app's menu) then you only have to adjust the crop handles and press the shortcut key. Hope it helps a bit.

[Mr. Review]

Why should this be so complicated?!

[Nowski]

If "most" people have the wrong expectation, It seems maybe it's worth investigating. Any way to request a feature? I would agree that while this is possible given the methods provided, it's unnecessarily complicated, adobe comparison or not.

[Kev Borg]

I love designer, but Crop means crop, [Select Crop Tool - Select Area - Enter = Cropped Image] 10 seconds.

But No, And here I am after 23 minutes and counting still trying to find out how to Crop a simple Logo,

im sorry but it is a nitemare to use in  AD,

So now on to the next way, Use the Slice Tool, (Select Pixel Persona)

I cant even find this Slice tool, ive looked every where, Where is that hiding?

Ive looked under Tools, Studio, View, Edit, Transform,

Please can you guys put up a sign so we can find it, where else is it?

I can't believe a simple op has taken me this long.

Happy New Year to you all

cheers Kev

[Alfred]

22 minutes ago, Kev Borg said:

I love designer, but Crop means crop, [Select Crop Tool - Select Area - Enter = Cropped Image] 10 seconds.

But No, And here I am after 23 minutes and counting still trying to find out how to Crop a simple Logo,

im sorry but it is a nitemare to use in  AD,

It’s hard to point you in the right direction without knowing what you’ve tried so far.

23 minutes ago, Kev Borg said:

So now on to the next way, Use the Slice Tool, (Select Pixel Persona)

I cant even find this Slice tool, ive looked every where, Where is that hiding?

It isn’t in the Pixel Persona, it’s in the Export Persona.

[Kev Borg]

13 minutes ago, Alfred said:

It’s hard to point you in the right direction without knowing what you’ve tried so far.

It isn’t in the Pixel Persona, it’s in the Export Persona.

Hi Alfred, Thank you very much, my bad I read that wrong.

I solved it another way, I just selected my logo and Exported the selection Only as a PNG

and that was a simplest way I could find.

And don't get me wrong I love Designer, I use it every day, and I wouldn't go back to the

my previous app, it just feels like some things aren't very intuitive, but thats just me, it's

probably my old age impatience, Thanks again Alfred for taking the time to reply I appreciate that.

All the best and Happy New Year

Cheers Kev

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, Kev Borg said:

I love designer, but Crop means crop, [Select Crop Tool - Select Area - Enter = Cropped Image] 10 seconds.

Designer lacks a Crop tool. It has a Vector Crop Tool, but that is a different tool intended for a different purpose.

4 hours ago, Kev Borg said:

I solved it another way, I just selected my logo and Exported the selection Only as a PNG

and that was a simplest way I could find.

If you want a quick way to crop a document in Affinity, one that avoids rasterizing anything unnecessarily, the simplest way I know of is to select everything you want to be in the cropped version (which can include groups, image & pixel layers, & even layers that have a vector crop applied to them), copy that selection to the clipboard (which can be done very quickly using the keyboard shortcut for copy), & then selecting "New From Clipboard" on the File menu.

The new file will be cropped exactly to the smallest size that all of the selected objects will fit into.

[Kev Borg]

On 1/8/2022 at 6:50 AM, R C-R said:

Designer lacks a Crop tool. It has a Vector Crop Tool, but that is a different tool intended for a different purpose.

If you want a quick way to crop a document in Affinity, one that avoids rasterizing anything unnecessarily, the simplest way I know of is to select everything you want to be in the cropped version (which can include groups, image & pixel layers, & even layers that have a vector crop applied to them), copy that selection to the clipboard (which can be done very quickly using the keyboard shortcut for copy), & then selecting "New From Clipboard" on the File menu.

The new file will be cropped exactly to the smallest size that all of the selected objects will fit into.

Hi RC-R,

Thank you very much, I love that idea, I didn't mean to sound so grumpy but at 3am in the morning I think my impatience was getting the better of me, and I like yr idea. Plus the new pasted "New From Clipboard"  image with be tidier, more focused and editable for later, Thanks again R C-R for taking the time to reply to me I appreciate that very much.

I hope you and yr family are having a great New Year, mine is getting better each day now because I have so much work to catch up on, these small tips really do help in the time and frustration they save.

All the best and stay safe.

cheers Kev

R C-R Would you mind if I asked you one more question, do you know if Designer has a "Power Clip" tool or option like Corel Draw does? I always found that tool a very handy feature to use and I couldn't find one in Designer, is there a way to achieve the same type of thing? Thanks Kev

[Ron P.]

It's called Clipping. I think it's much easier and quicker in Designer or Photo, than CorelDraw. Here's a quick video capture using Designer.

 

 

[alanbrownone]

So, I tried the non-destructive approach mentioned earlier where once you've selected and applied the crop tool to the area you are interested in, copying to the clipboard and then making a new document from the clipboard, and I keep getting the cropped area inside a much bigger background. I've tried this several ways but never get the result I'm looking for with the cropped area filling the whole area. Maybe I'm missing something.

I switched to Affinity products once I retired, I could no longer justify Adobe's subscription model. I bought the whole suite and overall have been very happy but Designer is really giving me problems. The crop tool should actually crop the image but I'm not seeing that happening (very simple to do in Illustrator). I've looked at the tutorials and the online manual but find nothing to explain how to use Designer's crop tool. Interestingly enough, even going to "Help" while in Designer, searching for crop brings up zero information. The other major headache is not being able to vectorize a bitmap image (jpeg or png). Just thought that I would throw that one out to the universe.

[Old Bruce]

14 hours ago, alanbrownone said:

I keep getting the cropped area inside a much bigger background. I've tried this several ways but never get the result I'm looking for with the cropped area filling the whole area. Maybe I'm missing something.

You are not missing anything as far as I know. There is no way to get an image cropped that is actually cropped. When you make your new document from the clipboard you will have to Flatten the document. Or you will have to Rasterize and Trim the layer.

This inability of Affinity Photo to be able to apply a crop destructively is a massive headache. I have no idea why the developers won't give us an option to do so.

[Alfred]

26 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

This inability of Affinity Photo to be able to apply a crop destructively is a massive headache. I have no idea why the developers won't give us an option to do so.

What are ‘Flatten’ and ‘Rasterize and Trim’, if not effectively options that allow us to make a crop destructive?

 

[Old Bruce]

51 minutes ago, Alfred said:

What are ‘Flatten’ and ‘Rasterize and Trim’, if not effectively options that allow us to make a crop destructive?

I learned to crop Photos using a straight edge and a knife. Crop equals a physical change is hardwired in my mind. I do appreciate the ability to have a non destructive crop, I really truly like it. I use it frequently, and do not want to see that taken away.

But sometimes at the end of the day I would like to use the Crop tool to destructively crop an image. Some few people would like to always destructively crop with the crop tool. However I would be very surprised if the majority of users have never thought "Wish I could use the crop tool to destructively crop this image".

[alanbrownone]

I am actually only interested in maintaining the vector format and don't want to rasterize the artwork.

--Alan

[Old Bruce]

33 minutes ago, alanbrownone said:

I am actually only interested in maintaining the vector format and don't want to rasterize the artwork.

To the best of my knowledge there is no way to do this type of destructive crop with the Affinity applications. So you (and I) are out of luck. There is no easy way to do a destructive crop of vector objects. This is one of the big failures of the Affinity applications.

[NotMyFault]

On 4/19/2022 at 2:43 AM, alanbrownone said:

and I keep getting the cropped area inside a much bigger background.

If you have only a few closed curves which are too big, you could create a rectangular shape, and use Geometry>Intersect (for each individual layer), to get rid of unwanted parts. 
 

This has clear limits e.g. might break fancy gradients, and wont work on very complex layers.

 

[alanbrownone]

So, has anybody talked with Serif about this useless crop tool and/or lack of instructions on how to use it?

[NotMyFault]

Add your vote here:

 

[R C-R]

5 minutes ago, alanbrownone said:

So, has anybody talked with Serif about this useless crop tool and/or lack of instructions on how to use it?

If you mean the Vector Crop Tool then this AD help page explains how to use it. It is inherently a non-destructive tool, basically just a quick & dirty way to create a rectangular vector mask for objects.

It isn't completely useless, just not a destructive crop tool like many of us would like for AD to include.

[alanbrownone]

So, I did already review that page and I still don't get what the purpose of their tool is and what it is supposed to be used for. It definitely doesn't work like it does in Adobe Illustrator which begs the question, "why?" as well as how can I accomplish what I want to do which includes keeping my design art in vector format and to get rid of extra background that I don't want.

[NotMyFault]

If you are still looking for how the vector crop tool works :

https://affinity.help/designer/English.lproj/pages/Tools/tools_crop.html

It affects only one object / layer. If you want to crop a whole document, you need to put all layers into one container object first (group or Layer layer).

The vector crop tool simply adds a rectangular shape to the masking position of a layer.

 

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

If you are still looking for how the vector crop tool works :

https://affinity.help/designer/English.lproj/pages/Tools/tools_crop.html

FWIW, that is the same link I posted above.

[acheOne]

Just managed to understand the crop tool, much better than Illustrator.

However please sort out the eye dropper for colours. 

Bring back FreeHand.

[R C-R]

Welcome to the forums, @acheOne.

47 minutes ago, acheOne said:

However please sort out the eye dropper for colours. 

It would help if you could explain a bit more about what you mean by this. What specifically do you think needs sorting out?

49 minutes ago, acheOne said:

Bring back FreeHand.

Who are you asking to do that? Freehand is owned by Adobe. They effectively killed it by stopping its development. There is nothing Serif can do about that.  🙁