Several Issues with Selection/Marquee Tool

[Geowil]

Affinity Photo 1.5.2.69

Windows 8.1

32GB ram

R9 290x x 2

 

 

So I have been using Affinity Photo for a few months now after using Photoshop forever (since 2003).  It is a nice program and definitely could, and should, kill Photoshop eventually but I am noticing all kinds of weird issues with it.  I wanted to limit my posts to just one topic at a time and once I had enough information so this one is on the selection tool and a lot of odd things I am seeing with it.

 

Issue 1:

 

When zooming in on a selection sometimes the selection demarcations just vanish entirely as shown below in the screen capture.  On zooming out they return, also shown below (in screen capture for #2).

 

 

Issue 2:

 

For whatever reason the selection tool is not protecting non-selected areas from changes.  In the below image I have an inverse selection applied but when I went to remove the surrounding background parts of the inner-selection (which is not selected during an inverse selection) started to also be erased.

 

 

 

Issue 3:

 

When copying a selection from another project and pasting it into the one I am working on the pasted layer always is feathered at the edges.  The below two images show the resulting saved png file from a project which the source, second image, was copied from a different AP project and pasted into the one I am working with.  The source selection feathering is 0px.

 

 

 

 

 

Issue 4:

 

There are some serious drawing issues with the view port on my system.  If I drag an image around it starts to cause corruption within AP's view port and at times it can also corrupt the selection demarcations as shown below.  I will post a video of the view port corruption to this thread later.

 

[DWright]

Hi Geowil,

 

I have been unable to replicate the issues that you are seeing, I believe that this may be a refreshing issue as when you change the zoom level it displays correctly is it possible to turn off your crossfire and see if you are getting the same issues when using one graphics card. 

[Geowil]

This seems to have fixed a few of these issues but I cannot be sure as I have not used Affinity enough post-xfire disable.  Affinity is still feathering any selection area copy and paste though even though I have the feather setting in the marquee tool bar set to 0.

[DWright]

Can you please send me a .afphoto file with the original image with the selection still active and a new layer with the selection pasted into for me to check as when I do the same steps the pasted image does not have a feather around the edge.

[Geowil]

An important note is that when pasting back into the source project, there is no feathering.  The feathering only happens when it is pasted into a different project.  Normally how I do thumbnails is to take screen captures in Sony Vegas with the preview window at the desired size (in this case 1280x720) and then I paste the screen capture (2560x1440) into Photoshop or Affinity Photo in this case.  I then make a 1280x720 selection and then copy each thumbnail background from each screen capture layer (normally I will have 10 of them as I work in batches of 10) and go back and forth between the project which has the other thumbnail layers which go over the background where I then past the selection from the other temporary project into.
 
In Affinity Photo the pasted selections in the main project always get feathered.  I have attached two projects.  The first is the source project and includes a layer with the selection pasted into it.  No feathering.  The second project simulates a main thumbnail project and in that one the same selection is feathered by one pixel on each side after being pasted.

 

This issue may also be related.  I am now seeing that anytime I try to use a selection area to either flood fill or paint into it is always being feathered even if the feather for the selection area is set to 0px.

edge feathering source.afphoto

edge feathering after paste.afphoto

[- S -]

In Affinity Photo the pasted selections in the main project always get feathered.  I have attached two projects.  The first is the source project and includes a layer with the selection pasted into it.  No feathering.  The second project simulates a main thumbnail project and in that one the same selection is feathered by one pixel on each side after being pasted.

 

The problem isn't due to the selection being copied with a feather, but instead it's happening because when you paste the selection into the new document and then centre it, it is quite literally centering it, even if that means the edges need to straddle a pixel instead of being aligned to whole pixels.  This makes the pasted selection semi-transparent on the edges.

 

Then when you move the pasted image around in the new document with the Move tool, it keeps this semi-transparent edge due to the 'Move by whole pixels' option in 'View > Snapping Manager' being turned on (or if you're nudging the image using the keyboard arrow keys).

 

You could also end up with the same situation if you're aligning/snapping to another object in a document that isn't aligned to whole pixels.  Or even moving the image around whilst holding the ALT key (to temporarily turn off snapping) as that will also allow moving by decimal pixel values.

 

In all honestly I don't know of a realistic way to resolve this issue.  Turning 'Move by whole pixels' off and then manually moving the image slightly so that it snaps the nearest whole pixel may help.  Keeping an eye on the Transform panel and changing any decimal pixel values for 'X' and 'Y' to whole pixel numbers may help. But these are manual processes, so they aren't ideal.

 

So, I think there should really be a global setting for this in the preferences.  For vectors maybe it's more important to place things exactly where they are placed or centered, but for pixel images it would be better to have a global setting to allow rounding everything in a document to the nearest full pixel to avoid this straddling of pixels, even if it means that alignments such as centering aren't necessarily absolute.

 

Screenshot:

[Geowil]

The problem isn't due to the selection being copied with a feather, but instead it's happening because when you paste the selection into the new document and then centre it, it is quite literally centering it, even if that means the edges need to straddle a pixel instead of being aligned to whole pixels.  This makes the pasted selection semi-transparent on the edges.

 

Then when you move the pasted image around in the new document with the Move tool, it keeps this semi-transparent edge due to the 'Move by whole pixels' option in 'View > Snapping Manager' being turned on (or if you're nudging the image using the keyboard arrow keys).

 

You could also end up with the same situation if you're aligning/snapping to another object in a document that isn't aligned to whole pixels.  Or even moving the image around whilst holding the ALT key (to temporarily turn off snapping) as that will also allow moving by decimal pixel values.

 

In all honestly I don't know of a realistic way to resolve this issue.  Turning 'Move by whole pixels' off and then manually moving the image slightly so that it snaps the nearest whole pixel may help.  Keeping an eye on the Transform panel and changing any decimal pixel values for 'X' and 'Y' to whole pixel numbers may help. But these are manual processes, so they aren't ideal.

 

So, I think there should really be a global setting for this in the preferences.  For vectors maybe it's more important to place things exactly where they are placed or centered, but for pixel images it would be better to have a global setting to allow rounding everything in a document to the nearest full pixel to avoid this straddling of pixels, even if it means that alignments such as centering aren't necessarily absolute.

 

Screenshot:

001.png

 

Same here, I don't know enough about the thought process behind the development of AP or the intentions of how things should work.  All I know is that this does not happen in Photoshop and that has been the industry standard for decades.

 

And I just fixed it.  I turned on 'Force pixel alignment' but did not turn on 'Move by whole pixels' and the problem is no longer happening for either the flood fill into a selection area nor the copy past problems.

[R C-R]

So, I think there should really be a global setting for this in the preferences.  For vectors maybe it's more important to place things exactly where they are placed or centered, but for pixel images it would be better to have a global setting to allow rounding everything in a document to the nearest full pixel to avoid this straddling of pixels, even if it means that alignments such as centering aren't necessarily absolute.

 

That's fine for the special (if not uncommon) case of an un-skewed, unrotated, unscaled rectilinear image, but it won't help for anything else, for instance an image trimmed to contain only an irregular shape like a person or just about anything rotated or scaled to an arbitrary angle or scale factor.

 

Basically, this is an anti-aliasing issue that will occur anytime an image's edge pixels can't all be aligned to whole pixel boundaries. That is quite likely to occur frequently in most workflows.

[- S -]

That's fine for the special (if not uncommon) case of an un-skewed, unrotated, unscaled rectilinear image...

 

Yeah, I can't think of any reason why anyone would want to use an un-skewed, un-rotated, rectilinear image.   :)

 

[Geowil]

Nope, I was wrong.  It is happening again even with what I posted earlier.  Not sure why it worked that time.  I found another piece to the puzzle though.  The selection area from project 1 (one with print screen pastes from frames in videos in Vegas 14) is size 1280x720.  When I then paste this into project 2 (project that has my thumbnail template) the pasted image size is 1290 x 726.....  Don't ask me to explain because I have no clue at all.  Affinity Photo does not behave at all like Photoshop sometimes which is bothering.