Inverse Selection and Feather Edge

[Catrin Everitt]

I am very inexperienced in Affinity but used to know photoshop very well.

 

I am trying to take a photo from Aperture (no problem there),

Select a central(ish) part of the image - the part I want to keep,

Feather the edge around the part that I want to keep,

Delete the rest of the image/document (don't mind which)

Convert the remaining feather-edged part of the image to greyscale (no problem there) 

 

I am;

Selecting the central(ish) part of the image that I want to keep,

Selecting "inverse pixel selection" - the marching ants look correct

Selecting "cut" to remove the inverse selection

 

The whole image is cut leaving a blank canvas.

 

What is really annoying is that I have done this successful (albeit after several retrys) twice today and now I can't get it to work at all.

I don't need a non-destructive method for this part and what I have done is what I would have done in Photoshop.

 

Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong (or right on some occasions)?

 

[Catrin Everitt]

Think I may have cracked it!

 

I need to rasterise the layer.

[MEB]

Hi Catrin Everitt,

Welcome to Affinity Forums

You were probably working with an Image layer type (see the label between parenthesis after the layer's name in the Layers panel). To be able to perform edits at a pixel level the Image layer must be converted to a Pixel layer type right-clicking on it in the Layers panel and selecting Rasterise (or going to the menus on top) as you already did.

 

Image layers retain all original image data so you can transform them without losing quality but they can't be manipulated at a pixel level.

[Catrin Everitt]

Thank you MEB - I obviously managed to do the first two by "accident".  Much appreciate your help.