Feature Request: Context-aware layer rearrangement [Designer]

[Toroquin]

Please excuse me if this has already been implemented and I just haven't found it yet. I am aware of the "Move Forward One" and "Move Back One" features, but they don't seem to provide quite the functionality that I am looking for. In short, what I am looking for is functionality similar to "Object -> Raise" and "Object -> Lower" in Inkscape - object z-order rearrangement that always arranges the objects z-position relative to overlapping objects. 

 

Feature Request:
Add a new way to rearrange layer order in the Layer -> Arrange menu in Affinity Designer. The new features would work similarly to the existing "Move Forward One" and "Move Back One" features. Let's call the new features "Raise" and "Lower". When a layer is lowered, rather than always moving down one position in the global layer list, it finds the top layer under the selected layer that contains elements that visually overlap with the selected layer, and moves to the layer position one step below that layer. Similarly, when a layer is raised, it finds the lowest layer above the selected layer containing overlapping elements and moves to the layer position one step above that layer.

 

The result of this functionality would be that the z-order of overlapping elements can rearranged without considering other "irrelevant" elements (which usually includes most elements that don't currently overlap with the selected elements). Essentially you can just focus on the relevant elements you are currently rearranging and ignore the rest of the project, regardless of how many other elements there are on the same layer level. Contrary to the existing "Move Forward One"-implementation it will also always provide direct visual feedback in the canvas (since you can see the overlapping objects switching z-order) without having to look at the layer list.

[kirk23]

I would prefer if all the objects  would have it's own Z depth info (channel)  like alpha channel  which we could influent directly  by painting into that channel or just adjusting with a mouse wheel.

 

That way any specific sorting could be irrelevant and  a  half of any object could be in front of something and another half behind  with its depth channel as a gradient for example.  No need of masks.     Never understood why all those 2d image editors couldn't  fake Z depth properly. It could open unbelievable amount of possibilities for complex object compositing without any care of a specific layer order or masking, lasso selection, edge feathering,  perspective  emulation etc. 

 You just grab a thing on screen and wheel it upfront  or behind with 100% proper object to object intersection  based by their depth info.  Kind of same thing Zbrush 2,5D pixols  do only vector and non-destructive.

The math is so simple for that I just can't understand why every image soft can't do it , vector or pixel based. It's already there usually among layer blending modes. Needs just to be set working automatically.

This could be especially helpful with new fashion iphone photography is  developing where depth info is getting an integral  part of any image