Lock Children: visual indicator/Contextual Menu

[urbanistica]

A modest suggestion, but would make such a huge difference: put "Lock Children" in a contextual menu when interacting with masking objects. Locking children (which took me 2 years to find) is so basic to working with masks, and even within a given operation, I sometimes have to make multiple togglings.

 

For example: I select an existing mask object; I option drag it to duplicate, but its children are locked. I go up to the toolbar and toggle it. I undo, but that leaves a copy in the layers list (why?). I drag it to position, and then I want to widen the mask leaving the image in position, so I have to toggle again. Now I want to resize the image with the mask, and another retoggle.

 

Making this worse are two things: if I work fullscreen with two apps, the toggle is usually hidden, so I have to click in the upper right corner, and then toggle. This also means that I have no visual indicator of the state of Lock Children. Since I can't tell, if I'm starting a new operation, like the one described above (which I do constantly as part of the graphic novel process I'm working on), I still have to take the initial trip to the top of the window, just to check the status. Even an function-key option to modify the status would be great; so would a small lock icon on the cursor when about to resize a mask…

 

Perhaps there are already shortcuts for this; but the fact that as a heavy user of Designer and Photo (on both Mac and iOS) it took two years to find the Lock Children option is perhaps an indicator that your excellent interface could benefit from consideration of the general problem of "hidden" features…