Unnecessary number of steps to crop

[Designed]

I'm trying to select a new application to migrate from Fireworks which sadly hasn't been updated in years.

Affinity Designer looked promising but after using it for a little bit I am absolutely getting frustrated by the number of steps to perform a seemingly simple action.

 

In fireworks, once I have drawn a selection around an object, to destructively crop it required three clicks:

1. Right click the crop area
2. Select "Crop Selected Bitmap"
3. Double click to finalise the crop

 

Simple.

 

I've tried to read a number of guides on cropping in Affinity Designer and the best I could come up with is after drawing a selection around an object in pixel persona mode:

1. Click the refine button from the top bar
2. Wait for the screen to redraw (approx 1 second)
3. Untick matt edges (because it seems to make a horrible mess of the image borders)
4. Click on the output drop down box to display a list of options
5. Select "New Layer" from the list
6. Click apply
7. Find the original image in the Layer list (may involve scrolling) and click it
8. Press the delete key to remove the original

 

Sorry but that is two to three times as many steps as Fireworks and is unnecessarily frustrating. Why does it have to take so many clicks to do this?
Why can't you just add an option to the right click menu after you've drawn your selection like most reasonable applications?

I haven't even figured out if it's possible to crop the document size to the bounds of the selection yet. Again, an option that could be selected obviously and easily in Fireworks at step 2.

 

I'm just about to give up on Affinity Designer and move on to the next product which might be able to take the place of Fireworks unless I'm missing something here.

Also, it's all well and good to say not to use a destructive crop but in some circumstances that's what I want to do. For example, working with an extremely high resolution image (12000+ pixels across) and I want to crop elements from the image into their own movable objects, imagine the file size if every time I had to make a new copy of the image with a mask (100+ copies of a 12000+ pixel image).

[firstdefence]

Why not use Copy and Paste?

 

copy and paste cropping in designer pixel persona.mp4

[lepr]

.

[toltec]

If you want a separate layer in the same document.

 

Make a pixel selection, press Ctrl + J. That will put a destructively cropped area on a new layer in one step. (It will automatically be highlighted in the layers panel).

 

If you want a separate document.

 

Make a selection, copy (Ctrl + C) and go File > New from Clipboard (Ctrl + Alt + Shift + N). That will put a destructively cropped area into a new document. Two steps.

 

Bear in mind that Designer is really a "Page" based program, so will have a small disadvantage compared to Photo which is a "Canvas" based program. You would be a bit better off with Photo but Designer can do it.

 

Because Designer is "Page" based, like Word or Quark or similar page-layou programs, you would normally create a page first and place things on it. Not crop the canvas to fit the image, like Photoshop or Photo would.

[Designed]

Thanks all for the quick responses.

 

@firstdefence Thanks for the video. At first I was confused because when I followed your steps exactly, the context menu did not appear when right clicking. Using keyboard shortcuts for copy and paste also did not copy the selected area but the entire image.

 

However, this functionality changed after I tried the suggestion from @owenr to "rasterise" the image, even before trying to select an area of it. After doing that, the context menu appeared and copy and paste correctly copied the selected area. I find this a little odd since the image I was using should already have been a raster image rather than a vector, but apparently there is still a difference between "image" and "raster." This step was not necessary back in Fireworks. Rasterising a masked object makes sense to me, that was like the "Flatten Selection" command back in Fireworks.

 

@toltec Great suggestion and shortcuts. Ctrl+J is as close to as short an execution path as possible. This was similar to the Right Click selection > New Bitmap via Copy option in Fireworks. Will also keep Ctrl+Alt+Shift+N in mind, although that isn't the most convenient shortcut to use with one hand!

 

It's great that there are keyboard shortcuts but I strongly believe that all of these options should be added to the context menu so that they're easy for new users to intuitively find how to perform these tasks in the software without being specifically instructed. Right clicking a selection in Fireworks gave four very handy options: Crop Selected Bitmap, Crop Document, New Bitmap Via Copy and New Bitmap Via Cut. It would also be nice if you could also save a step by allowing the user to right click without having to switch back from the selection tool (marquee tool) to the cursor (move tool), since right clicking in selection mode doesn't seem to do anything. Ctrl-J actually doesn't require switching back to the cursor, which is at least good.

 

I think Affinity could really seek to improve in this area.

Being able to find how to use these functions without being specifically told is the mark of a well designed, intuitive application.

I'm new here and a bit sad about moving away from Fireworks but I will give Affinity a go. I'm not sure how responsive Affinity are at taking user suggestions on board but if they are, I would be happy to provide some feedback along the way to make the program more intuitive for new users and those switching across.

[R C-R]

10 hours ago, Designed said:

I'm not sure how responsive Affinity are at taking user suggestions on board but if they are, I would be happy to provide some feedback along the way to make the program more intuitive for new users and those switching across.

There is an entire subform devoted to that: Feature Requests, Suggestions and Feedback