Freehand Selector Issue - Affinity Photo

[damianat24]

Hi,

I'm new to Affinity Photo, so just getting used to how to work it, migrating from Photoshop... On Windows... hope someone out there can help.

I have an issue with the Freehand Selector tool -  it either selects nothing, or creates a selection of an oval within the shape I draw out. Mostly, when I release the mouse button, it just selects nothing. I have it set on mode Add, and the top pixel layer selected. Occasionally after an age a selection appears, but it doesn't bear much relationship to my selection, usually some curve or oval shape inside what I wanted, no straight lines and no relationship to the underlying image. The polygonal tool and magnetic tool are no better. Magnetic tool is awesome at detecting the edges but as soon as I finish, it all disappears. Tried it on different images, to no avail. Tried using Add instead of New, no difference, made sure there was nothing else selected (Deselect All), reloaded the program and reloaded the image, all made no difference.  Am I doing something stoopid?

Software version number is 1.6.4.104 in case there's an update?

Thanks

Damian

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, damianat24 said:

I have it set on mode Add, and the top pixel layer selected.

Are you sure that layer is a pixel layer, indicated by a "(Pixel)" suffix, & not an image layer, indicated by an "(Image)" suffix?

[Wosven]

Did you check the amount of "feather" for your selection? Try setting it to 0 before selecting an area.

[damianat24]

Hi Wosven,

Yes, it was the feather setting - once set to 0 it worked. For some reason even with the new file it was set to 586 pixels. Perhaps I'd changed it another time using the 'Refine' dialogue, I hadn't changed it on the context menu.

 

Thanks muchly,

Damian