How do I add the selection of layers?

[Kheewz]

You guys know that if you ctrl+click on a layer image you get it's contour as a selection.

That said, in Photoshop, it is possible to ctrl+click on a first layer and ctrl+shift+click on other layers to add to that initial selection. I couldn't do this on AD or AP. Is it possible to be done?

Showcase:

First I ctrl+click, then I try to ctrl+shift+click on the other layers.

[verysame]

It can't be done in Affinity.

[hifred]

Yup, a very helpful little feature. Could someone please move this feature requests?

[firstdefence]

Group the Layers and Cmd + Click or (Ctrl + Click on Windows) on the Group, job done.

[hifred]

9 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

Group the Layers and Ctrl click on the Group, job done.

A clever workaround for now, but being able to add to (and subtract from) a layer selection is more powerful. There's no reason why one would not want a combined selection of a mask and and a layer. Here your trick would fail. There's sure yet another workaround, but more solid low level tools were more helpful, if. you ask me :o)

[firstdefence]

1 minute ago, hifred said:

A clever workaround for now, but being able to add to s selection is more powerful. There's no reason why one wound not want a combined selection of a mask and and a layer. Here your trick would fail. There's sure yet another workaround, but more solid low level tools were more helpful, if. you ask me.

Being able to shift + cmd + Click to add to a selection is a preferable method but until something like this comes along you have to work with what you have. I'm not sure what you mean by Mask and a layer, do you mean a layer that also has a mask, maybe show an example?

[hifred]

It would be nice to add and subtract from all sorts of selections just with the mentioned Modifier keys. Start with a circular selection on the canvas, add a (text) letter from the layer stack and maybe subtract a gradient from that combined selection, which is a mask for yet another layer.

[hifred]

1 hour ago, firstdefence said:

Being able to shift + cmd + Click to add to a selection is a preferable method but until something like this comes along you have to work with what you have.

I do agree - the ubiquitous danger however, in proposing workarounds is, that the actual shortcoming is burried underneath. Have a look at this thread.

From the answers by fellow users one could get the impression that it was the user who had made a mistake. That's only superficially so. The actual mistake was made by Serifs programmers. Answers stating 'no problem at all' do not help Serif finding out where they could do better.

[firstdefence]

1 minute ago, hifred said:

I do agree - the ubiquitous danger in proposing workaround however is, that the actual shortcoming is burries underneath. Have a look at this thread.

From the answers by fellow users one could get the impression that it was the user who had made a mistake. That's only superficially so. The actual mistake was made by Serifs programmers. Answers stating 'no problem at all' do not help Serif finding out where they could do better.

Totally agree, Serif should amend or fix existing features more frequently IMHO. I empathise with the devs to a point, they have a continuous hill to climb but I think there should be a fast track patching system in place for smaller bugs, I think this would at least show some incremental progress and alleviate continuous postings of known issues.

Making everyone wait a long time for a job lot release is frustrating and having a more frequent smaller 1.7.1 or even 1.7.1.1 cycle in between 1.7, 1.8 releases would encourage confidence in Affinity products as they are being visibly proactive. As it is there are long pauses between fixes and updates. 

Having said that, I would rather wait for something to be fixed properly and features to be added that go beyond what the competition are putting out. What I don't want is "Affinistrator," I want something more than just a clone of adobe software.

[hifred]

1 hour ago, firstdefence said:

What I don't want is "Affinistrator," I want something more than just a clone of adobe software. 

I certainly welcome every solution that is simpler than Photoshops feature implementations - or at least justifiably different, as it gives access to more advanced workflows than possible with Photoshop. I don't see the latter being the case here :o).

[Kheewz]

Good to know I'm not alone dealing with this bug/lack of feature.

I just hope it gets implemented soon! I agree there should be more often updates. There are many small changes to be tweaked.

[carl123]

10 hours ago, Kheewz said:

.....I couldn't do this on AD or AP. Is it possible to be done?

You can add and subtract pixel selections using the Channels Studio - a bit more involved than Photoshop, but yes, it can be done

[R C-R]

7 hours ago, firstdefence said:

Totally agree, Serif should amend or fix existing features more frequently IMHO. I empathise with the devs to a point, they have a continuous hill to climb but I think there should be a fast track patching system in place for smaller bugs, I think this would at least show some incremental progress and alleviate continuous postings of known issues.

The thing about that is often those "smaller" bugs require rewriting more code than one might think to prevent other new bugs from occurring. Worse, if a section of the code is already being rewritten to support new features that have not yet made it into the release versions, then the time & effort spent on doing those short term incremental fixes is wasted & would be better spent on getting the code finalized to support the new stuff.

The developers have explained this quite a few times, though not in those words. They have also told us they are working on some major code changes for the much anticipated 1.7 versions of the apps, so it is not as if they are just ignoring fixing the 'smaller' bugs to work on adding new features.

[Alfred]

8 hours ago, hifred said:

I do agree - the ubiquitous danger however, in proposing workarounds is, that the actual shortcoming is burried underneath. Have a look at this thread.

From the answers by fellow users one could get the impression that it was the user who had made a mistake. That's only superficially so.

In that particular case, it was indeed the user who made a mistake. Other contributors to that thread (including me!) also made a mistake: namely, failing to notice that the OP said ‘Select’ (which is a menu heading) rather than ‘Selection’ (which is the button label that he should have been looking for).

8 hours ago, firstdefence said:

Making everyone wait a long time for a job lot release is frustrating and having a more frequent smaller 1.7.1 or even 1.7.1.1 cycle in between 1.7, 1.8 releases would encourage confidence in Affinity products as they are being visibly proactive. As it is there are long pauses between fixes and updates. 

The problem is that every release is going to trigger a QA cycle, so lots of little releases would mean hugely increasing the workload for the staff involved.

[hifred]

1 hour ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

In that particular case, it was indeed the user who made a mistake. Other contributors to that thread (including me!) also made a mistake...

Yeah, that was indeed an unexpected case :o)

You are of course correct in the sense that the user didn't use the program /set up the workspace in a way which serves him best - within the current implementation of turning elements on the canvas into a selection.

I rather criticized the inconsistent - and in the case of vector shapes needlessly hidden - way to turn supported object types to a pixel selection. I consider this a programmer mistake which will cause needless clicks, irritation and error - or at least a taste of lacking elegance - even amongst those who have the context toolbar showing.