Clip canvas should ignore hidden layers

[jtlapp]

I am designing T-shirts. I want to see how my design looks on various T-shirt colors, so I have a big square in the background whose color I periodically change. The square is bigger than the image to help me see the image in the context of the T-shirt.

But I don't want this background square to be part of the print. So I hide it for test prints sent to the printer and for the final print sent to the POD service.

Once I hide the background color square, I clip the canvas to minimize the print size. This also makes it easy to center the print on a piece of paper.

But clipping the canvas changes nothing. I have to manually crop the image. And I have take care to do it accurately with the image at the center.

Were clipping the canvas to only heed visible layers, this would be a cinch. It would also make clipping useful for more creative editing.

P.S. I don't want to delete the background color layer because I'm frequently back after test runs tweaking the image.

[Alfred]

23 minutes ago, jtlapp said:

P.S. I don't want to delete the background color layer because I'm frequently back after test runs tweaking the image.

Instead of deleting the background, why not cut it to the clipboard? Then you can simply paste it back in when you want to do more tweaking.

[jtlapp]

54 minutes ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

Instead of deleting the background, why not cut it to the clipboard? Then you can simply paste it back in when you want to do more tweaking.

I've been deleting it, printing/exporting and then trying to remember to undo the delete. Often I'll get into tweaking before I remember that I'd dropped the background. Maybe having a clipboard copy would give me a better chance of recovering -- up until I use the clipboard for some tweak.

[carl123]

See the attached file...

The background colour can be changed by selecting the "Background colour" layer and changing the colour as required.

When you want to clip the canvas, first activate the "Clipping Control" layer, (nested in the Background colour layer), then Document > Clip Canvas.

To undo the clip canvas first deactivate the "Clipping Control" layer, then Document > Unclip Canvas.

The image file is just there to represent your design but it can be whatever you want it to be (shapes, text, brush strokes etc)

 

clipcanvas.afphoto

[jtlapp]

Hey @carl123, your file works perfectly. But I can't figure out how to duplicate it. Here's what I'm doing:

1. Create a big square background with my background color.
2. Create a small no-fill no-stroke square at the center.
3. Put the layer for the small square in the layer for the big square.
4. With the small square layer visible and active, clip the canvas.

This still sizes the canvas to the big square. What am I doing wrong?

[carl123]

The only thing I can think of is that in step 3 you moved the small square into the wrong position in the layer for the big square.  Make sure it goes into the "masking" position as indicated by the "crop symbol" on the small rectangle when moved to the correct position.

If you still cant get it working upload a sample file so we can see what you have done

 

[jtlapp]

Thank you @carl123! Unfortunately, I'm encountering bugs with clipping to canvas, so I'm now avoiding the feature.