Basics How To - Selections

[John-B]

I'm switching over from MANY years with Photoshop, and I can't find any very basic tutorials. The in-app help just show blank pages when I select a topic (like a particular tool), and I can't find the docs on line. I can't figure out how to do selections. If there are online tutorials or online documentation, I'd appreciate being pointed in the right direction. I can't figure out the following:

• How to make a selection. I can draw a rectangular marquee around something, but then can't do anything else. Command-drag drags the entire layer, copy copies the entire layer. Nothing seems to be selected, every action affects the layer, not the selection.

• How to use the Flood Select (magic wand) tool. It does nothing as far as I can tell, no matter how it's set..

• How to shrink a selection to remove empty space. In PS, nudging a selection will get rid of empty pixels.

• How to find the size of a selection. The width and height of the rectangular marquee show while it's being dragged, but the dimensions disappear when the mouse is released.

[MEB]

Hi John-B,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
There's still a few couple issues with the inline help we are looking into. Meanwhile please check the online help here. For video-tutorials covering almost all features of the program check the Official Affinity Photo (Desktop) Video Tutorials thread. Here's the relevant ones for selections/masking:

Selections and Masking

• Making Selections
• Refining Selections
• Pixel Selections from Layers
• Quick Masks
• Mask Layers
• Exposure Merging
• Clipping vs Masking
• Vector Masking
• Using Adjustment Layers on Masks - YouTube / Vimeo

Regarding your questions specifically:

1. If you are trying to edit image layers (check the label after the layer's name in the Layers panel) you must first have to rasterise them. Right-click on the layer in the Layers panel and select Rasterise. It should then work as you are expecting.

Image layers are a special layer type that retains all the original image data - you can think of them as embedded images . They are created when you use the Place Image Tool (in Affinity Designer only), the File ▸ Place command or when you simply drag them from the Finder (Mac) or File Explorer (Windows) to the canvas of an opened document. They can be transformed globally (rotated, skewed etc) without losing quality but they cannot be edited/manipulated at a pixel level. For that they must be rasterised first. To do it right-click on them in the Layers panel and select Rasterise. They are then converted to a Pixel layer type (as you are used to from other programs) which you can then manipulate at a pixel level and copy/paste to another layer's.

2. Same issue as above. Rasterise the layer first.

3. Not sure I understood your question can you rephrase it please?

4. With the Move Tool selected, check the Transform panel width/height fields.

[John-B]

2 hours ago, MEB said:

Hi John-B,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
There's still a few couple issues with the inline help we are looking into. Meanwhile please check the online help here. For video-tutorials covering almost all features of the program check the Official Affinity Photo (Desktop) Video Tutorials thread. Here's the relevant ones for selections/masking:

Selections and Masking

• Making Selections
• Refining Selections
• Pixel Selections from Layers
• Quick Masks
• Mask Layers
• Exposure Merging
• Clipping vs Masking
• Vector Masking
• Using Adjustment Layers on Masks - YouTube / Vimeo

Regarding your questions specifically:

1. If you are trying to edit image layers (check the label after the layer's name in the Layers panel) you must first have to rasterise them. Right-click on the layer in the Layers panel and select Rasterise. It should then work as you are expecting.

Image layers are a special layer type that retains all the original image data - you can think of them as embedded images . They are created when you use the Place Image Tool (in Affinity Designer only), the File ▸ Place command or when you simply drag them from the Finder (Mac) or File Explorer (Windows) to the canvas of an opened document. They can be transformed globally (rotated, skewed etc) without losing quality but they cannot be edited/manipulated at a pixel level. For that they must be rasterised first. To do it right-click on them in the Layers panel and select Rasterise. They are then converted to a Pixel layer type (as you are used to from other programs) which you can then manipulate at a pixel level and copy/paste to another layer's.

2. Same issue as above. Rasterise the layer first.

3. Not sure I understood your question can you rephrase it please?

4. With the Move Tool selected, check the Transform panel width/height fields.

Thanks. I wasn't aware of the different types of layers. Looks like the image layer was created when I used New From Clipboard. And also when I just paste something in from the clipboard.

Those look like the tutorials I need. Access to the docs online should also help. Every time I tried the inline help, it didn't work at all, all the topics come up with blank pages. Not to mention how terribly SLOW Apple's help system is.

Regarding my question 3, say I have a layer with any arbitrary shape in the middle (like a cutout tree), the rest of the layer is empty, transparent to the layers below it. In PS, I can draw a rectangular marquee around the shape, nudge the selection (command-arrow), and the selection shrinks to just the pixels in the shape, excluding the empty space in the layer. There are other ways to do this, but that is the quickest, since it doesn't require selecting a different tool.