Photo: Basic selecting, deleting, pasting issues

[moonliner]

I'm so impressed with Affinity products that I cut the cord with Adobe to force myself into the learning curve, figure out the differences, etc. But there is something I must be doing wrong. If there's a video or tutorial on this, just point me to it unless it's an easy explanation. I'm basically looking for something that explains how Photo works differently than PShop in this basic area.

If I import or open an image, (in this case, a .jpg from my iphone camera),  it appears that I have to go to the layers drop down and rasterize it before I can edit it. Sometimes the layer palette calls it an "image" sometimes a "pixel."

If I lasso a selection and copy and paste, it works sometimes, but sometimes I get a black background layer as the new pasted layer.

There seems to be something fundamental to how Photo works that is vastly different to a simple import, cut, paste in Photoshop. Any direction would be much appreciated.

 

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, moonliner said:

If I import or open an image, (in this case, a .jpg from my iphone camera),  it appears that I have to go to the layers drop down and rasterize it before I can edit it. Sometimes the layer palette calls it an "image" sometimes a "pixel."

If you open the jpeg with Affinity Photo you should get a "(Pixel)" layer. If you use the place command or drag & drop to add the file to an existing Affinity document you get an "(Image)" layer.

[Pšenda]

2 hours ago, moonliner said:

 Sometimes the layer palette calls it an "image" sometimes a "pixel."

If Open file, then Pixel (work with rasterized image). If Place file, then Image (work with object). 

[MEB]

Hi moonliner,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
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 (Designer and Photo) 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/copy/paste to another layer's.

[moonliner]

Thanks everyone, that explains it. Sometimes I was dragging, sometimes opening, sometimes placing.