Selection tool

[Rudy Rogalsky]

Selection tool sometimes works (marching ants) and sometimes doesn't.  And when it does work, the red refine mask doesn't appear.

[HVDB Photography]

In Affinity Photo
View > Show Pixel Selection

Click Q and/or Refine button on the toolbar (View > Show Toolbar)
 

[hifred]

40 minutes ago, HVDB Photography said:

In Affinity Photo
View > Show Pixel Selection

I can't test this myself currently - but the actual question is why Rudy doesn't see the marching ants on newly created selections.

If Hide Selection was involved: Is its implementation possibly sticky, so that it also affects completely new selections as well? If that was the case I'd consider this a bad usability bug. Hide Selection should only work on what's currently selected, new selection should turn the command off.

[MEB]

Hi Rudy Rogalsky,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
What tool are you suing to create the selection? If it provides a Mode in the context toolbar, make sure it is set to New or Add. If it's set to subtract for example and there's no selection active, the program have no selection to work with (subtract from) and does nothing.

[HVDB Photography]

Noted ...

[hifred]

42 minutes ago, MEB said:

If it's set to subtract for example and there's no selection active, the program have no selection to work with (subtract from) and does nothing. 

But that's a terrible and utterly needless trap MEB! A bug that would be trivial to turn off.

Subtract from selection in no context makes sense without a pre-existing selection. That mode may therefore not be active, unless a state is established, which justifies it's existence.

[MEB]

I wouldn't consider this a bug - although it can be improved. When the Mode is set to subtract a minus sign appear near the cursor letting the user know it's in subtract mode and that a subtract operation will be performed (which intuits the existence of a selection).

Photoshop for example does create a selection first if there's none when the Subtract mode is active/selected which in its own way is counter-intuitive but does prevent the situation the OP is experiencing (assuming it's caused by the subtract mode enabled).

[hifred]

1 hour ago, MEB said:

Photoshop for example does create a selection first if there's none when the Subtract mode is active/selected which in its own way is counter-intuitive...

I fail seeing how this is couter-intuitive. What Photoshop does may not be strictly logical in a mathematical sense (as an exception to a rule is made) but it's very deliberately there and it prevents all users from error - that's what counts.

Realistically, pretty much every Affinity-user will at least issue one failed selection attempt before discovering the wrong mode, this will sum up to very many needless clicks and decisions a year. It's your job to avoid these.

Some users obviously even fail to decipher the modified cursor and need help, others get annoyed by such blatant weaknesses.

[Rudy Rogalsky]

Thanks for replies. In frustration, I decided just to re-install the program and to my delight I discovered a repair feature. I ran that and, behold, the problem was fixed. That happened llast night (Vancouver time)  and I should have let the forum know but I was having too much fun using the Selection Brush and moving on.

[R C-R]

6 hours ago, MEB said:

I wouldn't consider this a bug - although it can be improved. When the Mode is set to subtract a minus sign appear near the cursor letting the user know it's in subtract mode and that a subtract operation will be performed (which intuits the existence of a selection).

Photoshop for example does create a selection first if there's none when the Subtract mode is active/selected which in its own way is counter-intuitive but does prevent the situation the OP is experiencing (assuming it's caused by the subtract mode enabled).

Personally, I would not like it if Affinity behaved like Photoshop does in this respect but I think it would be nice if instead Affinity either an alert beep (my preference) or displayed a warning, much like it does when trying to use one of the retouching brushes that requires an alt/option click to set the retouching reference.

There are a few other places where I think this might be helpful as well, like trying to create a style from a raster layer, & any other place where nothing happens.