Desperately missing features

[Gerrit Velthuis]

There's a few things I miss desperately:

1. Cropping an image takes a lot of steps; of course that might be necessary sometimes, but most of the time I would simply like to drag a marquee and hit a keystroke. I do a lot of batch work and especially then, one needs fast and simple shortcuts.

2. When (again) I have to batch-edit a lot of images (say . . . adjusting the white background with the brush tool); one always has to re-select the brush tool and after that re-select the color (which has changed from background to foreground or vice versa) for each image. Why not let the same tool and colour be selected when going to the next image.

3. It happenes a lot, that I have to close (cmd-W) an image three times before it really closes (even after having saved it first); I simply get the same dialog box three times. The same with flattening. When I first choose "Flatten" in the "Document" menu and then cmd-S for saving, AP aks again if I want to save the image flattened or not.

4. After having resized the canvas slightly to give an image a (white) border, the "new" area is transparant (showing a grey checkered texture; one would expect that area to be white after having flattened the image; that's not the case; it stays transparent.

[walt.farrell]

1. I don't think I understand this one. You should be able to click the crop tool, drag the crop marquee, and click apply. Isn't that basically what you described?

3. This seems odd. I think you should only get that prompt if you still have layers on the document. A screenshot of you Layers panel after you Flatten might be useful.

4. It sounds like you checked Transparent Background in your document settings. You can place a Fill Layer behind everything to get the colored border you want. Or you can Export the image (rather than Save) and specify a colored matte as part of the export settings.

[Gerrit Velthuis]

Thanks Walt.

1. The crop tool takes the whole image, which means you have to adjust at least four sides or two corners (more work) and then you have to click apply (enter or return doesn't work).

3. Of course I checked that one. The layers palette shows only one layer. It doesn't happen always and I can't reproduce (yet) the circumstances under which it does or does not.

4. Sound reasonable; searched for something like that but couldn't find. Where are these document settings when you're opening a jpeg (f.i.).

I found the option when starting a new file.

[Pšenda]

On 2/15/2019 at 6:46 PM, Gerrit Velthuis said:

when you're opening a jpeg 

JPEG does not have transparency. So there's always a background, which you need to manually remove.

[Medical Officer Bones]

On 2/15/2019 at 9:46 AM, Gerrit Velthuis said:

The crop tool takes the whole image, which means you have to adjust at least four sides or two corners (more work) and then you have to click apply (enter or return doesn't work).

Click the crop tool button, and the entire canvas is selected. Drag anywhere in the image to create a new crop. No need to adjust those four existing corners.

That said, it *IS* a bit of a hidden affordance: it looks as if the crop must be adjusted using the initial full-canvas crop handles, but this crop is cancelled the instant the user starts dragging a new crop.

PS I noticed it is not possible to start a new crop by dragging outside the existing canvas: Affinity assumes that the user wants to rotate the existing full canvas one in this case, which is frustrating when attempting to increase the canvas size to add a border white space. Unless I am missing a shortcut option here, or something.

And it doesn't seem possible to drag one of the handles and have the crop proportionally scale from the center outwards. It is also not possible to perspective distort the crop marquee.

 

[Gerrit Velthuis]

Hey MOB, that's a great answer; exactly what I was looking for . . . . Thanks.

Please shine your light on my second question; that one is even more annoying.

[Medical Officer Bones]

Unfortunately, Affinity "remembers" tool or colour settings for each separate document, and will not use your colour settings between documents. That is just how Affinity seems to work.

As a work-around, save the colour as a colour swatch, and select the colour swatch when switching between documents. A new document or image that is opened will always reset the colours to black and white.

Frustrating, I agree. As far as I can recall, Affinity is the only design software which displays this behaviour. I wouldn't really know why this workflow would be preferable: to me it also makes little sense. Resetting to the default colours seems more like how a developer would solve this, rather than an artist or designer.

[Gerrit Velthuis]

Thanks MOB, I agree.

[angelhdz12]

Hello Gerrit,

I don't know if this is what you want, but you can select any object on canvas, even images, then Document > Clip Canvas and the canvas will be cropped to that object/image size.

Cheers

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, angelhdz12 said:

I don't know if this is what you want, but you can select any object on canvas, even images, then Document > Clip Canvas and the canvas will be cropped to that object/image size.

Sorry, but that's not correct. Document > Clip Canvas does not care what you have selected. It changes the canvas size so that all the non-transparent pixes just fit within the rectangular canvas. That can be a crop or an enlargement, and all the objects will be completely included in the new canvas.

[Gerrit Velthuis]

I guess walt.farrell is right. After a crop action, removed parts are still there and can be "restored" by choosing menu-item "unclip canvas". After "clip canvas" or "flatten image" they are really gone.

But, besides that, MOB gave me the right answer at this point; fully satisfied on that one.

However, items 2, 3 and 4 are still open.

[angelhdz12]

21 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Sorry, but that's not correct. Document > Clip Canvas does not care what you have selected. It changes the canvas size so that all the non-transparent pixes just fit within the rectangular canvas. That can be a crop or an enlargement, and all the objects will be completely included in the new canvas.

Regardless of it is by selecting an object or not, my answer is still valid. The OP just wanted to clip the canvas to an image, so this is a solution. The canvas will be clipped, as you mentioned, to the boundaries of the objects on canvas, removing the empty pixels.

If the OP just wanted to "crop" the image to a specific size, then MOB's answer is the one. But I wasn't sure.

However, I wonder if is possible to do what I said? Selecting an object or objects and the canvas will be clipped to those objects... it would be an excellent feature.

As far as I've read in the forum, the only workaround is exporting the file to a non-destructive format (EPS, PDF, etc.) and selecting "Selection Without Background". Then opening the exported file and continue working from there. This workaround just make it obvious that this features is needed in the tools.

Cheers