Crop tool

[Frank Jonen]

I know this has been asked a few times before (because it's weird to not have it).

Can we have the same constraints on the crop tool that the scale tool has? Not being  able to crop properly and having to create a rectangle, nest the layer stack below, copy and paste to a new document to quickly get the proper cropping is just crazy. But it's what we have to do at the moment.

[walt.farrell]

I don't see a scale tool. Where would I find it? (Or is it known under a different name?)

[Frank Jonen]

It's the tool you use to scale things. They're usually called 'scale' or 'transform' / 'interactive transform' tools. You pick an object and it shows you the transform handles. Hold the designated key for the desired transform constraint and drag the handles. Now try the same with the crop tool.

[walt.farrell]

Thanks.

There is no "scale tool" in the Affinity products, which is what confused me. There is Move Tool, and a Node Tool. Selecting a vector  object gives you a bounding box with handles, and you an use those tools to scale the object.

The Crop Tool in Photo is not a vector object-based tool but a canvas-based tool. It crops the entire canvas.

The Crop Tool in Designer seems to work as you'd like. It is a vector-based tool, as opposed to the pixel-based tool in Photo.

I have seen requests for a pixel-based cropping tool in Designer, but I don't recall seeing requests for a vector-based crop tool in Photo. There may be some older ones I haven't seen, of course.

It sounds like what you're asking for is a vector-object-based cropping tool in Photo, or at least a vector-based tool, even if it works on the canvas.

But if you're wanting it to crop the whole canvas (are you?) then the existing Crop Tool will crop without all the "nest into a rectangle" work that you mentioned. You just drag the crop box around the area you want to crop to, and press Apply. Then (perhaps, if you want it to be destructive) you Rasterize.

Can you clarify a bit more what you want the tool to work on (cropping the complete canvas, or something else)?

[Frank Jonen]

Ever used Photoshop?

[walt.farrell]

Long time ago.

[walt.farrell]

I know (from discussions here) that PhotoShop allows one to crop the canvas and resize in the same operation, which the 1.6 version of Photo doesn't allow. But that doesn't sound like what you're asking for.

But that is perhaps available in 1.7, though I haven't played with the cropping in Photo 1.7 beta yet to understand exactly what it's doing.

[MEB]

Thread moved to the Feature Requests section.

[Fixx]

Crop and scale is in the new beta.

In Affinity Photo crop ratio is selected in the Context Toolbar. I agree using mod key would be better.

But perhaps you have something else in mind?

[Frank Jonen]

14 hours ago, Fixx said:

Crop and scale is in the new beta.

In Affinity Photo crop ratio is selected in the Context Toolbar. I agree using mod key would be better.

But perhaps you have something else in mind?

Just the normal way crops work pretty much everywhere. You hold `command` and the crop tool just works as expected.

In Affinity that never was the case. To get an exact crop we always have to go through this highly annoying dance of nesting the entire layer stack to a rectangle. Scaling it. Copying it to a new document and saving it from there. Urgh. The opposite side of intuitive workflows.

[walt.farrell]

1 minute ago, Frank Jonen said:

In Affinity that never was the case. To get an exact crop we always have to go through this highly annoying dance of nesting the entire layer stack to a rectangle. Scaling it. Copying it to a new document and saving it from there. Urgh

No, you don't have to do that. You can use the Crop Tool, and crop to the image content you want. Then Rasterize, and use Document Resize to make it the physical size you want. That is simpler than your approach, conceptually, and avoids creating a new document.

It should be simpler in the beta (but I haven't played with that function, yet).

[Fixx]

17 hours ago, Frank Jonen said:

Just the normal way crops work pretty much everywhere. You hold `command` and the crop tool just works as expected.

In Photoshop "command" does not do anything when dragging crop corner. Outside crop corner it activates straighten function.

Would not making exact rectangle be as hard to do as making exact crop? (OK, making exact dimensions is easier with new beta but not impossible with the old version either.)

[Frank Jonen]

In Photoshop it was easier. It took just one key when dragging to get even spacing to the edges when cropping. No need to rasterise and the document remained intact for future edits. You just couldn't make it bigger again.

I'm doing the output in Publisher now. Pages = different crop versions for lossless ideating.