Being able to drag crop edges instead of small crop-handles

[Friksel]

When using the croptool, which I really like btw, there's only one small handle on each side. At the moment I'm using this crop tool a lot at work to crop rastergraphics of screenshots. For that I start zoomed out and work my way to higher detail by zooming in.

During this proces I find myself looking for the crop handles a lot because often they are not on screen when zoomed in, so I need to grab-move the 'canvas' to search for the crop-handle. This handle is very small and in fact just a line, so it's easy to miss during this drag-move. Also while dragging, the edge and the handle aren't visible, these are only visible if we stop dragging, so everytime we need to drag a little and then stop just to see if the handle is already in view.

I often have to zoom out again, just to find the crop-handle and zoom in again, but it takes a lot of extra steps and it's not a very efficient workflow. (see video)

I understand the way it is build now is the same as for sizing and moving artboards with the artboardtool and also works like this in other tools. But for those we mostly work with vectors, so we don't need to fine-tune in high zoom values most of the time and could easily use the snapping options to snap, for example, the artboard to an object. But when we want to crop a rastergraphic snapping isn't possible, so we need to zoom in to finetune the crop and need to move the edges manually.

It would be great if we could just click and drag the whole edge!!

That way, whereever we are on the graphic and whatever zoom level, we would never have to search for that small crop-handle, we could stay at the zoom level we are in, we don't need to grab-move the 'canvas' and we could work a lot faster and keep focussing on the task of cropping.

 

[edit] the forum is acting strange, couldn't upload the video at first and now obviously added twice the video here, which seem to be impossible to delete by us from this WYSIWYG editor??

[Friksel]

BTW related to this for future reference:
The Tool Handle Size option in the preferences, which is nice!, is scaling the shape-handles, node-, corner- and probably some more tool-handles, but not the crop-tool handles:

 

[Friksel]

Just a bump on thisone, as this could be such an easy fix for such a big UI problem I bump into each day now for last weeks. Please improve this part of the UI so we can crop by dragging the edge, instead of those very small (and never scaling) lines (as handles).

Thanks!

[drks]

I would love to see this on Affinity Photo on desktop as well, since it's a daily issue for me.

I have to crop images to the size of video against a background, and quite often the color of the video at the crop handle is the same color as the background, and I must refer to a different part of the edge to find the correct place to crop, but there's no crop handle visible at that location when I'm zoomed in enough to get it pixel perfect.  It would be far easier if I could simply drag the crop frame edges instead. 

[Catshill]

Dynamic crop handles that are always visible regardless of the zoom would be a big improvement .

[bures]

I agree.

 

[cygaj]

I would like to +1 this thread because I also bump onto this quirk often. I crop scans of paintings and the edges aren't perfect so I'd like to crop zoomed in onto specific segment. It's quite annoying that I can't do that, especially coming over from photoshop. Also, even zoomed out it would be way more straightforward to just grab on the edge, and not needing to grab onto a small handle

EDIT: I apologize! I found this thread on google and forgot to double check it refers to Designer, not Photo. I have the problem in Photo. But it still stands!

[ahnay]

So, this isnt a bug, but was designed this way?  You have got to be kidding.  Read the workaround.  I have arthritis in my fingers, and find this to be a deal breaker.  How on earth are we supposed to make precise crops this way?   You do know you can go to Gimp open sourse software and just copy the routine to do this correctly?  I paid money for this software and i expect it to actually be usable.  How do we request a full refund?

Im just doing a simple crop and as long as im zoomed out, i can see the back and forth arrow to move the crop lines.  But if i zoom in to actually make it exact, then the only cursor i get is the Move cursor for the tool!  If i mouse over the corners, i do get the back and forth arrow, however i do not want to move the cropping frame in the diagonal direction.  Is this a bug then?  and is it on the list to be fixed?

Is this important ?yes very.  I need to crop the image correctly so the transform axis is in the correct place.

Thank you.

 

Workaround if you dont have arthritis in your fingers:  Go up the side to the black bump, and mouse till you have the back and forth arrow, now dont let go, use the mouse wheel to zoom in and dray that arrow down, keep zooming in, yes this takes some time to do, hang in there its possible.   When you zoom in enough and are down to the corner you can now, very carefully set that side where you need it.   Let go.  Wasnt that fun?  

 

You can see the back and forth arrow for sizing the box frame in the fist pic, and none in the second pic down where i actually need to move that crop line to the point. 

[Friksel]

Bump!

[drks]

Still waiting for this...

[ahnay]

apparently they only care about the almighty coins.  Forget the users

 

[drks]

15 hours ago, ahnay said:

apparently they only care about the almighty coins.  Forget the users

 

I think that might be an overstatement considering they offer their software at a very reasonable one-time purchase price.  However I would definitely still like to see this problem addressed.