simple Photo UI questions

[dcortesi]

Sorry for the simple questions; longtime PS user settling in to Affinity Photo and having some problems with the user interface.

One, how do I control the units displayed in the info panel? I swear, it was showing both X/Y and W/H in pixels, then suddenly in some documents it is showing X/Y in px but W/H in pt. Other documents it shows everything in pts, no pxs. I've looked in the help/info panel and help/options, can't find anything.

Two, I have from PS, over-learned zooming using space+command, space+option keys. These keys don't always work in Affinity, producing error beeps if I press that key combo when the move cursor is over gray space (off canvas?). Any way to make space+command-click work with the cursor anywhere in the window? Correction- it only makes error beeps if I press option or command first and space second. If my fingers mash the space-bar first and then hit option/command, the zoom icon appears. So the question is, can Affinity learn to accept Option/Command-space as equal to Space-Option?

Three, I took a large document and with the crop tool (mode: absolute size) made a narrow vertical strip to use on the spine of a book cover. After the crop, when I click on the visible strip I get a big blue outline the size of the original image, with no tool handles, but little x's where tool handles should be. If I select-all, then only the cropped image strip is selected, and it has x's where tool handles oughta be, and the big blue rectangle remains but has no x's. The Document>Document Size and >Canvas Size dialogs reflect the size of the cropped strip, not the original doc. How do I get the cropped strip to be the complete document with proper tool handles?

Edited July 14, 2019 by dcortesi
add specific detail

[firstdefence]

10 hours ago, dcortesi said:

One, how do I control the units displayed in the info panel? I swear, it was showing both X/Y and W/H in pixels, then suddenly in some documents it is showing X/Y in px but W/H in pt. Other documents it shows everything in pts, no pxs. I've looked in the help/info panel and help/options, can't find anything.

[firstdefence]

11 hours ago, dcortesi said:

Three, I took a large document and with the crop tool (mode: absolute size) made a narrow vertical strip to use on the spine of a book cover. After the crop, when I click on the visible strip I get a big blue outline the size of the original image, with no tool handles, but little x's where tool handles should be. If I select-all, then only the cropped image strip is selected, and it has x's where tool handles oughta be, and the big blue rectangle remains but has no x's. The Document>Document Size and >Canvas Size dialogs reflect the size of the cropped strip, not the original doc. How do I get the cropped strip to be the complete document with proper tool handles?

The crop is non destructive until you rasterise the crop, you can do this by right clicking on the layer and selecting Rasterise and Trim. The blue line with 'X' marks normally denotes a locked layer. Think of a locked layer as a move locked layer, it's still selectable, it can have filters and adjustments applied, you can paint on it and erase from it but you can't move it in the workspace.

[dcortesi]

@firstdefence, thank you! I had not noticed the little padlock icon on the layer. Clicking it got rid of the x's and revealed handles. Now I'll know how to deal with that.

The need to rasterize a crop is also new to me (coming from PS). I'm sure I'll figure out how that is a very useful feature, eventually.

Thanks again!

 

[dcortesi]

However, regarding unit of measure in the info panel, the preference pane you show does not seem applicable. Currently I have three documents open, in two of them, X/Y and W/H are shown in px, while in the third, it insists on showing X/Y (i.e. move cursor position) in pt  and W/H in px. Changing the two preference buttons doesn't make any difference.

Actually I am a bit confused about the W/H values anyway. They do not vary with the object selected, so they aren't showing me the width and height of the thing with a blue rectangle. If I drag a rectangle with the move cursor or the selection tool they reflect that. I wonder what they reflect other times...

Edited July 15, 2019 by dcortesi
further obfuscation

[PaulEC]

6 minutes ago, dcortesi said:

The need to rasterize a crop is also new to me (coming from PS). I'm sure I'll figure out how that is a very useful feature, eventually.

Until you rasterize it,  it is non-destructive, so you can adjust it if you change you mind.

[dcortesi]

Still plugging away on these issues. Regarding info panel display units, I stumbled on the following in the help under Rulers,

 

Quote

To change document units:

Do one of the following:

• With either the View Tool or Zoom Tool selected, choose a unit of measurement from the pop-up menu on the context toolbar.

And that does it: select the View (hand icon) tool, there is a units pop-up on the context toolbar, setting it to pixel makes the info panel display in pixels.

Reason I didn't find it when searching Help on "unit" was, it was in the Ruler topic, which I skipped over because, hey, this is about the Info panel, not Rulers.