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Arbitrary rotate selection (NOT PIXELS)


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I don't know if I'm missing something obvious, but in Photoshop, you make a selection, right click it, choose Transform Selection, and you can resize, and also rotate! This makes it super easy to  I can't see any way at all of doing this in Affinity Photo. It's great for making little rotated blackout boxes in photos! And it's really super awesome to have an easy visual rotate and expand/contract.

Also, bug related to selections: Drag+RDrag expands the selection. Unless... you release the right button before the left. Whoops! Old selection's gone, now you only have the new one!

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Hi Emfiliane,
Welcome to Affinity Forums :)
Enable Quick Mask mode in the main toolbar (or press "Q"), change to the Move Tool and edit the selection as if it was a regular object using the bounding box handles, then exit Quick Mask mode.

I'm assuming that by selection you are referring to a pixel selection made with the selection tools  (Flood Select Tool, Selection Brush Tool etc) - that is transforming the pixel selection. If you are referring to select/transform a regular layer/object, then select the object/layer you want to transform, change to the Move Tool and use the bounding box handles to transform it.

Note the bounding box handles have more than one function: you can stretch/scale the object clicking on them and dragging the mouse as usual but if you approach them from outside the cursor will change to a rotate icon (corner handles) - click and drag at that point to rotate the object, or skew icon (mid bounding box handles), again click and drag at that point to skew the object. This is also valid for transforming pixel selections in quick mask mode as explained above.

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8 hours ago, MEB said:

Enable Quick Mask mode in the main toolbar (or press "Q"), change to the Move Tool and edit the selection as if it was a regular object using the bounding box handles, then exit Quick Mask mode.

How is it that I have been using Affinity Photo since it was first released & never realized I could use the Move Tool while in Quick Mask mode? I feel so stupid! :$

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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1 hour ago, R C-R said:

How is it that I have been using Affinity Photo since it was first released & never realized I could use the Move Tool while in Quick Mask mode? I feel so stupid! :$

There’s no need to feel stupid! I’ve known about this for quite a long time, but I’m pretty sure that’s only because I read about it on these forums. I don’t think it’s as easily discoverable as it should be.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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1 minute ago, Alfred said:

I don’t think it’s as easily discoverable as it should be.

Perhaps, but I have more than once made a selection, switched to the Move Tool & then clicked the Quick Mask button, never realizing that I could actually use the Move Tool's features while in QM mode. That's why I feel so stupid!

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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2 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Perhaps, but I have more than once made a selection, switched to the Move Tool & then clicked the Quick Mask button, never realizing that I could actually use the Move Tool's features while in QM mode. That's why I feel so stupid!

I think I may be missing something here. Are you trying to make me feel stupid so that there are at least two of us? :P

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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Just now, Alfred said:

Are you trying to make me feel stupid so that there are at least two of us? :P

Not at all. I have enough stupid to cover dozens of people. :(

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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  • 2 years later...

Indeed, I suffered from the same lack of knowledge. Been a long-time Mac user and entered the world of Affinity by the discounts during the pandemic. Thank you for that.

However, never figured out how to rotate a selection frame without the actual pixels. Modifying the selection is so standard in Photoshop and Photoshop has such a huge influence in muscle memory that I never thought about masking. 

For all others coming to this thread after desperate searching, here is the workflow I figured out:

Press [M] for drawing a selection e.g. rectangle as a good starting point
Press [Q] to switch into QuickMask mode.
Press [V] to use the move tool and modify the area as required: Resize, rotate and position as needed.
Press [Q] again to leave QuickMask mode.

Now you can apply filters or use the selected pixels in the intended way (move away, delete, whatever).

(Sometimes the selection is gone after leaving the QuickMask mode. Does never happen whenever the area was moved during masking. Have to use this technique more often before I submit an actual bug report; maybe someone noticed this glitch as well or is it a common failure for newbies? ;-) 

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For those who are looking for a workflow available both on Desktop and on iPad (missing quick mask):

  • add an empty pixel layer
  • Create selection
  • switch to move tool (available in Selection Persona on iPad)
  • choose empty pixel layer
  • rotate, transform, move selection. It will “edit” the empty pixel layer, but this stays as before
  • switch back to actual pixel layer, and do whatever you need to use the selection

Mac mini M1 A2348 | Windows 10 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080

LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5

iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589

Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps.

 

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