Grab the sides of the crop rectangle at any point

[Alex_M]

It would be very helpful if we could grab the crop tool at any point on the 4 sides of the rectangle, currently, we are able to grab it by the 8 the predefined points which is not always ideal because sometimes I need to zoom in very close at a certain point of the image and the 8 predifined points are often out of view. This is already possible in Photoshop so it should also be possible in Photo IMHO.

[GarryP]

I like this idea as it could be very useful - the drag nodes are often not where I want them to be - but I would like to suggest a slightly different technique.

Instead of allowing the user to be able to drag anywhere on the Left, Right, Top, Bottom (LRTB) bounds of the crop box, the drag handles on those extents could be moved to always be in the centre of the visible portion of those extents.
That would give the user the extra functionality – or, to put it another way, would not have the user losing functionality – while also not making the entire crop bounding box a ‘live’ draggable item.
If this was done, it might also make sense to extend this functionality to bounding box dragging in general for all layers.
See my attached crude mock-up where the drag handles (red circles) on the right and bottom of the layer always stay at the centre of their bounding lines within the canvas (light-blue rectangle) no matter the zoom extent.

This could be the default way of handling LRTB drag nodes on all objects with a bounding box on all Affinity applications giving a more consistent UI.
I believe this would give the user a better experience overall as they would never have to go searching for a drag node while not also having a ‘totally-live-and-draggable’ bounding box.

Alex_M: Does this suggestion meet with your approval, or is there a reason why it wouldn’t work for you?

[Alex_M]

Yea, this could work too, but I'm no UI or UX designer so I can't give any expert opinion. Although either will still be better than the current situation.

[GarryP]

It would be interesting to hear if any other applications do a similar thing to what I suggested or, if deliberately not, what the reason is for not doing it.
There’s a chance that my suggestion isn’t viable for some reason but I can’t think why that would be.
Either way, it would be nice to be able to resize/crop things without having to scroll around to find a handle.