besselfunct Posted October 9, 2019 Share Posted October 9, 2019 Hi, I'm a scientist and I used Illustrator to make figures until jumping ship to Affinity. I would like to be able to perform an aspect-ratio crop within Affinity easily. Thus far the only way I've found to do this is to simply look at the rulers, and hope that I'm getting close to a square or a 1x2 crop, depending on the scenario. The ability to manipulate the crop area in the transform panel would be sufficient to get the desired result, though a true aspect ratio control widget would be better in my opinion. This would save me from having to crop all of my microscope images in Photo just to move them into Designer so that I can arrange them how I would like. Additionally, I'm not able to find a way to resize the crop while keeping it centered on my subject, which was possible in my previous photo editing software, I think by holding Alt(?). I would make the case that it's inconsistent for you to be able to resize an object in Designer, with the Ctrl key depressed in order to keep it centered, but not be able to do the same thing with the crop tool in photo. This may be an edge use case for many photographers, but for me, I frequently want to center the crop on the particle/anomaly I want to highlight. Please advise if there is a way to do this that I simply haven't found. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff stokerg Posted October 10, 2019 Staff Share Posted October 10, 2019 Hi besselfunct and Welcome to the Forums, The Crop Tool in Designer is different to the Crop Tool in Photo. The Crop Tool in Designer is an object based crop tool which means it only crops (actually masks) the object/layer you have selected not the whole document as other programs. If you look at the layers panel in Designer after you've used the crop tool you should see the Mask present. The crop tool in Affinity Photo is for cropping the whole image and while it doesn't currently allow for resizing the crop box around the middle, I have seen a few requests for a centre crop option in Affinity Photo so it might be something that's added at a later date. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
besselfunct Posted October 10, 2019 Author Share Posted October 10, 2019 @stokerg Thanks for the reply. I realize this software is primarily focused on "proper" graphic designers, but these features would greatly facilitate my workflow. Even just allowing the modification of the crop mask in the transform panel in Designer (which should be as "simple" as passing the XY coords of the bounds which are already stored in a vector somewhere to the transform panel) would be useful. Even if the tools are different, the ability to "look under the hood" and modify them in a precise manner would be invaluable. When I'm cropping microscope images, and I want to maintain the same scale between several different images in a figure, it's useful to be able to crop all images to the same dimensions, and then scale them to the same size in Designer. Currently the workflow is: 1. Open microscope image in Photo and crop to specified # of pixels x and y (which does behave in a centered manner thankfully) 2. Export cropped image from Photo (As "open in designer" opens the original photo, not the photo with the crop applied, even if you save the cropped photo as a new Photo file. I would argue that this is not the expected behavior by most users, even with the "non-destructive" nature of editing in Photo) 3. Open cropped photo in Designer 4. Resize to fixed size using the transform panel, and manual size entry 5. Position image, and apply new scale bar This could be shortened to: 1. Drop image into Designer 2. Apply constrained ratio center crop to desired size 3. Resize to fixed size using the transform panel, and manual size entry if necessary 4. Position image and apply new scale bar While the number of steps is not that different, the difference in number of clicks is massive, especially for a case like mine where I'm processing on the order of 20-30 microscope images for a publication. Again, I know I'm not the primary user type for your software (though a few of my colleagues do use Illustrator, most use ... Powerpoint ... to lay out their figures), so I don't expect my feedback to make it into the featureset for a long time. Thanks for taking the time to respond, and if you have any ideas of how this workflow could be improved, I would welcome it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
qwz Posted October 10, 2019 Share Posted October 10, 2019 So, maybe is better just Paste a image Inside a rectangle? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
besselfunct Posted October 10, 2019 Author Share Posted October 10, 2019 @qwz I'm not sure what you mean by paste the image inside a rectangle? I've tried using the place image tool with a properly sized rectangle selected. It doesn't seem possible to change the fill of a rectangle to be an image. Is there another way that I'm missing to do what you've suggested? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
qwz Posted October 11, 2019 Share Posted October 11, 2019 Edit>Paste Inside command will place a object i.e. picture from clipboard inside a simple closed path object i.e. rectangle. Double-clicking on inserted picture get you controls of sizes of it (via handles or Transform panel). Studio>Constrains get you a constrains of relations between container and inserted picture, see there: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.