Odd behaviour of Crop tool

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johngie
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Registriert: Sa 26 Jan 2008 23:17
Wohnort: Mold, Wales, UK

Odd behaviour of Crop tool

Beitrag von johngie »

After working for years with Paintshop Pro, I found the behaviour of the Crop tool in Photoline to be very odd and infuriating. Indeed it seemed to have a mind of its own! Then I realised that to get a "free" crop size you have to press Alt while dragging the tool with the mouse. The second oddity was that, often, the crop tool did not seem to work at all. Defining the crop area, then double clicking inside it, made no difference - it left the image as it was (uncropped). Then I found, by accident, that you have to merge the layer to background. This seems very clumsy - can it be changed in a future release?

As far as I can discover, neither of these issues are documented in Help or in the Manual.
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Hoogo
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Re: Odd behaviour of Crop tool

Beitrag von Hoogo »

For most croppings, especially when I do not want to change pixels, I do not use the crop-tool, but the lasso-tool. When I switched from PSP I had quite "some" trouble, too, because the Dialog "tool settings" was totally out of my mind and view. It is usually at the right border, and there is a button "crop" and some more useful things.
lutz
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Registriert: Mi 12 Apr 2006 19:53

Re: Odd behaviour of Crop tool

Beitrag von lutz »

hello John,

welcome to the club. An "infuriating" experience is understandable, when attempting to learn cropping in PhotoLine.
The lasso and the new crop tool are offering many advanced cropping options, but they are anything but intuitive. I wish all the options could be re-organized into the crop tool and be laid out clearer. The current tools are, of course, learnable but quite a bit deterring for any beginner.

In my experience the crop tool actually works but it will show you the cropped results only after closing and re-opening the image (actually, this applies only to the document modus) . That said, I usually do not use the crop tool. For most purposes: the "lasso tool" actually is the crop tool as described by Hoogo above.
Zuletzt geändert von lutz am Mi 21 Mai 2008 23:34, insgesamt 1-mal geändert.
podperson
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Registriert: Mi 16 Jan 2008 20:13

Re: Odd behaviour of Crop tool

Beitrag von podperson »

Agreed.

First -- shift to constrain should be supported.

Second -- enter should crop (versus having to click the tiny button).

Third -- we need a "Selection" menu that groups together all Selection-related functions (and doesn't confuse "Mask" with "Selection"). Being able to crop to selection is an obvious function, and convert the current selection to a new layer (command-J and command-shift-J in Photoshop; ctrl- for Windows users).
Martin Huber
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Re: Odd behaviour of Crop tool

Beitrag von Martin Huber »

podperson hat geschrieben:Being able to crop to selection is an obvious function,
This can be done with "Tool/Lasso/Crop" (also in the context menu).
podperson hat geschrieben:and convert the current selection to a new layer
This can be done with "Tool/Selection/Convert Selection to Layer" (also in the context menu).

Martin