Trouble with Crop

[nomads...@gmail.com]

I don't seem to be able to get the Crop feature to work as I expect.  I have a graphic, then superimpose a simple outline rectangle on top, then execute Format->Images->Crop.  Instead of getting a view of the original graphic windowed by the rectangle, I get the rectangle filled in in red.  While I can move it around, as soon as I draw a further graphic, the red rectangle disappears, along with the original underlying graphic.  The red rectangle is apparently still there but invisible, and can be seen again by selecting where it is, but the original graphic has gone for good.

I'm obviously doing something fundamentally wrong, but since this is my first foray into Crop I would appreciate any guidance to get it right.

I'm using EazyDraw 10.5.3 on an M1 iMac with Big Sur OS.

Thanks.     Paul.

[Dave Mattson]

The Red indicates the selected state for a Crop graphic.  You will note different graphics have different highlight colors for visual clues.  The red-ish tint is only when selected. Deselect and it goes away.Re: Trouble with Crop.

You need to select both the rectangle and the target graphics. The rectangle would be the front-most graphic, which is the shape that will do the cropping.  I guess you did not have the target image selected when you executed the crop.

However, crop will not enable unless there is more than one graphic selected. So you had the rectangle and something else selected.  My guess is you had two rectangles, they were selected and not the other image.

Or - you will need to send in the drawing. We are only guessing without the actual drawing to investigate. It is possible the bitmap image is a rare color space or has hit a bug in the image analysis.

[nomads...@gmail.com]

This gets odder as I investigate further, and I have been a bit more methodical.

If I take a blank drawing, and draw two graphics, e.g. an ellipse that is partially overlaid with a rectangle, then select both and do a Crop, is seems to work quite well.  The ellipse is cropped as expected, and I get the cropped bit overlaid with a light pink colour rectangle - the rectangle disappears when I deselect the image, and the cropped image remains.   Selecting the cropped ellipse shows the pink rectangle again and both can be moved around together OK.  This is understandable behaviour and I can live with it, although I would like to get rid of the rectangle altogether and just have the cropped bit left to move around and duplicate.

Doing the same thing on my drawing behaves differently - I have about 20 graphics (nothing special), but am doing the crop on an empty portion of the drawing.  I crop as before, but now get a darker pink rectangle with an even darker red rectangle inside bounding the original graphic (the ellipse).  If I grab the ellipse (i.e. the dark red bit) and move it, it moves but the cropping rectangle stays still, which results in a different part of the ellipse showing when I do the deselect ( or none at all if I moved the ellipse completely away from the cropping rectangle - in this case the ellipse can't be individually selected and cannot be found again unless I Ungroup).   In order to move the cropped image unchanged, I have to grab the cropping rectangle and move it, at which point both ellipse and rectangle move together and the cropped image doesn't change.

Doing a Duplicate on the cropped combination gives more strange results, and I am going to want to do this as I proceed with this drawing.  But I'll leave that for now.

How can I send this drawing to you to investigate?

Paul.

[Dave Mattson]

I think you want Union, Intersection or Difference - one of the Logical operations found on the Tools --> Combine menu.  This solves the behavior you don't seem to like in the blank drawing.

Send the drawing to EazyDraw support (sorry, but it is bad form to put an email on one of these public forums).  Look on the Support page.

I think you other drawing has Group Edit set to Free - kind of an advance topic to get into here, and I'm still just guessing.  Set Group Edit for that drawing (using the submenu on Format main menu) to Fixed - then the ellipse in the Crop group won't move.

And - all mystery for your working drawing can be resolved using Easy Look (on Format main menu).  You can see exactly what is in the groupings and crops.  Use that to see exactly what you have combined and cropped.

[nomads...@gmail.com]

Thanks.  That change fixed the question for me.  Group Edit had been changed to Free - I don't know how, but I'll keep an eye on it in future.  Interesting topic, but more advanced than I'll probably need to use much.