Copying part of a picture

[maddia]

I am using Photo and Graphic designer 9. Mucking around with a house plan that is a png file. I want to copy and move elements within the picture, such as wall placement. In the old software I used, I drew a marquee around the part I wanted to copy, pressed cntrl C, then cntrl V and there was the part I wanted. In designer 9, all it copies and pastes is the marquee rectangle, not the enclosed element.

What am I missing please?

Allan

[Egg Bramhill]

Not 100% where you're going here but it maybe you're creating a alpha channel bitmap, so the resultant bitmap has no content? What software were you using before?

[PhilM]

Go back to the Selector tool before you Copy.

Phil

[handrawn]

are you trying to select part of the png itself - you cannot do that in the xara program, it will only select the whole png - you have to draw round the part you want with the shape tool, then select both, and either slice [ctrl+4], subtract [ctrl+2] or intersect [ctrl+3]

if this is what you are doing, in the shape tool only the drawn shape can be selected - hence phil's suggestion

[you can use freehand brush tool instead - you will still need to manually select both, but you don't need to go back to selector tool, you can use shift+click to add the png to the shape selection after your drawn shape is completed]

EDIT: Although you can copy of part of the png using the mask feature, maybe that is what you are doing?

[PhilM]

I assumed the OP was using the mask feature.

In the mask tools all ops affect the mask objects, in non-mask tools all ops affect non-mask objects but optionally using the current mask, if present.

Hence to do what the OP wants, enter one of the mask tools, draw a mask, leave the tool, Copy.

Phil

[handrawn]

ok - in ver8 all you need do is open a mask layer, draw, copy object, paste and there you have it

if the OP is confused between ver8 and ver9 fair enough, I don't have ver9, sorry

[angelize]

I'm not sure but if the OP is wanting to select a portion of a .png he should be able to do so by going into the photo tool and choosing the clone tool.
Gary Bouton did a tutorial on this a while back. http://www.xaraxone.com/tutorials/ad...ge-retouching/