Cloning objects

[Acorn]

So, I have this coin image with a little dropshadow. The coin itself is 6mm in diameter. I'm cloning it with drag+right click, and I want the clone to be smaller. So I go to the toolbar, enter 4mm in the width text box and press Enter... Oooops, my coin is smaller then what I expected. How come? Well, because after cloning both the object and its shadow are selected, thus manually entering a size affects both as a group. So, to have this right, after cloning I have to hit Esc (to unselect everything), then click the cloned object, and then alter its size.
May I ask to change this behavior?

morris, I would have selected a scaling of 66.7% myself.

By comparison - you see, when you click the shadow, it gets selected, which is reflected on the toolbar (the width and height text boxes display the shadow's dimentions), but - but - when you try to drag the shadow, the "main" object magically gets selected, which is of course reflected by the width & height text boxes.

But the shadow is not a shadow of its own being, it is a shadow of the object. Both are linked and the change of one necessarily forces a change on the other. Clone your object and add a feathering and a transparency with the needed shadow colour. Then you can alter scaling and other aspects like an envelope to reflect an undulating surface. Far more versatile.

I have another request regarding cloning. You see, I have this coin image with a dropshadow. It is right behind a text area (on the same layer). I want to clone it, and I want this clone to stay behind this text area. May I ask for a feature like, for example, holding Shift or Alt while cloning, that would place the cloned object right above its original, not on the very top?

That's why the Page & Layer gallery and drag and drop is useful. Easy to use it flexibly and intuitively.

Acorn