Wish we could lock layer position

[cornflakes]

Thank you everyone. Yes, someone also told me that and I tried it and it works! Background image/original image is immovable now. No more worrying about accidentally clicking it and dragging it around.
Cheers!

[Finfell]

THIS!! I can't understand how you can create a editing program with layers, and not put in a way to lock layers while editing. It's such a basic thing. Not being able to work on part of your image without affecting the background defeats the whole purpose of working in layers to begin with. I might as well go back to MS Paint, and work on a single layer for free.

[LeviFiction]

This entire topic pretty much demonstrates how to avoid this issue most of the time.

First - If you need to move the layer, use the move tool not the pick tool. Easiest thing. This lets you move the entire layer, and if you hold "SHIFT" it'll never move any other layer

Second - Turn off these auto-actions in the General Preferences
1 - Auto Promote Background Layer
2 - Unlock Layer Tranparency

Third - Use Transparency Lock when you don't want to edit the actual transparency. This will make the Pick tool useless, but all editing is restricted to the already existing pixels in the layer. The move tool will still work though.

Fourth - if you need the pick tool, but only to scale or distort (move tool for moving) then you will have to be careful and actually click on the deformation cage nodes but that's pretty easy. Even on this horrible work laptop with a bad touchpad.

Other than that, everything should just work. All other tools work on the selected layer, they don't jump between layers. And if you can't move the background layer it'll never change to a raster layer without you expressley promoting it.

You can create a new background layer by flattening the image, but that's the only way if the image doesn't already have one.