How do I keep a background image from moving around?

[cornflakes]

I pasted a lot of tiny little layers on my original image. The problem is clicking on those tiny images I pasted onto my background gets tricky.
Half the time I miss the layer and I end up grabbing the background image and move the whole image around. It's really frustrating.

Isn't there a way to keep the background image locked permanently so that no matter where I grab around the image even if I miss the tiny image layers on top
it won't move the background around?

[Jean-Luc]

Press Shift while clicking. It selects the active layer and moves only that layer.

If you turn off the Visibility of the Background layer, it will not move when you click on the image.

[cornflakes]

Thanks Jean! I'll give that a try!

I don't think turning the background layer to invisible will work for me since I need to actually see where I am moving the tiny image layer relative to the background image (it has to go in very specific spots).

I appreciate your tip!

[Radim]

Each layer can be locked, right?

[JoeB]

This issue was discussed in this older thread:
https://forum.corel.com/viewtopic.php?f ... 3c9589eeff

[LeviFiction]

cornflakes, you can change the appearance of the checkerboard pattern in the General Options. If you did this you could set it to a solid color or something that would make your tiny images easier to see. If that helps.

[cornflakes]

Thank you Levi. Both tips are helpful but I still have the problem.
I'm working with single strands of hair. Yes, that's how thin we are talking. I have to be able to snag it the first time. Even when I hold SHIFT, if I didn't snag the little sucker the first try, the entire background image was being dragged around instead. What I do is copy and paste individual strands of hair and then paste it on the original image as a new layer CTRL+V and I do this about 10 times so there are 10 layers of individual strands of hair. They are all piled ontop of each other so the line is very dense and thick. I can see it easily but grabbing it with a mouse pointer is PITA because if I miss it, the entire background moves and I have to undo and try again. If I successfully snag it, then the SHIFT button comes in handy but you have to get it the first time. Therein lies the problem. I miss it half the time so I spend 50% of my time just undoing my action and trying again.

If there was a way to just keep the original image still and immovable, then I can click away as much as I want and drag without worrying if I miss. It won't move the background image. I can just try many attempts very quickly without having to worry about having to keep my background image in the exact same original position it was in.

So I'm still wondering why there isn't a simple option to keep the background image locked and still permanently. I never quite understood why one would open up an image and then want the entire image to move around? I can understand if you wanted to cut out some parts and move them around but why would the entire image be movable? It seems kinda strange.

You should be able to just open an image, and click on it wherever you want without worrying you are going to drag the entire picture off the canvas. It's like when you open up a real coloring book and you color in the lines, you wouldn't want the original coloring page to move around each time you accidentally color outside the lines or something. In a real book, the image drawn on the paper is always still. You can draw over it with pencil and erase it, but the original drawn image on the piece of paper in the book will never ever move unless you rip the page out.

[JoeB]

Thank you Levi. Both tips are helpful but I still have the problem.
I'm working with single strands of hair. Yes, that's how thin we are talking. I have to be able to snag it the first time. Even when I hold SHIFT, if I didn't snag the little sucker the first try, the entire background image was being dragged around instead.

I posted this in the other thread on this subject. It sounds like you are first trying to snag the small hair layer and then holding the shift key to move it. That's not the procedure to follow.

This is the correct procedure. You can add your small images/hairs as layers. Then, any time I want to move one of those hairs with the Move tool you first have to make sure that the layer with the small image is highlighted in the Layers Palette. Then, before going back to your image, hold down the shift key and then place your cursor anywhere on the image, left click, hold and drag, and the only layer that will around is the one with the hair that had first been highlighted in the Layers Palette. Are you following that procedure?

[cornflakes]

Thanks Joe! I understand what you are saying. Yes, you are right. I was originally just trying to snag the hair with my mouse and drag it around but kept missing and ended up dragging my background around. I do see the right side column where all 10 layers are shown as I pasted each strand of hair 10 times.

Even though it's not what I want (a way to keep the background image permanently still no matter if I click it and try to move it), I guess the only way for me to do this
is to manually click on the layer I'm working on each time on the right side. But I'm working with 20, 30, 40 strands of hair individually, it's really time consuming to scroll
through my layers list on the side and click it each time I want to move another hair. I would have found it must easier without even having to look at the layers on the right side. All I would do is click on whatever little image i have on my the original layer and drag it around wherever I want. Then I could grab another image right after and drag it around. Do I have to keep clicking on the right side panel the layer I want to drag around?

I appreciate your replies. Do you think I have a good point that there should be an option or ability to keep the original image still? I never understood why we can even accidentally move the background image in the first place. It's supposed to be the canvas that we work on not the original image being on another canvas and thus becoming layer 1 each time we open the image. When you open an image, there should be no layer. The first strand of hair I paste onto the original image should then become layer 1. The background just permanently inactive and immovable.

[cornflakes]

Oh, I should mention that I am using a really old version...PSP X4. I'm not a professional graphic artist or anything close to it. I just do the most basic functions and found that X4 was fine for me and I never needed anything more. Maybe on newer version they do have a way to keep the background image permanently locked and immovable?

[LeviFiction]

Quick answer to your question: if you want to treat the background layer is fully immovable turn off auto-promotion of the background layer in the Genreral Preferences.

File -> Preferences -> General Program Preferences
Choose "Auto Action" from the preferences list on the left.
Find "Promotes background layer to full layer"
Change it from "Always" to "Never".

Now it won't be moveable.

Background Info:

Technically the Background Layer isn't the canvas, the canvas is the entire image. A background layer is just a raster layer without transparency. You aren't required to have a background layer at all, you can have just a regular raster layer. And you're not moving the background layer, this is the fun part. When you first try to move the background layer PSP assumes you know what you're doing and what you want so it auto-promotes the background layer to a regular raster layer. And that's what you're moving. It's the fact that a background layer doesn't support transparency that prevents it from being moved around. And why it needs to be promoted first.

The pick and Move tools attempt to be helpful here by letting you click anywhere on the canvas and move the layer that's under the mouse pointer. When it sees you want to move the background layer it does what it needs to let you do that with as little interference as possible.

[JoeB]

LeviFiction explained it well. The problem you will have, however, is that you still have all of those little hair layers. So you will still have to use the procedure of first clicking on each of those layers in the Layers palette to highlight it, hold down the shift key, then keeping it held down use your mouse with left click held down to move the next piece of hair. Just sayin'....

[cornflakes]

Thank you Levi and Joe.
Levi, your solution is exactly what I was looking for.
The image doesn't move anymore thank god! I can click at the multiple tiny image layers as many times as I want dragging them around without worrying about
the background image moving anymore.

Thank you guys, problem solved!