Can a selection area be required to stay inside the image area?

[Pendleton]

I have a how-to question.  When I am moving the location of an area selection tool (say, a fixed-size rectangle), is there a way to require it to always remain in the image area, as if there were a wall around the image that it could not cross?  Right now, the selection area can be partly outside the image, but it would be helpful at times to disallow this behavior.

I searched this forum, keyboard commands, the FAQ, the Help file, etc, but didn't find anything.   Thanks for any information you are able to provide.
 

[pdnnoob]

There is not, unfortunately. If you can give details for what exactly you are doing, maybe there are workarounds for your case in particular.

For example, if you are trying to align an image with the edge of the canvas, this plugin might be helpful.

[Pendleton]

Thank you for your very kind reply.  I appreciate having an authoritative answer to this question.

 

I am using fixed-size rectangular selections to define image crops (something very elementary ).  Often, I want one, two or sometimes three of the image edges to also be the crop boundary, and I have not found a straightforward way to make sure the selection area edges are coincident with the image edges I want to keep. 

 

I can usually find some other method to end up with the image crop I want.  Selection tools that are aware of image boundaries would make this task quick and straightforward, so I was hoping that I had just missed finding the documentation for an existing capability.

 

I will try the plugin you suggested.  Anyway, paint.net is pretty cool, and I enjoy using it.

 

Thanks again ...

[pdnnoob]

Oh. If you are just making selections, then plugins won't be able to help much. If you know the dimensions of the area you wish to crop and it is either in a corner or the center of the edge, you could use the "resize canvas" tool (ctrl+shift+r), but otherwise, you're just going to have to manually select things.