stingray

Got it! Thanks for this. I looked everywhere but where I should have looked !

I don't see that. There seems to be no 'Deselect Layers' function in Photo. At least, I can't find this here.

Thanks again for your advice. FYI, I meant I have no choice with dragging from the pipette from the colour panel.

Thanks loukash. Great advice. You have really clarified the design philosophy behind Affinity Photo in this regard. I'll check out 'Deselect Layers'.

Thanks Walt for this great advice. That really does clarify the options.🙂

Thanks @loukash I'd been trying those moves in various ways. To be honest I'd been trying to avoid the dragging of the pipette from the colour panel as it sometimes involves a lot of mouse travel. Looks like I have no choice in this particular case. Thanks again for taking the time to reply to this. Much appreciated. I intend to set up a key command for rasterise.

Thanks Walt. Yes, I'd been attempting to change the behaviour by de-activating 'Apply to Selection' but when that is not active the colour doesn't get activated properly in the colour tab... it's just activated in the small colour circle next to the colour picker symbol. And so the workflow of returning to the Flood Fill tool and attempting to fill a zone doesn't work. Basically, I'd be hoping that I could use the colour picker and flood fill tool with an Image layer in more or less the same way as I can with a pixel layer - but I'm guessing this must be not possible and not the way the software is intended to function.

@PaulEC thanks for your reply. I am not trying to do anything differently. I'm attempting to make a basic function easy for myself. Do you know how best to use the Colour picker and Flood Fill tool with an Image layer? As far as I can tell using the Colour Picker and Flood Fill tool behaves as expected with a pixel layer but with an Image layer these tools seem to behave differently. I may well have missed something. Just humbly seeking help on this. And as for your comment, I'm using Affinity Photo here. I mentioned Gimp by way of comparison which I think is completely valid.

Thanks for your reply @walt.farrell With an image layer, when 'Edit All Layers' is active, using the Colour picker tool automatically immediately updates the colour scheme of the image after picking a colour. De-activating 'Edit All Layers' stops this happening. TBH this may also be a colour picker tool issue. I don't really understand how I can use the colour picker tool and flood fill tool with an image layer... the tools behave as expected with a pixel layer but the behaviour is different with an image layer.

I fully understand that but please do reply in the other topic. Thanks.

Please reply in the other thread.

I knew somebody would say that. Nothing is difficult about rasterising an image layer except my laziness - and I consider I have the right to be lazy when doing something basic. The Image or Pixel layer has certain advantages but apparently there's also a price to pay. My topic above mentions GIMP and others where this is much easier to do from the start. Yep a key command makes it easier. My original quest was to not have to do that. Please continue this in the other topic here: I won't be replying any further to this topic.

For anyone concerned with this, I think I may now partly understand the issue. It would seem that the type of layer (pixel or Image) has a great influence on the outcome. Use of the colour picker doesn't have the same behaviour with a pixel layer as an image layer. When used with an image layer the colour picker and the Flood Fill tool behaviour doesn't seem to make sense. Can anyone here explain how to effectively use the Flood Fill tool and Colour Picker with an Image layer?

I'm finding the colour tools in Affinity Photo particularly difficult to use and unnessecarily complex when compared to Gimp and others. For example, consider the following case: - copy the screen and paste the image into Affinity Photo using File / New From Clipboard - select the Colour Picker tool to sample a colour from the new image - select the Flood Fill tool with the intention of filling another part of the image with the colour which has just been sampled These three steps do not work. The expected result is not possible to achieve in any immediate sense. Instead, the user must first convert the 'image' layer into a 'pixel ' layer and then click on the tiny colour picker circle in the Colour tab in order to get the colour properly selected in order to then use the Flood Fill tool to fill the desired area !!! I'm sure I'm missing the point somewhere here, but why does this have to be so difficult? In my opinion, the colour tools are extremely non-intuitive. Can anyone here explain what the intended workflow is supposed to be for picking a colour using the Colour Picker and then filling an area using the Flood Fill tool with an Image layer? This doesn't seem to function as expected here. If there is such a procedure please could you do this in a simplified step-by-step manner... FYI I've just tried doing the very same thing in GIMP and i can achieve what I want to do easily in two or three steps with no fuss, no complications. Indeed, anyone could do it in GIMP because it works in an entirely logical manner. Why does this have to be so complicated in Affinity Photo? Surely, Affinity Photo should have considered this relatively simple workflow expectation when working with an Image layer.

I realised I've posted this in the wrong section. FYI I have moved it to: Please post any further comments to this other topic.