Global Colours Not Working 1.8

[When_Subscription]

I am unable to get global colours working in Affinity Designer 1.8 on Windows 10.

I have never attempted to use this feature on previous versions so there is a chance I may be doing it wrong 😁

Steps I have tried;

1. Create multiple objects all using the same colour.
2. Open Swatches and "create a new document palette".
3. Select an objects fill colour with the eyedropper tool.
4. Click on "add current colour to palette as global colour".
5. Double click on global colour swatch and adjust colour.

The above steps are only changing a single objects colour, the rest of the objects remain unchanged.

Am I missing something here or is it a broken feature?

[walt.farrell]

You should create the global color, then assign it to the objects, @LunchMoney_Matt.

 

[Jowday]

5 minutes ago, LunchMoney_Matt said:

Am I missing something here or is it a broken feature?

This is the expected behaviour:

https://affinity.help/designer/en-US.lproj/index.html?page=pages/Clr/globalClr.html?title=Global colors

 

[When_Subscription]

Well I'll be damned, it works lol.I had looked everywhere for a tutorial explaining how to use global colours but didn't find anything useful.

Thank you guys, I appreciate the help.

[When_Subscription]

One thing I'm still confused about, is that right clicking on an object and adding it's fill colour as global, does absolutely nothing when you change the colour of the swatch. I feel like changes to the swatch should do something in this case 🙄

Edit, this function seems very hit and miss. Sometimes it will change just one objects colour, in some case two out of three, and at times it won't change the colour of any objects, only the swatch. BTW, I'm just using the square tool if that makes any difference.

To replicate, draw 3 squares in a colour of your choice, right click and add it as a global colour, now edit the global swatch. For me in this case, all 3 squares seem to update. Now draw another 3 squares in a different colour, add as global colour and adjust the global swatch for that colour, for me only the last square updates, the other two remain unchanged.

[Jowday]

Hi @LunchMoney_Matt

Be aware that if you create a global color from object A, it is not applied to object A.

Apply it to two other objects - B and C  - deselect them to be sure it works - and adjust the global color in the swatch. They will update. You have to apply the global color to A as well to see the effect on that too.

You have to actively apply the global color to an object for them to be linked.

[When_Subscription]

Thanks Jowday, I have been playing around with it and it still seems very hit and miss. I get different results every time I do it.

It seems weird that you could have say 100 objects in a particular colour, add that colour as a global swatch only to have to re-apply that colour to all 100 objects in order to get global colour changes to work. That seems broken to me.

Personally the way it is doesn't seem to be very useful unless you've 100% created your global colour palette before commencing work.

[When_Subscription]

Here's a video of what I'm talking about.

It's strange that it works fine for the first lot of objects (the green squares), but then acts differently for the second lot.

As I said, if I had 100+ objects all using the same colour, based on my testing it would seem I could add that colour as a global swatch after the objects were created, but I would then need to select every single layer  that uses that colour and re-assign the colour in order for global changes to occur. 

 

[walt.farrell]

7 hours ago, LunchMoney_Matt said:

It seems weird that you could have say 100 objects in a particular colour, add that colour as a global swatch only to have to re-apply that colour to all 100 objects in order to get global colour changes to work. That seems broken to me.

Personally the way it is doesn't seem to be very useful unless you've 100% created your global colour palette before commencing work.

If you want to use global colors then yes, you need to think about them before you start coloring things. Once a color is assigned to an object, that object either has a global color, or not. If not, its color will never be global unless you recolor that object.

Someday, perhaps, the Affinity applications will be able to select all objects with a particular color, and at that time you would be able to recolor everything with a newly made global color. But that kind of selection is not yet possible.

[When_Subscription]

12 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

If you want to use global colors then yes, you need to think about them before you start coloring things. Once a color is assigned to an object, that object either has a global color, or not. If not, its color will never be global unless you recolor that object.

Someday, perhaps, the Affinity applications will be able to select all objects with a particular color, and at that time you would be able to recolor everything with a newly made global color. But that kind of selection is not yet possible.

That's a shame. I wonder why the global colour function worked as expected for the first group of objects, but not for the second group, the process was exactly the same.

[Wosven]

With the way the colours works usually, it's the first way that is a bug, since it's not supposed to memorise the colour of  some elements unless you've used swatches. They are only a propriety of an object, with RGB/CMYK, etc. values, not linked to a swatch or a style with a specified colour.