Multiple objects linked to a color

[michaelreilly]

I have a completed design with graphs and charts, each made up of multiple objects (rectangles, etc).  Now that it's all laid out, I want to tweak the color palette a bit.  However, there might be 10-15 different objects that are all the same color, and if I want to change that color, I'd need to select each of the objects individually (through the layers panel), and then change the color.  That's pretty tedious if I have 5 different colors that I'm adjusting, with that many objects per color, and multiple iterations before deciding on my final color palette. 

It would be great to be able to link objects to a certain color, so when you change that color it updates all of the objects linked to it. 

If this is already possible, please let me know!! 

[MEB]

Hi michaelreilly,
Create a Global Colour (Swatches panel, click the small menu icon on the top right and select Add Global Colour) and apply it to the objects. Every time you adjust/edit the Global Colour (through the Swatches panel clicking on it and selecting Edit Fill...) the objects will change accordingly.

[thomaso]

It's called "Global" colours. They can be saved as Swatches and demand a separate Document Palette.

Unfortunately in Affinity you can't copy/paste an object with a Global color assigned to another document without loosing its swatch, instead the object gets copied/pasted with its colour but does neither bring its swatch to the other document nor is it linked to a swatch anymore.

[michaelreilly]

Thank you @thomaso!  That helps explain... I thought 'global' colors was more about having a palette that persists across different documents... but this accomplishes what I need to do.  

Thanks for your help

[michaelreilly]

And thanks @MEB! 

[walt.farrell]

6 minutes ago, michaelreilly said:

. I thought 'global' colors was more about having a palette that persists across different documents...

No, that's an Application Palette (or, on a Mac, a System Palette). But colors in those palettes won't be global, and won't let you make the easy color changes you want.

[thomaso]

7 minutes ago, michaelreilly said:

I thought 'global' colors was more about having a palette that persists across different documents

Those palettes are called Application and System palettes in Affinity.

[MEB]

7 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

No, that's an Application Palette (or, on a Mac, a System Palette). But colors in those palettes won't be global, and won't let you make the easy color changes you want.

Mac's also have Application Palettes (shared/available within the app for all documents), System Palettes (available to all system), besides regular Document Palettes.

[mbfjrd]

I'm a long-time (20yrs) InDesign user and in my work rely heavily on swatches to control and swiftly adjust all the hundreds of color elements in my documents. I understand that in a particular document, Publisher's "global colors" act like InDesign's swatches. That seems to work fine--but only within one document.

My problem in Affinity is that when I copy elements from one document to another, the global color is lost; the items copied into a second Affinity document now have no global color, or in fact any swatch at all applied to it. It still retains the color, but is not connected to any swatch in the document. So if I want to adjust the color, I have to create a new global color and re-assign all the elements to it. Which is not workable for me.

I don't need the global color swatch to be linked to another document; I don't need the global colors to be available to other documents as in application palettes. I just want to retain the convenience of having all my copied elements retain a global swatch in the new document, so I can still easily modify their colors once they are copied in.

InDesign does this perfectly. And if the document into which you are copying already has a swatch by that name, the new incoming swatch is re-named. Fine; I can re-name the new swatch whatever I want, or delete/replace with another one. (Another extremely useful feature.) But at least my colors are still linked to a swatch.

Any way to do this in Publisher?

[RM f/g]

I stumbled over this problem in Designer, so it's not just a Publisher inadequacy.

[prophet]

On 4/1/2020 at 3:50 PM, thomaso said:

It's called "Global" colours. They can be saved as Swatches and demand a separate Document Palette.

Unfortunately in Affinity you can't copy/paste an object with a Global color assigned to another document without loosing its swatch, instead the object gets copied/pasted with its colour but does neither bring its swatch to the other document nor is it linked to a swatch anymore.

And to boot, even with the newly pasted object selected, when choosing "Add Global Color", the resulting window doesn't "see" the color you've selected, but rather defaults to a somewhat arbitrary rich black, forcing me to redefine the swatch manually. I can get a usable swatch by clicking the little "add current fill to palette" button, but if I don't have a Document palette created yet, the color is added to whatever palette is currently active. In my case, I got a PANTONE spot color added to the "Greys" palette. Not super helpful.

[thomaso]

2 hours ago, prophet said:

And to boot, even with the newly pasted object selected, when choosing "Add Global Color", the resulting window doesn't "see" the color you've selected, but rather defaults to a somewhat arbitrary rich black,

Yes, that workflow concept in particular with its insisting default rich black preset can feel ridiculous. If you want a global swatch 'only' (= not a spot color) you might prefer the two buttons in the swatches panel instead, whereas the left button has the advantage that the new swatch gets named by its color values (and model) and "just" needs to get switched to global with a right click.