Black & White Inkpot Shortcut?

[Andrew McIntyre]

My understanding is that if you want the inkpot in the Affinity Photo colour palette to switch to black & white, the short cut is D.

This would appear to be the equivalent of clicking on the miniature squares at bottom left in the Photoshop colour palette (my CS2 version!)

However the D shortcut doesn't work for me. Am I doing something wrong?

 

[Dave Vector]

Hi Andrew,

Perhaps the key it not set in the keyboard commands. Go to the Edit menu at the top of the screen, then click on Preferences... at the bottom of the menu.  In the pop-up window, click on Keyboard Shortcuts.  Make sure the two top left drop menus are set like in the image below (Photo and Miscellaneous).  Scroll down in the main area to see Set Fill to Black and White.  To the right there is a box which contains the corresponding shortcut.  If the box is blank, click it so the cursor is flashing in side, then immediately click your "d" key.   That's it!

To save your Keyboard Shortcuts hit Save in the top right of the pop-up window to save them for later installs or resets.  Click Close in the bottom right of the pop-up window and test your new shortcut!

 

[Andrew McIntyre]

Dave - that's really helpful. It now works! Thank you very much indeed.

One of Affinity's less intuitive features I'd say when having a tiny b&w icon under the inkwell is such an obvious way to do things!

 

[Dave Vector]

Yes, it feels missing coming from the Photoshop world.  I am not sure why they decided to eliminate the "Default Foreground/Background Colors" button, but nice to know it's only a hotkey a way!

Affinity Photo choose to use the inkwell icon's corner real estate with a transparent mode button.  When in brush mode, setting the primary color to transparent essentially just turns off the brush, which admittedly is not very useful, but it retains a consistent tool "look" to how it functions for vector objects.  If anyone has any insights as to how the Paint Brush Tool with transparent as it's Primary is useful, I would love to know.

Also be cautious!  As of Affinity Photo 1.8.3.641, if you are creating vector shapes with a transparent color as the foreground and then switch to the Paint Brush Tool, the transparent primary color in the inkwell icon will switch to white, but the brush will retain the  transparency from the previous mode, so when you try and try the brush will not paint white but be "off".  You have to click on the small Transparency circle in the bottom left corner of the inkwell tool for it to display correctly.  Definitely a bug.