Colour picker and colour panel not working correctly

[Arcane Vector]

Hello, I hope someone can help. I've found tonight that the colour picker and colour panel aren't working correctly for me. I colour picked a colour from a reference image after laying in the design in grayscale and applied it to the shape on the bottom left of the screenshot I've attached. I then selected the shape to the right of the image and colour picked the colour from the previously filled shape and as you can see it won't change to the correct colour, which you can also see in the layers panel that the two shapes aren't the same colour. I initially thought that it was a version issue as I was still unintentionally running version 1.8.2 but closed the app and updated to 1.8.3 and the issues still remains. I've tried colour picking other colours from the design to change the corner shape's colour, like the blacks you can see but it won't change to that either. I also tried copy/paste the hex code of my desired colour to the corner shape and still no change. It actually tells me that to two shapes have the exact same hex code even though you can clearly see they aren't the same colour

[thomaso]

7 hours ago, Arcane Vector said:

selected the shape to the right of the image and colour picked the colour from the previously filled shape and as you can see it won't change to the correct colour,

To me it is not quite clear what did not work for you in detail. It might be related to the way you use a color picker:
– either from the color/swatches panel (which always has loaded a color that can be different from the last used)
– or from the tool panel.

While the picker from the Panel is a 3-step procedure...

1. move picker with pressed mouse button –>
2. pick color –>
3. click tiny color preview right of the picker icon to assign.

... it is rather a 1-step process with the picker Tool selected:

1. pick + assign color in 1 step.

Here it 1st uses the panel picker to pick+assign Red > Gray // then 2nd the picker tool to pick + assign Yellow > Blue:

The behavior of Affinity color pickers versus pickers of other apps are discussed a few times in the forum. The Affinity way(s) obviously may result in confusion.
So, to detect what's going wrong for you it would help to know your workflow in details. – Maybe you upload a video?

 

 

 

[Sean P]

Hi Arcane Vector,

As Thomaso has mentioned the Colour Picker in the Colour Panel, adds the picked colour to a small well (and doesn't immediately apply it), so be sure to click the well to apply that colour. 
If you're still having issues, would you be able to get a quick screen recording that demonstrates the issue please?

[Arcane Vector]

I've uploaded 2 video demos if you have the time see if I'm doing something wrong or it is a bug

[Gear maker]

Are both of the layers 50% opacity?

[Arcane Vector]

I've just checked and the smaller of the 2 layer was at 50% opacity which I didn't realise, but I've changed that now and the colour doesn't visually look the same. Also changing the colour of the smaller shape to the dark grey colour still shows the wrong hex code

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, Arcane Vector said:

I've uploaded 2 video demos

Where to? I don't see any video in your posts yet. Can you upload them in the forum or post a link?

[Arcane Vector]

 

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, Arcane Vector said:

I've just checked and the smaller of the 2 layer was at 50% opacity which I didn't realise, but I've changed that now and the colour doesn't visually look the same. Also changing the colour of the smaller shape to the dark grey colour still shows the wrong hex code

Note that you have activated the lock in your Color Panel which forces the color values shown in the HSL model. This way it doesn't show the original color model of a selected color nor does it show its hex values.

Can you upload an .afdesign with the 3 layers you showed selected in your video example?

[Arcane Vector]

In the second video I show the RGB Hex panel

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, Arcane Vector said:

In the second video

And where is that? I don't see it yet in both of your threads to this subject.

Can you post the 2nd video or its link here, too?
Possibly also an .afdesign document with the 3 objects containing/demonstrating your color issues?

[Gear maker]

Could it be just an optical illusion?  If you make a shape with the color of one of the sections and no stroke it should be invisible.  Then drag it in front of the other section, is it also invisible?  Just a thought...

[Arcane Vector]

2 hours ago, thomaso said:

And where is that? I don't see it yet in both of your threads to this subject.

Can you post the 2nd video or its link here, too?
Possibly also an .afdesign document with the 3 objects containing/demonstrating your color issues?

Ok I'll send the send my source with an element of trust as it personal work for my portfolio. One of the issues seems to resolved as one of the shape was at 50% opacity which I didn't take into account. But trying to colour pick the dark grey colour within the design presents the wrong hex code as I've just double checked before sending this by trying to check other shapes colours NES.afdesign

[Arcane Vector]

17 minutes ago, Gear maker said:

Could it be just an optical illusion?  If you make a shape with the color of one of the sections and no stroke it should be invisible.  Then drag it in front of the other section, is it also invisible?  Just a thought...

Yeah seems to be the case with one of the situations i spoke about. In my response to thomaso is my source file if you want to investigate yourself

[Gear maker]

FYI I would have only sent the few layers necessary to show the problem...

When I do the shape test it's invisible in both areas, so they must be the same.

I'm getting a hex color of C0C7CD in both sections.  Which looks correct.  What are you getting or expecting?

I'd delete my file from the above entry if I felt it was sensitive.  I am deleting the copy I made.

[Arcane Vector]

1 hour ago, Gear maker said:

FYI I would have only sent the few layers necessary to show the problem...

When I do the shape test it's invisible in both areas, so they must be the same.

I'm getting a hex color of C0C7CD in both sections.  Which looks correct.  What are you getting or expecting?

I'd delete my file from the above entry if I felt it was sensitive.  I am deleting the copy I made.

Yeah those two shapes with the code C0C7CD are correct and was my own mistake, but the dark grey shape inbetween them code 424242, now if your try and change the colour of C0C7CD or any shape to 424242 I personally get a colour of 3F3F3F instead of 424242 which could be another mistake on my part but all shapes are now at 100% opacity and shouldn't be picking any other colours other than the target colour. what do you think? ---EDIT I'm an idiot using 3 different colour models thats why noting matches sorry to waste your time

Edited May 12, 2020 by Arcane Vector
corrected information

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, Arcane Vector said:

But trying to colour pick the dark grey colour within the design presents the wrong hex code as I've just double checked before sending this by trying to check other shapes colours NES.afdesign

Are you aware that you mix in your illustration different color models?
top light: HSL
front light: RGB
front dark: Greyscale
None of the 3 object's colors is originally defined as Hex color, the documents color space is RGB.

So, to show and compare Hex values for various objects you will have to activate the lock icon in the color panel. That way a non-Hex color will be "converted", means its original defined values become calculated into Hex. That can cause minimal differences, simply naturally/technically, because of various possible approaches of doing such calculations. Simply spoken because greyscale is rather light/dark only whereas the other models have at least one color (non-black) channel. And none of them uses decimal but integer numbers only. In your file I see such a conflict and minimal difference when pick-assigning the Dark Gray (Greyscale) to replace the Light gray right of it (RGB).

It appears as if the objects themselves have their initial color model in mind. However, the difference is quite small, to avoid/prevent any difference it might be necessary to clean/reduce the various used color models down to one only. – Therefore I personally would prefer to work with swatches, global, in particular in such a file of Greys, because their proper setup and use can help to avoid confusion and unwanted mixtures.

[Arcane Vector]

11 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Are you aware that you mix in your illustration different color models?
top light: HSL
front light: RGB
front dark: Greyscale
None of the 3 object's colors is originally defined as Hex color, the documents color space is RGB.

So, to show and compare Hex values for various objects you will have to activate the lock icon in the color panel. That way a non-Hex color will be "converted", means its original defined values become calculated into Hex. That can cause minimal differences, simply naturally/technically, because of various possible approaches of doing such calculations. Simply spoken because greyscale is rather light/dark only whereas the other models have at least one color (non-black) channel. In your file I see such a conflict and minimal difference when pick-assigning the Dark Gray (Greyscale) to replace the Light gray right of it (RGB).

 

It appears as if the objects themselves have their initial color model in mind. However, the difference is quite small, to avoid/prevent any difference it might be necessary to clean/reduce the various used color models down to one only. – Therefore I personally would prefer to work with swatches, global, in particular in such a file of Greys, because their proper setup and use can help to avoid confusion and unwanted mixtures.

I see, I'm such an idiot, I did work in grayscale in the beginning of the project to figure out the lighting as its my first complex isometric design but wrongly assumed that it was just normal greys and not a separate colour model as the whole document is RGB. I then introduce colours from source images and adjusted them in HSL as its simpler than adjusting 3 sliders in the RGB model that explains why nothing matches the numbers and what I'm visually seeing on my screen. How do I make all my current shapes and future shapes in this document the right colour going forward?? Also I apologies for wasting your time I'm just an idiot coming from Adobe illustrator where I don't have to think about these kind of things

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, Arcane Vector said:

How do I make all my current shapes and future shapes in this document the right colour going forward??

My workflow would be to start with creating a set of global swatches. Then, for visual convenience, I'd place a row of larger squares with these colors somewhere near the artboard (like you did already with your shape resources/images).

The swatches would use the color model of the documents color space. The Color Panel slider mode would be set to the same model – and get locked. (Unfortunately the lock can't be used to prevent from choosing another selector mode.)

If the illustration will go to be printed I would use CMYK as documents space and create all swatches in CMYK. Note that in CMYK you always have two ways to define a certain gray: either with more K + less CMY / or with more CMY + less K. (You might know that difference from Photoshop and its UCR/GCR color separation setting). Once decided and started then stay with one of this two ways for new color swatches. For print GCR (gray component replacement) has 2 advantages: a.) it uses more K and therefore needs less ink to achieve dark greys, and a deep rich black is easier to achieve. And b.) if it will be printed in K only at any time then a conversion from 4c to 1c will be closer to the original, because CMY are mainly used to tone the greys (warm/cold), not to darken them. – Disadvantage: GCR can be more sensible for ink variations when printing, means a little too much of any of C, M, or Y ink can influence the hue/tone in the print result more than in UCR (under cover removal).

Since you have done already a major part of the illu you would need to manually re-assign all colors. To avoid any confusion and unwanted conversion I'd start with selecting all objects and assign to all of them any default 'wrong' color of mid lightness (e.g. orange, light green etc). Then I would re-assign the correct swatches step by step, layer by layer.

In case all grays shall be of the same hue (warm/cold) then tints of swatches may sound appealing. Unfortunately, although in Affinity you may create a palette of tint swatches, they seem to be less useful than expected, the most disturbing maybe that they are created as independent swatches, not related to their mother of 100% after creating them, regardless of manually or with the auto-create-tints option in the Colors Panel. Furthermore the tint slider view in the Colors Panel is not connected to its color sliders and therefore not updated if you temporary switch to a color slider to alter the definition and come back to the tint slider view – or vice versa. Can be dangerous this way if you are used to it differently. These things maybe a reason to avoid using tints for this illustration.

Also the swatch names may behave different than expected and can cause confusion this way: once you alter a swatch definition its name is not updated – even though its first name appears automatically. Global colors are auto-named unfortunately only as 'global + number' instead of color values. But in an illustration with about 10 swatches it's no big deal to name them manually.