Coloring lines and Adjusting said Colors

[moedgehog]

Been using Affinity Photo for a month and can't seem to find a solution to this that doesn't make a file incredibly messy with layers. Is there an easy work flow to color line art and adjusting the colors selected without using HSL layers and layer masks/stacking layers? I've tried experimenting a number of ways but each time yields the same result - a file with way more layers than is needed and also an inability to even merge something until it's completed since it seems like merging a group of layers with HSL layers included impacts them all? Any help on this would be appreciated, thanks.

[lepr]

You'll probably get advice more quickly if you provide an example Affinity document.

[moedgehog]

27 minutes ago, anon2 said:

You'll probably get advice more quickly if you provide an example Affinity document.

Why would that be necessary? I guess to be more clear - I'm asking about if it's possible to do something akin to color holds on Photoshop.

[lepr]

Just now, moedgehog said:

Why would that be necessary?

Nobody said necessary. Goodbye.

[moedgehog]

2 minutes ago, anon2 said:

Nobody said necessary. Goodbye.

Whoa there. I was just asking a question. If you or no one has the answer that's 100% fine but I was just confused as to why screenshots would be relevant for something like this, eesh. Have a good day I guess?

[Old Bruce]

Is the line art generated in Photo or is it scanned? Different people have different formulas for the two.

[moedgehog]

2 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Is the line art generated in Photo or is it scanned? Different people have different formulas for the two.

Oh! It's all line work that's been generated in Photo.

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, moedgehog said:

I was just confused as to why screenshots would be relevant for something like this

@anon2 didn’t mention screenshots! He wrote (my emphasis):

1 hour ago, anon2 said:

You'll probably get advice more quickly if you provide an example Affinity document.

If you attach an Affinity document we’ll be able to see the layer structure.

[moedgehog]

29 minutes ago, Alfred said:

@anon2 didn’t mention screenshots! He wrote (my emphasis):

If you attach an Affinity document we’ll be able to see the layer structure.

Thanks but this doesn't have anything to do about what I asked. It also contradicts what they emphasized in their own response.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, moedgehog said:

but this doesn't have anything to do about what I asked.

It is easier for us to understand what you mean, and provide meaningful answers, if we can see what you're asking about. That would involve screenshots.

It is even easier for us to provide meaningful answers if we have a sample .afphoto document we can experiment with. It seems you're coming up with a complex arrangement, and without a file we'll be guessing to some extent what you're trying to accomplish.

So, in that sense, it has everything to do with what you asked.

[firstdefence]

[moedgehog]

10 hours ago, Lagarto said:

As I am myself just learning to use Affinity Photo, I got interested in your question but might have a wrong answer, as I assumed that by lineart you mean pixel art rather than vectors, even if you mention multiple layers and complexity as a key problem.

Anyway, to learn one way to use the technique you called "color holds" in Photoshop, I opened a piece of EPS vector line art fetched from Sketchepedia, rasterized it, placed a Threshold adjustment on it and then made a rasterized copy to have a hard-edge monochrome pixel layer on which to paint with a Paint Brush tool. Applying Filters > Colors > Erase White Paper removes the white within closed areas so to apply color only on outlines, this needs to be done, as well. Using Document > Transparent Background shows the checkerboard background if that is preferred to having a solid background.

Affinity Photo seems to use tool-specific lock of transparency so I clicked the "Protect Alpha" option on the context toolbar and started applying paint. This worked pretty much as expected and allows using different kinds of brushes, as below where a texture brush is used in most parts.

Coloring could later be adjusted by using e.g. HSL and Recolor adjustments selectively (you can use e.g. Selection Brush Tool to paint first areas that you wish to be affected),

There are probably non-destructive ways to do this but this is at least a starting point...

 

If you instead meant coloring vector based lines, I have no clue if it could be done more interactively and intuitively (e.g., using a brush-like tool) than applying layer-wise fill and line attributes and adjustments. 

 

 

Oh my god. Oh my %#(* god you are a fricking life saver. I didn't even know about the Protect Alpha feature. That was 100% what I was looking for, I really really really appreciate you taking the time to break this down for me.

It's definitely a bummer that there doesn't seem to be a way to adjust the color of something without using an adjustment layer but this at least cuts down so much of my layer pile up by exponentially so WOW yeah wow thank you!!

[thomaso]

21 hours ago, moedgehog said:

Why would that be necessary?

Because your description and question are simply ambiguous and may require new questions if there are different possible answers depending on unknown aspects of the question. To shorten this process, it is simply helpful for the forum to see the situation visually in addition to unclear text.

35 minutes ago, moedgehog said:

It's definitely a bummer that there doesn't seem to be a way to adjust the color of something without using an adjustment layer but this at least cuts down so much of my layer pile up by exponentially so WOW yeah wow thank you!!

Your assumption appears to be a misinterpretation. You can change the color of vector objects simply by 1. selecting the object + 2. selecting the wanted color (either in the Swatches Panel or the Colours Panel or via one of two Colour Pickers). Done. WOW.

[moedgehog]

  

6 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Because your description and question are simply ambiguous and may require new questions if there are different possible answers depending on unknown aspects of the question. To shorten this process, it is simply helpful for the forum to see the situation visually in addition to unclear text.

Your assumption appears to be a misinterpretation. You can change the color of vector objects simply by 1. selecting the object + 2. selecting the wanted color (either in the Swatches Panel or the Colours Panel or via one of two Colour Pickers). Done. WOW.

At this point it feels like this is getting personal and becoming incredibly inappropriate. I had someone who was kind enough to take the time to understand what I was trying to say and the issue I was running into, and was also kind enough to both explain and introduce me to a feature in the program that I didn't even know existed to help me resolve the question I had.

I'd like to assume that this is all done in good faith but at this point there's only two conclusions to come to - that there's a weird amount of embarrassment over not fully understanding what I was trying to communicate or there's an ingrained theme within this community that seems fixated on trying to find ways to shame new posters. I asked a question, I asked again for more clarity. I made it clear from the start that I've been open to understanding and communicating.

Everything about this just feels really gross and there's no reason why this post needed to escalate to this point.

Thank you again to the kind user (I won't tag them because I don't want them dragged into this) that was respectful and understanding enough to answer my question. To the rest of you - I really hope this made you all feel better to randomly bully someone on a forum who was willing to be curious and vulnerable enough to ask questions. Have a great rest of your day and take care.

[thomaso]

16 minutes ago, moedgehog said:

At this point it feels like this is getting personal and becoming incredibly inappropriate.

What part of my answer made you think so? I tried to answer your question, without this question it would not have been discussed at all.

Here is an example of a recent and similar topic. It is also about coloring line art and transparency/alpha. I wonder if these answers would have helped you. According to your initial question they would, according to your reactions so far they would not. So it is still unclear to me.

 

[moedgehog]

6 minutes ago, thomaso said:

What part of my answer made you think so? I tried to answer your question, without this question it would not have been discussed at all.

Here is an example of a recent and similar topic. It is also about coloring line art and transparency/alpha. I wonder if these answers would have helped you. According to your initial question they would, according to your reactions so far they would not. So it is still unclear to me.

 

Stop. This is 100% weird now that this thread has derailed this much. I already got the answer I'm looking for and it's 100% fine that you and anyone else who seems fixated on derailing this thread wasn't able to provide it. But if this discussion persists then it has absolutely nothing to do with me anymore because I already got my answer and I'm fine with that so my part in this is done.

Have a good one.

[Dan C]

This thread has been answered and I don't wish for it to derail further, so I'm locking it to prevent further replies. Please treat all users with respect on the Affinity Forums.