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copying globally coloured object to new doc looses palette


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As the short title tries to explain: 

Copying objects with assigned global colour to a new document does not transfer the document palette. So they retain the colour, but the swatch lives a half life somewhere "in the air".

That's a bug.

 

Longer explanation:

So I carefully manage my document with named colour swatches inside its document palette. ...maybe for a brochure for a specific client.

Then I need to create a related document (same client, partly same graphic objects, obviously same colour swatches.) in a different size, say, for a business card design.

So what you usually do is:

  • select relevant objects,
  • command+C, 
  • command+N for new doc, dial in all measurements,
  • command+V

Problem is, a new document has no document palette. And even if you create one from scratch, the copied colours are not appended to it.

Further: if you then select "add current colour to palette as global colour" it creates a new name for it, although the old name was visible in the colour panel...

 

I beg you, please consider repairing the underlying colour system in the affinity apps. there are so many inconsistencies. (create palette from doc uses rgb or hsl converted colours instead of the cmyk definitions, copying colours from one doc with cmyk OUTPUT colour profile a to another one with OUTPUT colour profile B does a colour conversion instead of keeping the INPUT values)

I know, you know how things worked in ID/Pagemaker/Quark for the last twentysomewhat years

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You can, of course, export your client's document palette to a .afpalette file and import it to a new document as a document palette there.

But I don't think that will help you with copying objects and retaining the colors as global. For that, I would recommend a different workflow. Rather than copying and pasting objects, I would create a copy of the existing document (Save As), which will give you a new document with the same document palette and objects, and you can just work with them there.

Also, if you want new documents to have a document palette, you can create your own Template, containing an empty (or filled) document palette. Then select that template when you create the new document using File > New.

Once you've created the new document with its document palette, you can copy objects and paste them, then add their fill as a global color to the document palette. But as you point out, that doesn't keep the same names.

So, starting with a copy of the client document will probably be simpler.

 

-- Walt
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On 10/12/2020 at 6:10 PM, walt.farrell said:

So, starting with a copy of the client document will probably be simpler.

Thank You for this suggestion, Walt.

But that is basically the messy workaround which I now do, but like to avoid.

What if you like to merge an object from Doc#A with some of Doc#B? The swatches have the same name and should be merged and linked together. At some point in every workflow you will inevitable have to copy objects together.

In Indesign there is also this neat trick if you change a colour swatch definition and paste an object from an older document with the old definition (same colour name!) then the new definition is used and linked to. That's very handy! (...and can be confusing if you don't expect it, I know. But every merging process has to make decisions or put up a dialogue)

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2 hours ago, Nazario said:

any new document should open a new document palette and the colours should be added automatically to the palette

Well, for AfPub, I would like this, but I realise it isn't just as easy:

Glancing at the Adobe way(s), they never unified such a behaviour for InDesign and Illustrator as they grew based on different codebase. Illustrator mostly didn't need global colours and gave you the freedom of messing around creatively colour-wise. InDesign on the other hand does register EVERY single colour occurrence as a global colour, which is a more cleaner and maybe less creative way.

ID way: For consistent output of press-ready PDFs, you want the controlled way as a Corporate Design usually never uses more than ten to twenty defined colours. (of which maybe 3 are absolutely critical)

AI way: To create a (vector-based) drawing with thousands of brush strokes and multiple shades of colours and gradients you would not want to convolute your palette with all these colours as the colour perception is seen as a whole. (useless like giving a mathematician a list of all numbers available...)

So Illustrator later got some features like "add all used colours" and "delete unused colours" to clean up your messy documents.
Here Affinity tries to add all shades of colours including pictures, which isn't helpful at all and doesn't link the colour to its original object as global.

 

Affinity now has the advantage of syncing the base technique between its three apps, but at the same time this exposes these short-comings in the different use-cases. Maybe a user preference in Settings could help, maybe a dialogue box... 

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I think in AI the gradients are shown as a gradient swatch and not all the individual colours/shades one could pick from the gradient. Obviously anything raster based wouldn't add the palette.

How I see it (and I could be overlooking something here) is if you created a triangle for instance and then set the colour to yellow. A Yellow swatch would then appear in the palette (much like it does with recent swatches panel). If you created another shape and made it red. A red swatch would appear in the panel. If you edit either the red or the yellow triangle to another colour, that particular swatch could update in the palette as not to have an overly messy palette with every colour you ever created in the document. If you have two yellow triangles and you edit one to be green. Instead of the yellow swatch updating, a green swatch would be added to the palette so now you have a green and a yellow triangle and the corresponding swatches are available within the palette for consistent use through the rest of the design. You could then choose if that colour is going to be a global colour or there could be a default option for any colour created to be global which would then stop the creation of a new swatch when having two or more elements like in the yellow triangles example above. Obviously in that instance if you change one of the yellow triangles to green and its set to add any new swatches as global then the second triangle would update accordingly and no new swatch is added to the palette..

The current recents panel is only useful up to a point. Especially if you're experimenting and you decide to go back to a colour you created but initially discarded and it was more than 10 iterations ago (which is quite easily done when choosing colours and shades). So if my idea above works we could do without the recents panel and have cleaner more useful and optimised colour palette/panel and there would be a lot less faffing about adding colours and breaking train of thought.

Think that makes sense but again like I said maybe i'm overlooking something whereby maybe it wouldn't work because X.

 

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@Nazario not sure if I'm able to follow your example with the red/yellow triangle...

But if there were an setting to automatically generate or link colours, you have to be able to have two or more equal colours that are intentionally NOT grouped together.

example: I have some global white swatch used only for text on a dark background and the same white 0/0/0/0 but second global swatch for specific graphical objects. So I can independently recolour the text OR these objects as a whole if I'm changing the design. 

  • Main machine: iMac 2019 (21,5-inch 4k, 6core), 64GB RAM, 1TB nvme + 2TB ssd, running on Mac OS 13;
  • Display setup: 28" 5k Display (primary) + 21,5" iMac4k-Display for studio panels (secondary);
  • Keyboard layout: german apple extended keyboard (aluminium);

 

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I just saw: the latest beta (798) now automatically applies the colour swatch after it generated it as global!

One step forward, hurray!

 

So while they're on it: can we now please also select multiple colour swatches to delete them together? (renaming a colour is also very cumbersome...)

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39 minutes ago, woefi said:

So while they're on it: can we now please also select multiple colour swatches to delete them together?

... and deleting multiple text styles ...
... and deleting multiple anchors ...
... and so on ... ;)

 

------
Windows 10 | i5-8500 CPU | Intel UHD 630 Graphics | 32 GB RAM | Latest Retail and Beta versions of complete Affinity range installed

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2 hours ago, woefi said:

I just saw: the latest beta (798) now automatically applies the colour swatch after it generated it as global!

One step forward, hurray!

I got the wrong end of the stick on this and thought that you create an object and use the colour slider to make a colour then add that colour to a global document palate, then thought that the object you created the global from would automatically be global - no - now see that the next shape you create will be filled with the global - would be handy if the original object was global - at least now we have 'select same' this is far less of a problem when trying to work with a 100% global workflow 

Daz1.png

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10 minutes ago, Dazmondo77 said:

would be handy if the original object was global

that's how it should work.

But as I mentioned, the colour palette panel still needs a lot of love from the affinity team - most times the swatch selection does not sync with the object selection...

  • Main machine: iMac 2019 (21,5-inch 4k, 6core), 64GB RAM, 1TB nvme + 2TB ssd, running on Mac OS 13;
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12 minutes ago, woefi said:

that's how it should work.

Yes would be good

Just thought I'd test to see if multiple strokes via the appearance panel has been fixed ie even if all strokes are setup as global, only the last selected stroke actually links, only workaround for me is to setup any multiple strokes separately.

Also tested fill gradients which has been a bit hit and miss in the past with globals and glad to say it's working although if you save the gradient to document swatch and use all colours are still unlinked and no longer global so workaround is to select object, copy and paste style and all colours remain global - or drag to assets panel - really fiddly trying to maintain a flexible global workflow

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1 hour ago, Dazmondo77 said:

only the last selected stroke actually links

😱

 

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5 hours ago, woefi said:

 

5 hours ago, Dazmondo77 said:

would be handy if the original object was global

that's how it should work.

 

That's what I expected, but the auto-assignment only seems to happen if you right-click the object on the canvas and choose Add To Swatches > From Fill/Line/Both As Global.

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12 hours ago, anon2 said:

That's what I expected, but the auto-assignment only seems to happen if you right-click the object on the canvas and choose Add To Swatches > From Fill/Line/Both As Global.

Ahhh I usually just click on the palette panel icon to add globals - I'll give it a try - surely they should work the same, if you're building a globals palette why would you want anything being left un-assigned? Personally, (as I stated on the forum many times) I would love to see an option in preferences that allows globals as standard but looks as though we'll probably never get that option

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