Picking Colors and Brushes on the Fly

[Pntrguy]

Hi Affinity,

I’d like to please make a suggestion and request for two important features to be included in future (hopefully near future) iterations of Affinity Photo. I likely express the opinion of many illustrators and digital artists in sharing this request.

Painting in Affinity Photo is wonderful. But a significant drawback is the lack of ability to pull up a color wheel immediately while working with a tablet and stylus, wherever the cursor happens to be at the time. This feature would allow the artist to choose a new color on the spot (without having to reach over to the color wheel in the controls). The color wheel would need to pop up quickly, allow rapid choosing of a new color, and likewise disappear easily with the release of a key. Being able to use a keyboard shortcut to instantly access the color wheel and choose a new color is a great workflow advantage in other software.

I know it’s currently easy to switch to the eyedropper tool and choose an existing color in the image. And that’s super important too. But in my opinion there also needs to be an immediate way to easily access and pick colors, of any hue and value, from the full color wheel.

Similarly, being able to pull up a full menu of the brush tips available (including those created by the user), wherever the cursor happens to be, and to pick a new brush right then and there, would also be a huge asset to workflow. This too exists in other software by simply clicking the stylus button when hovering the pen over the drawing tablet.

Affinity’s lack of quick access features for choosing both color and brushes on the fly is currently holding back Affinity Photo’s efficiency. Working without these abilities feels strange when many of the app’s painting features are otherwise so robust.

Please seriously consider these suggestions. Adding these features would really help round out Affinity Photo’s power as imaging software.

Thank you for your consideration.

[Nikon Shooter]

+1, +1, +1, +1, +1…

[Frozen Death Knight]

Agreed, especially regarding the brush manager being directly accessible on the canvas; i.e. R click. Another aspect that needs improving is the Colour Picker Tool not sharing its custom settings with the other brushes. For instance, you want to sample with a 3x3 Radius instead of 1x1 with Current Layer activated while using the Brush Tool? Nope, can't do it. You have to select you Colour Picker Tool with either "I" or the tool icon and then use it with those settings. I want these settings to apply to ALL colour picker tools in Affinity, not just the Colour Picker Tool.

Another downside is that if you want to have a specific setting that you wish to use every time you start up Affinity, you then have to do it manually. Every. Single. Time. It sure gets tiring repeating the same action every time you want to work. Saving them as sticky settings that remembers the customisations from your last session would be a massive quality of life improvement as well.

[VirginiaL]

I agree. I was opening a topic because I didn't find how to pick a color while drawing