Selection in swatches jumps to another colour when clicked

[Paul Mc]

I've a set of spot colours on a design where selecting one colour jumps to the other colour. These two spot colours involved are identical in that they reference the same Pantone colour but have different names. Is this by design or possibly a bug? I've tried changing the colour to reference a different Pantone and the colour then remains selected, changing it back and it jumps to the other, identical one. Also, I have two other colours in the design which perform the same function but neither of these jumps to the other.

In case you are wondering I need to use two spot colours for the same print colour so that the exported PDF can be used to create separate plates as they have different trapping specs.

[Paul Mc]

I've been experimenting and thought it might be related to locked objects in the Layers structure. Unlocking everything and trying again made no difference.

And before anyone asks I can't upload the file, sorry.

[Paul Mc]

ClickTestPalette.afpalette

Here's the palette should anyone be interested in trying to duplicate the issue.

[Sean P]

Hi Paul Mc,

I think what is happening, is that some colours are exactly the same, and the app is just highlighting the colour used on the selected object, but as its the same name it appears to be picking the first in the list.With no object selected I'm not getting the jumping, but as soon as I select an object and apply them you get that behaviour.

In the attached Palette's case its the Pantone 7693 C - despite the two colours having different swatch names, the actual colour used is the same (as seen in the Colour Panel). Where as with 2118 C the two colours have different names in the colour panel also.

I'm not seeing this with the Mac either so it looks like a small Windows quirk. I'll pass it over to development to see if anything can be done!

[Paul Mc]

@Sean P Thanks very much. For now, it's not a show stopper as I can use a very slightly different colour in the PDF preview and include instructions for the printer to use the same Pantone colour for both and ignore the colour in the PDF. Hopefully it will be fixed as I'm hoping to have more work relating to this process in the future and having it work as I expected it to will be a great help.

[Sean P]

2 minutes ago, Paul Mc said:

very slightly different colour in the PDF preview and include instructions for the printer to use the same Pantone colour for both and ignore the colour in the PDF

I believe those colours will go out as the same Spot Colour in the PDF - as both swatches share the same spot name. Pantone spot names cannot be renamed as it tells the printers exactly what colour to use for each spot. However if they're added to a Document Palette as a Global Colour they can be renamed

In your situation It might be best adding the PANTONE colour you want to use and then using 'Add current colour to palette as Global Colour' and naming accordingly. This way you will be able to specify a different Global Name (the name seen in the Swatches list) and Spot Name (the same seen in brackets in the colour panel, and also the name that gets exported to the PDF. As it sounds like you watch the same PANTONE colour split over several different spot names. This would avoid the issue you're currently getting above.

The palette you've attached is very odd as it has PANTONEs as non-global colours (which cannot have the spots renamed, which is what I think you really need), so its hard to really tell what workflow you've used creates that.

See attached video, I've tried to demonstrate this (note the first selected PANTONE gets added, but subsequent don't - we're aware of this). I've also attached a PDF export so you can see the resulting spot colour names (see below).

PantoneSpots.afdesign PantoneSpots.pdf

[Paul Mc]

On 2/18/2021 at 4:12 PM, Sean P said:

As it sounds like you watch the same PANTONE colour split over several different spot names.

That's it exactly. (Assuming "watch" = "want" )

Thanks very much @Sean P, I appreciate you taking the time to show this. I will dig into it further as there may be a misunderstanding on my part. I find the whole colour and palette management in Affinity very confusing and unintuitive. These colours were all originally set up as Global Spots but at some point in the workflow the Global aspect disappeared. I have no idea what I did to make that happen. It wasn't intentional. I can't help feeling that these attributes should (perhaps?) apply to a palette rather than - or as well as - individual colours.

I think I've figured a way to get thing working satisfactorily for my current project but there has to be an easier way. My biggest frustration is locating Pantone colours when adding new Global Spots. Anytime you add a colour and are not using the Colour or Swatches panel directly then you really need the search facility that they have to find the colour, without it this is a labour of love scrolling through the list. Also, it would be nice to be able to resize the list window to be able to view more than the 10 or so rows. And while I'm on that point, the font menu needs to be displayed on Windows like it does on the Mac. Tiny windows through which you view a huge, scrolling list make for a really, really bad user experience. Being able to resize all these panels would be really helpful.