Having trouble with the color picker and flood fill tool

[dobiegerl]

Okay so I'm trying to use the fill tool in affinity designer. I'm pretty new to affinity so I'm still trying to figure my way around but I've looked through other forum posts and tutorials and can't find any help with the specific problem I'm having.

I basically have two areas next to each other, one light green and one dark green. I'm trying to fill the light green area with the same color as the dark green area. I go to pixel persona and then click on the flood fill tool. When I do that both of the color swatch circles (I'm not sure what they're called but the two circles in the corner of the color selector section that show what color you're using) show there's no color (white with a red line through it). So I go to color picker and click on the dark green colored area. But then when I go back to flood fill the green color has disappeared from the circle and it's gone back to white with a red line through it. The smaller circle next to it with the eye dropper symbol next to it is still colored with the dark green color. So while I'm in flood fill I click on that smaller circle but it just fills the whole page with that color before I can eve click on anything. 

I'm really at a loss for what I'm doing wrong. All I want is to fill a small area with color but I can't seem to do it.

[Gear maker]

@dobiegerl There are a few tutorials that can help.  There are actually 2 color pickers, this will explain both.   

 

[Ana Mendes]

Im trying to use the flood fill on a symbol and its not working properly. 

I'm still unsure if its a bug or if I'm missing something.... 

yellow cross marking the place where I'm clicking with the flood tool - I'd like to paint it purple. It should work because theres a fill under in white.

[Ana Mendes]

Following the issue: I moved on with magic wand and brush tool to paint, but I want to know why flood tool didnt work.

[Ana Mendes]

I managed but, the magic wand is also having trouble selecting. Could it be because some of the border is transparent?...

[walt.farrell]

17 minutes ago, Ana Mendes said:

yellow cross marking the place where I'm clicking with the flood tool

It looks to me like you may have a pixel selection active, and if so you'd only be able to paint/fill within that selection. It's hard to be sure from that screenshot, though.

[Ana Mendes]

There isn't... I was wondering if it was sellecting the whole artboard, in case the parameters Im giving are not enought, but it wasn't....

I used Ctrl+D to deselect as I keep lowering the tolerance

I'm having other paints in this project... crazy unecessarely complexifyied pains. Like refining edge... it keeps having a faux edge when I ask for a mate edge. I change the paramenters that seem to be the source of the problem as I read the help article but it isnt working. I must be missing something...!

 

The wand keeps working and not working randomly, I have no idea why. What a pain!!!!

Also, somehow the "wet edges" option of the brush tool was activated (windows update seems to have messed some stuff up), and it took me a loooooooong time to understand why it would give me the sharp edges I wanted. 

[Ana Mendes]

Example of Magic wand not working:

Clicking on the red cross, and it doesn't select a thing.

[Ana Mendes]

ahhh, other variable I forgot the share: this is a symbol. But on the case above I'm not editing it.

[walt.farrell]

22 minutes ago, Ana Mendes said:

Clicking on the red cross, and it doesn't select a thing

I think there are no pixels to select there, given that it's a transparent area.

[Paul Mudditt]

You are using Designer, rather than use pixel persona have you considered using vector fills instead?

You might be better off using Affinity Photo if you want to do pixel work, then transferring to designer for you symbol work.

Demo of vector fill in designer iPad.

[Ana Mendes]

On 3/18/2024 at 6:09 PM, walt.farrell said:

I think there are no pixels to select there, given that it's a transparent area.

That seems to have been the problem. I assumed it'd select area till the bounds of the existing pixels. Thanks!

 

On 3/18/2024 at 8:50 PM, Paul Mudditt said:

You are using Designer, rather than use pixel persona have you considered using vector fills instead?

You might be better off using Affinity Photo if you want to do pixel work, then transferring to designer for you symbol work.

Demo of vector fill in designer iPad

I'm drawing with vectors and then painting with the pixel persona, so I can texture with the brushes... idk if its the best idea, but seems to be the fastest to reach the result I'm looking for...

I think inicially I gave a try with the vector brushes, but it didnt work great, can't remember why

[Alfred]

12 minutes ago, Ana Mendes said:

I'm drawing with vectors and then painting with the pixel persona, so I can texture with the brushes... idk if its the best idea, but seems to be the fastest to reach the result I'm looking for...

It sounds as though you’re drawing vector strokes and then adding pixel fills. If that’s the case, try initially adding a (solid or gradient) fill to the vector objects and then applying a pixel-based texture on top.

[Ana Mendes]

1 hour ago, Alfred said:

It sounds as though you’re drawing vector strokes and then adding pixel fills. If that’s the case, try initially adding a (solid or gradient) fill to the vector objects and then applying a pixel-based texture on top.

Exactly. I added a fill layer under everything and it worked.

[Ana Mendes]

Now I'm notecing, even in old files where I used this method, it stoped working.

 

In pixel persona, the flood fill is not working.

What happened?

 

 

[NotMyFault]

Im a bit confused by the post.

In my experiments, you can fill a empty pixel layer with transparent canvas in Designer using fill tool in Pixel Persona. So why add a fill layer?

On 3/18/2024 at 11:46 AM, Ana Mendes said:

It should work because theres a fill under in white.

Do you use a Pen to start the fill?
This is extremely unreliable as in 99% Affinity app wrongly detect a very small pen stroke instead of single touch. The stroke will change whatever slider has focus, often radius or tolerance in case of fill tool, but it will not fill. This is reported as bug, but unfixed.

 

[Paul Mudditt]

4 hours ago, Ana Mendes said:

Now I'm notecing, even in old files where I used this method, it stoped working.

 

In pixel persona, the flood fill is not working.

What happened?

 

 

It would help if you could upload an example affinity file or a full screen recording with the layers panel and context toolbar clearly visible so we can figure out what is going wrong.