Affinity Photo imported style not working

[AllanT]

I have just installed Affinity Photo 1.9 on a mac running 10.14.6 (Mojave). I have downloaded some style zip files, unzipped and imported the results into the style tab. If I then just create a document containing a simple object (eg filled circle) and try to apply the new style it does not work. It DOES work with the inbuilt default styles.

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

To be sure I understand: you unzipped some .afstyles files, and imported them into your Styles panel. You can see them, but when you click on one of them it is not applied to the object.

If that's correct, I have done something similar, and it worked. Are you able to share one of the files here without violating its licensing?  

Did you buy them or download them from a free site?

[AllanT]

Free downloaded. I have attached the afstyles file in question. Thank you for such a quick reply. Until affinity allow for patterns to be part of a style, it will never replace Photoshop (just my opinion). I am still running PS CS 3 on an ancient windows XP machine which is about to die. My normal machine is a mac laptop, hence the move to Affinity.

S.L_LETTER_STYLES.afstyles

[AllanT]

I just worked out that the styles only work for text. If applied to plain pixel layers, only the FX are applied and not the associated gradients / patterns.

[walt.farrell]

10 hours ago, AllanT said:

I just worked out that the styles only work for text. If applied to plain pixel layers, only the FX are applied and not the associated gradients / patterns.

That sounds right to me. Styles are primarily for vector objects, I believe.

[jmwellborn]

@walt.farrell For fun, I just tried adding a style to an inverted selection.   Here is what I got.  I did not purposely add any effects.  But here is what happened when I checked on the Effects.  Ver'r'r'r'ry strange.  ( I might add that I tried adding a relatively plain style on top of an image, and managed to change the color of the entire image.)

[walt.farrell]

5 hours ago, jmwellborn said:

I might add that I tried adding a relatively plain style on top of an image, and managed to change the color of the entire image.

If you're referring to (Image) layers, they have a Fill that acts like a vector object, rather than the  Fill a (Pixel) layer has.

I'm afraid I don't understand the rest of your post, but I'll look at it some more

[AllanT]

ok, so I achieved what I wanted (sort of). If I create a fill layer and then apply a style (containing a pattern) to it, I can use the normal pattern handles to adjust the size and orientation.

I still prefer photoshop's pattern tools - a style has a pattern overlay option. I guess Affinity photo will be just another learning curve like photoshop was. Thank you to everyone for their assistance.  

[jmwellborn]

20 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

If you're referring to (Image) layers, they have a Fill that acts like a vector object, rather than the  Fill a (Pixel) layer has.

I'm afraid I don't understand the rest of your post, but I'll look at it some more

The rest of my post was about a separate file.  I opened a forest image and then applied a style (a yellow color rather than a pattern) to the background layer just to see what would happen.  The forest acquired a sickly shade of yellow.   That was a surprise.  I did not add a new layer or change the blend mode.  This is so decidedly not worth fooling with any more.  Cheers!