Fill with Primary and Secondary Color does not work correctly

[rawalanche]

These two operations which are supposed to fill with primary and secondary color do not work correctly. Instead of filling with either primary or secondary color, they refer to the data of the two color slots directly, ignoring whether the state given color slot is currently primary or secondary. This means that both of these will always fill the same color regardless of how you swap the primary or secondary color using the X key.

For user, the only way they can visually determine whether given color is primary or secondary is by looking at the Color panel UI:

And seeing whether the decided color swatch icon is in the foreground, or in the background. Since the Fill operations do not take this order into consideration, it's impossible for the user to predict the effect of these fill operations in advance, and only way to perform them successfully is trial and error. 

 

[Ron P.]

What I understand about them, the Lower Color Well (circle) is always the Primary. The front and back configuration just sets which is active. In your screenshot, Black is the Primary color, Red is the Secondary AND it is set as being Active.

[Wosven]

2 hours ago, Ron P. said:

Lower Color Well (circle) is always the Primary

And that's strange and can confuse, since the primary is supposed to be the first (visible, on top), and secondary is usually... behind. Using "foreground color" and "background color" would have been simpler that this... strange denomination.

[rawalanche]

On 10/6/2021 at 7:57 PM, Ron P. said:

What I understand about them, the Lower Color Well (circle) is always the Primary. The front and back configuration just sets which is active. In your screenshot, Black is the Primary color, Red is the Secondary AND it is set as being Active.

Unfortunately no degree of mental gymnastics will make this any more predictable to use. Regardless if it's a bug or poor design, the result is the same - very poor usability.

[firstdefence]

In Affinity Designer the colour panel has a distinction between a fill and a stroke colour well...

[PaulEC]

I've never understood why the colour panel in AP isn't the same as in AD and APub, nor why there isn't a Stoke Tab, as in the other two apps!

[Lisbon]

1 hour ago, rawalanche said:

Unfortunately no degree of mental gymnastics will make this any more predictable to use.

The same with me.

I just think of it in terms of left and right.

[R C-R]

27 minutes ago, PaulEC said:

I've never understood why the colour panel in AP isn't the same as in AD and APub, nor why there isn't a Stoke Tab, as in the other two apps!

The Color panel difference does't bother me much because (unless I have this wrong) it is just a cosmetic difference -- AP uses a filled circle & the others a donut for the stroke or secondary color -- but it is really annoying that there is no Stroke panel in AP because (among other things) it makes it impossible to select more than one vector shape & change any of their stroke properties other than color at the same time.

[carl123]

12 hours ago, R C-R said:

but it is really annoying that there is no Stroke panel in AP because (among other things) it makes it impossible to select more than one vector shape & change any of their stroke properties other than color at the same time.

Dig deep. They hid it.

[lacerto]

(...)

[Pšenda]

In the case of ADesigner and APublisher Help (https://affinity.help/designer/English.lproj/pages/Panels/clrPanel.html), the description is clear,

in the case of APhoto (https://affinity.help/photo/English.lproj/pages/Panels/clrPanel.html), the description is unfortunately unclear.

 

[R C-R]

13 hours ago, carl123 said:

Dig deep. They hid it.

Thanks for that tip! Without it, I never would have noticed I could do that via the Character panel for non-text objects.

5 hours ago, Lagarto said:

The stroke control (along with stroke color control) becomes visible on the Context toolbar while multiple shapes are selected when activating the Pen tool [or the Node tool].

Thanks also for your tip! I think of the two this method makes more sense & is easier to use (& remember!).

[rawalanche]

On 10/12/2021 at 6:05 PM, Lisbon said:

The same with me.

I just think of it in terms of left and right.

Exactly. You need to invent some severe mental gymnastics which take mental bandwidth to perform just to do such essential task. This is a great example of what a poor design this is. Something this primitive should not require significant amount of mental work to figure out.

[JOleg]

On 10/6/2021 at 5:54 PM, rawalanche said:

These two operations which are supposed to fill with primary and secondary color do not work correctly. Instead of filling with either primary or secondary color, they refer to the data of the two color slots directly, ignoring whether the state given color slot is currently primary or secondary. This means that both of these will always fill the same color regardless of how you swap the primary or secondary color using the X key.

For user, the only way they can visually determine whether given color is primary or secondary is by looking at the Color panel UI:

And seeing whether the decided color swatch icon is in the foreground, or in the background. Since the Fill operations do not take this order into consideration, it's impossible for the user to predict the effect of these fill operations in advance, and only way to perform them successfully is trial and error. 

From what I've just manually tested, it works the way I envisioned it. I also view this with Affinity Designer eyes and it does help. Please refer to the attached image. 

The Fill with Primary and Secondary color works consistently with the Pixel type of layer. So if you make a selection on the Pixel layer and press key combination to fill with Primary color, it will always pick the one which I pointed at on the image as Primary, and it won't matter what is currently active (or in the foreground). Likewise, if you select to fill with Secondary color, it will always pick the one which is up-and-to-the-left. So this behavior is consistent, which is what we want.

When you have a Shape layer selected, like a Rectangle in the picture, then these circles also work consistently. The "primary circle" is for the fill of the shape. The "secondary circle" is for the Stroke. 

And lastly, options "Fill with Primary Color" and "Fill with Secondary Color" kind of hint at their usage - they are meant to be used as a color for the Fill and not the Stroke. And I see this as being useful. Suppose you have 2 main colors which you switch around. So, instead of switching you can just use hot keys, knowing precisely what is your primary color and what is your secondary color, but granted that you are working with Pixel Layer.

I'm using Affinity Photo v1.10 in case it matters. Hope this helps.

[R C-R]

On 10/12/2021 at 11:05 AM, Lisbon said:

I just think of it in terms of left and right.

Personally, I have never thought of those two color wells in those terms. Primary/secondary; foreground/background; or stroke/fill are the terms that make the most sense to me.

Each to his or her own, I guess.

[Lisbon]

2 hours ago, R C-R said:

Personally, I have never thought of those two color wells in those terms. Primary/secondary; foreground/background; or stroke/fill are the terms that make the most sense to me.

Each to his or her own, I guess.

"The primary colour must be the one on top". This was my first thought.
I was wrong, but then I notice that the primary colour corresponded to the right circle no matter if it was on top or bottom.
This is why I think in terms of left/right.
But this left/right thinking has a problem. Since I only use shortcuts and ignore the concept of primary/secondary when I open the fill dialog (Edit > Fill) I have to experiment. Fortunately, I never use the fill dialog for filling with the primary/secondary colours.

Hope this makes sense.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Lisbon said:

"The primary colour must be the one on top". This was my first thought.

Heh. For me, my first thought was that 'primary color' somehow referred to one of a set of three primary colors so I wondered how to switch to a different one of that set. 😕