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Appearance panel & editing multiple objects


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In the appearance panel, I only see a single stroke and fill property when I select multiple objects or layers:

image.thumb.png.392dff46fcfd4b0000620ca8ba7f5b94.png

This is the case, despite both objects sharing the exact same appearance:

image.thumb.png.9de237e060a6e133c20d38d7110178db.png

This also means that if I go to the appearance panel and duplicate the stroke, the duplicated stroke is applied to all objects and I am not able to see this in the panel itself! That shouldn't be the case.

Hopefully, this will be addressed together with a feature request of mine, which is to apply an appearance a layer:

 

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Sorry to say that this is how the changing of any stroke or fill will work when you have multiple objects selected. Try it with some different coloured vector objects that have different sized strokes applied to them, just change the fill colour or stroke width and all will change. 

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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7 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Sorry to say that this is how the changing of any stroke or fill will work when you have multiple objects selected. Try it with some different coloured vector objects that have different sized strokes applied to them, just change the fill colour or stroke width and all will change. 

I of course expect all of them to change. However, I do expect to see that If I have two strokes applied to multiple objects, that the appearance panel also shows this. If there are multiple objects with different strokes it should show a ? mark. Moreover, I cannot apply a second stroke to a multiple object selection, it'll just be greyed out. These are vital tools that should work for large documents.

Now I have to either create a style, which I cannot seem to update once created. Or, copy the appearance over to all the other objects (which is rather time consuming...).

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34 minutes ago, Intuos5 said:

I do expect to see that If I have two strokes applied to multiple objects, that the appearance panel also shows this. If there are multiple objects with different strokes it should show a ? mark.

You are right. I misunderstood. We would wind up with lots of indicators of mismatched strokes and or fills but an indication of this would be preferable to an incorrect Only One Stroke Applied Here result.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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13 minutes ago, Intuos5 said:

should it be considered a bug?

Pretty sure it's a bug, even if it is only displaying, say, the first selected object's attributes it should still show it has 2 strokes

 

PS The same thing (bug) shows with multiple fills

To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time.

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4 hours ago, Intuos5 said:

In that case, could any of the moderators move this over to the bug section of the forum?

They would need to know what OS you use.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
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  • Staff

Hi @Intuos5,

Thanks for your report!

I've checked with our QA team who have confirmed this is expected behaviour currently, with multiple objects selected the Appearance Studio will only show the 'selected' fill and stroke, set when selecting the first object on your canvas - even if both objects are the same. The 'selected' fill & strokes in the Appearance Studio display a white dot to the left hand side.

I am however logging an improvement with our developers for this, as I can certainly see how beneficial multi-stroke editing would be for duplicated objects etc.

I hope this clears things up :)

Please Note: I am now out of the office until Tuesday 2nd April on annual leave.

If you require urgent assistance, please create a new thread and a member of our team will be sure to assist asap.

Many thanks :)

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On 7/7/2022 at 8:23 PM, Intuos5 said:

Or, copy the appearance over to all the other objects (which is rather time consuming...).

I don't think the difference in time consumption is that big - I will adjust the appearance of one object, Ctrl+C, select all object, Ctrl+Shift+V. So the difference is only in pressing Ctrl+C and Ctrl+Shift+V.

Affinity Store (MSI/EXE): Affinity Suite (ADe, APh, APu) 2.4.0.2301
Dell OptiPlex 7060, i5-8500 3.00 GHz, 16 GB, Intel UHD Graphics 630, Dell P2417H 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155.
Dell Latitude E5570, i5-6440HQ 2.60 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics 530, 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155.
Intel NUC5PGYH, Pentium N3700 2.40 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics, EIZO EV2456 1920 x 1200, Windows 10 Pro, Version 21H1, Build 19043.2130.

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1 hour ago, Pšenda said:

I don't think the difference in time consumption is that big - I will adjust the appearance of one object, Ctrl+C, select all object, Ctrl+Shift+V. So the difference is only in pressing Ctrl+C and Ctrl+Shift+V.

This becomes time consuming with many layers and nested layers. This workaround doesn't scale well with large documents and it also breaks the flow of designing. If the computer/ software can do this for me, why should I do these manual steps every time?

You can't apply an appearance to a layer either, so this also makes it harder to preview a certain appearance while drawing the lines in particular layers/ groups. Oftentimes I need to draw stuff on multiple layers simultaneously, so copy and pasting appearances quickly becomes laborious backtracking and that's what I was really referring to with being time consuming.

I don't really get why people are complacent with workarounds, rather than lauding workflow improvements. 🤷‍♂️

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55 minutes ago, Intuos5 said:

This becomes time consuming with many layers and nested layers. This workaround doesn't scale well with large documents

I'm probably missing something in your request, because I don't see any great advantage in it - it's still necessary to select the required objects in the complex structure of the document, which is the most difficult thing for large documents and nested groups. So if I select the objects in advance and then set their appearance - as you suggest, or if I first adjust the appearance and only then select the objects to apply it to, it makes no big difference. Regardless of the fact that with a very complex structure I will probably forget several objects, so then I have to select them additionally - and copy the style/appearance to them. With your procedure, I would have to laboriously adjust their appearance again.

Affinity Store (MSI/EXE): Affinity Suite (ADe, APh, APu) 2.4.0.2301
Dell OptiPlex 7060, i5-8500 3.00 GHz, 16 GB, Intel UHD Graphics 630, Dell P2417H 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155.
Dell Latitude E5570, i5-6440HQ 2.60 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics 530, 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155.
Intel NUC5PGYH, Pentium N3700 2.40 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics, EIZO EV2456 1920 x 1200, Windows 10 Pro, Version 21H1, Build 19043.2130.

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No,  I would select them by appearance in advance using select > select same > edit all of them at once. No need to do tedious selections. In short, hotkey > edit the appearance of all objects = 2 steps.

Currently you would have to select one object, edit it, copy appearance, select the rest of the objects, paste appearance = 4 additional steps.

To really circumvent any selection procedures, I proposed to apply appearances to a layer (just like you can in Illustrator or what Autocad/ Rhino do by default if you place an object in a layer). This proposal hasn't been picked up yet.

 

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