Make object styles editable (like text styles)

[Intuos5]

Currently, it doesn't seem to be possible to edit object styles. This makes it difficult to update a lot of objects all at once. It would be great if we could double click on a style to open an editor in which the object style could be edited, duplicated and saved.

[walt.farrell]

I'm sure that has been requested before, and a simple search turns up a few relevant hits in this forum: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/search/&q=edit object styles&quick=1&type=forums_topic&nodes=53 but fewer than I would have expected. I may need different search terms, or to search different forums.

While in general I support the idea, you've mentioned two things:

1. Being able to edit a style. And
2. Being able to update all objects at once.

The first of those seems simple. The second, though, requires that each Style knows all the objects that it has been applied to, so they can be changed. And that introduces some problems, because there is one difference you may not have considered between Text Styles and Styles that complicates things. Styles (that is, object Styles) are associated with the application, today. Text Styles are associated with the document.

In practice, the difficulty that introduces is this:

1. Suppose you have a style named Style 1, with certain stroke, fill, and other characteristics. You apply Style 1 to several objects in your document, and Save the document. Then you close it. Within the document, there needs to be some memory of what Styles existed when the document was open, and what objects they're applied to.
2. Now you make some changes to your Styles. Perhaps you delete Style 1. Or perhaps you delete it and replace it with a Style 1 that has a completely different set of characteristics. Or perhaps you just edit it, and change some of its characteristics.
3. Now you reopen the document you saved in 1. At this point, you have several objects that would claim to have Style 1 associated with them, but they don't because you've either deleted, or modified, Style 1.

I'm not sure there's a good solution to that problem.

But the general idea of updating multiple objects that have the same style, is a good one, and we can already do that today using Select Same. If you have a style, with a certain stroke/fill, and you have applied it to 5 objects, you can select 1 of the objects and use Select > Select Same > Fill and Stroke Color. You can then change the stroke or fill color, or apply a different Style, and you will affect all the objects you've selected.

That's not perfect, because Styles can have other less-obvious characteristics associated with them that Select Same won't handle, such as Font names or Font sizes, or Text Style names. But it may help for the more common cases.

 

[Old Bruce]

Wouldn't that edited style show up with older documents being changed as soon as you open them to show the edited styles. Perhaps this would be undesirable.

[walt.farrell]

2 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Wouldn't that edited style show up with older documents being changed as soon as you open them to show the edited styles. Perhaps this would be undesirable.

Only if the objects were immediately changed to take on the new attributes. I do not think that would be a desirable action.

You could instead just forget about those modified styles.

Or perhaps it would require a document-level Styles panel as well as the application-level Styles panel we have today. Or something like the Palettes panel, with document palettes and application-level palettes.

Or something like happens in Publisher when you "Add Pages from File" and there are text style conflicts. You might open a document and be presented with a dialog telling you that "Style 1" applied to some objects has been changed, and allowing you to update the objects, or keep the same definitions they now have (and perhaps add the old style as a new name in some Style category.

As I said before, I'm not sure there's a good solution. Or, if there is, I don't think it's simple.

[Intuos5]

@walt.farrell good insights on the matter, I'm pretty sure the devs appreciate that.

The thing is, in Indesign, that's how it works. So there's already more than a working proof of concept on this on the market. But I like Affinity more, so I hope they could adopt features like these, so I can say goodbye to Adobe.
The styles are saved to the document (like text styles), so if you save a new style, they will be part of the current document only. Now that shouldn't be an issue, because you should be able to save a style as preset to a style folder (located in appdata on Windows), from which you should be able to load previously created styles. The decision to save an application style preset, however, remains a manual choice.

Since styles are not shared across documents, it won't affect older documents. In fact, if I have a Style 1 with a 1pt black stroke and I decide to override this application style preset to become a 2pt yellow stroke, the document to which the style was applied wouldn't change. Why? Because it still uses the document style that was applied to it. Once the styles are loaded in the document, they will become local to the document.

That should be the gist of it. By the way, Indesign doesn't let you save styles as application style AFAIK. But if you copy-paste an object with a style, it auto-creates this style in the new document in which the style wasn't present.

[Old Bruce]

10 hours ago, Intuos5 said:

By the way, Indesign doesn't let you save styles as application style AFAIK.

Then this is why it is possible in Indesign to edit Styles.

[MikeW]

10 hours ago, Intuos5 said:

... By the way, Indesign doesn't let you save styles as application style AFAIK. ...

Yes, ID does allow one to change just about every type of default style, including object styles. One just does it with no document open, make the desired changes, and close ID. When restarted, the changes are new defaults. QXP also allows this.

The difference between ID/QXP and APub/AD is that once that object style is used in a document in ID/QXP and subsequently altered, the style becomes a document-only style as you mention.

This is how APub/AD ought to work too.

[Intuos5]

Interesting, didn't know, didn't try.

I fully agree. It's good to be able to create defaults as a template (i.e. house-style).
That's also the way I would expect these things to work and it gets around a lot of issues on the way.

[Customer Feedback]

On 7/7/2022 at 8:28 PM, Intuos5 said:

Currently, it doesn't seem to be possible to edit object styles. This makes it difficult to update a lot of objects all at once. It would be great if we could double click on a style to open an editor in which the object style could be edited, duplicated and saved.

I just discovered in an evaluation test document that styles are not styles as we know it from other programs, but simple banal presets! Totally stunned.

It borders on mildly misleading marketing. Beyond that, it's a pointless feature if it's supposed to streamline workflows and make them easier. Serif should start by renaming styles to presets. Don't lure more customers in with wrong labels. There is not even an 'Update "style" from selection' for Pete's sake!

This disappointment alone is close to pulling Designer out of our evaluation process. Styles in Designer are completely unusable in their current banal form.

With some quick research I can see that this feature is even carried over 1:1 from Serif's previous now retired products, so we dare not hope for an improvement in the future if Serif has not improved their products at this point in decades.

/Eddie

[Catshill]

15 hours ago, Customer Feedback said:

I just discovered in an evaluation test document that styles are not styles as we know it from other programs, but simple banal presets! Totally stunned.

It borders on mildly misleading marketing. Beyond that, it's a pointless feature if it's supposed to streamline workflows and make them easier. Serif should start by renaming styles to presets. Don't lure more customers in with wrong labels. There is not even an 'Update "style" from selection' for Pete's sake!

This disappointment alone is close to pulling Designer out of our evaluation process. Styles in Designer are completely unusable in their current banal form.

With some quick research I can see that this feature is even carried over 1:1 from Serif's previous now retired products, so we dare not hope for an improvement in the future if Serif has not improved their products at this point in decades.

/Eddie

I disagree that styles in ADe are unusable. I have created a number of them in order to draw road maps. Very useful to me.

[Customer Feedback]

10 hours ago, Catshill said:

I disagree that styles in ADe are unusable. I have created a number of them in order to draw road maps. Very useful to me.

1)
Road maps. Interesting. May I ask what type of client you work for? Do you work alone or in collaboration with others? Do you rely on time as a factor and will inefficient software mean you spend longer completing your tasks, thus increasing the total cost of the task?

2)
Yes, you are probably happy with the styles used as PRESETS. I am talking about styles as common dynamic STYLES. If you work with text styles in Designer, they are stored in the document itself, and if you update a text style, all text marked with that style is automatically updated over the Designer document. That's what styles are for.

In Affinity Designer, however, a graphic style is a static preset. If you apply this preset to 1,200 objects in gigantic design and you need to update the style, then you must apply this preset to these 1,200 objects manually. You can't even update this preset. You have to make a new one.

And then styles are not stored in the document, but locally and globally. So a small style applicable to a couple of documents will lie with all other styles until you delete it. But styles are not stored in the only place they should be, in the document itself. So if you send the document to a colleague, this style will not be included.

So here we have term styles that mean something quite different from text to graphics in the same application. It makes no sense. And it's a pity that there are no real styles in the program.

But I'm starting to understand why I don't see any traces of professionals in here. Noted.

/Eddie

[Intuos5]

@Customer FeedbackThese are exactly the reasons why I have created this feature request. But, you do have to consider that developing software takes time, so you can't reasonably expect a new piece of software to have the same amount of features as a 30+ years old one.

It also simply didn't receive close as much feedback from its users. So no reason to rant on people or the software. If you take a constructive approach, I am pretty sure your points are taken in much easier.

You'll also have to consider that people who bought the software did some testing and know that it is up to what they'll use it for. If not, they will just stick to the competitor. Adobe has introduced some very serious bugs in recent years and so it's not like the grass is always greener on the other side either.

[Customer Feedback]

No, but I expect a company to learn from its mistakes or to learn from its competitors. Styles were part of DrawPlus I now see, and as I understand, also worked like styles in Designer. So after years and years of having it in DrawPlus, they implemented exactly the same feature the exact same way in Designer. That is 0 + 0.

It's a ridiculous misconception that Adobe and others have a 30-year head start. Serif is an old company now with lots of experience. Of course Affinity needs to be built up over iterations, but mistakes and algorithms should not be brought from the old products. And I expect the company's algorithms are mature after so many years. The company is from 1987! But often they are not.

Serif didn't start from scratch with design software when they designed Affinity. DrawPlus was released in 1993! It is of great concern if both algorithms and features do not improve over 30 years. Then the company is not accumulating skills and knowledge in this area.

Occasionally, customers testing software provide feedback. It's not really for you, but for Serif. I report back with expectations similar to the level Serif markets their software at. That's how constructive approach is used in professional environments. Live up to the promise, sell the product. Otherwise, no deal.

But it's really a trend that users here are apologists. Many have been lectured about the feedback cycle and software development by users who hardly have inside knowledge. I've seen that in many places on this forum. It's like being lectured on how to boil an egg.

But enough about that, I've wasted enough time on this. Serif: presets are not styles. You have bypassed a golden feature and opportunity. That's a loss. You use the term "professional" a lot in your marketing. Set the bar accordingly, please.

That's the level at which we evaluated your products.

/Eddie

[Catshill]

15 hours ago, Customer Feedback said:

1)
Road maps. Interesting. May I ask what type of client you work for? Do you work alone or in collaboration with others? Do you rely on time as a factor and will inefficient software mean you spend longer completing your tasks, thus increasing the total cost of the task?

 

/Eddie

I could but in the context of the discussion about styles and their use in ADe you appear to making assumptions that are irrelevant. Unless I misunderstand your intentions?