Global color preview darkens by transparency

[shushustorm]

Hey everyone!

Having a document palette and a shape that uses a color that's supposed to be transferred to a global color, the color's preview will be darker by the amount of 1.0-opacity.

I am using Designer 1.10.4, which may not be the most current version. I am rarely updating in order to keep workflow stability.
I searched for "global color preview" and didn't find this issue.
Best wishes,
Shu

[Lee_T]

Hi shushustorm, 

as per other posts, i can only really recommend you update, the update should not affect your workflow, retain your original install file just in case though.

Lee

[Old Bruce]

7 hours ago, shushustorm said:

I am rarely updating in order to keep workflow stability.

Based on the number of posts you have made perhaps you should consider to occasionally update in order to achieve workflow stability.

[shushustorm]

I wanted to make a short version of this my signature, but I haven't found a way to set one, so I'll just post here:

Since it's often topic of debate: I update rarely to ensure workflow stability. Even after point releases I am sometimes facing severe issues, which result in countless hours of additional work. When I'm in a place that only shows less severe issues (that I still consider worth reporting), I typically stay there for quite a while. Not to mention files sometimes not being backwards compatible after having worked on them for some hours or days in a new version, just to discover a severe issue, which may or may not be fixed in maybe a few months' time. So you're trapped with that version including the issues. If _potentually_ "outdated bugs" are not wanted here, a moderator or Serif employee shall message me and I will no further report any bugs. No hard feelings.

@Old Bruce

Touche! But really, I am just reporting some hiccups. Have faced much more troublesome issues. Quality issues. Data loss. File corruption. ....

[walt.farrell]

On 10/7/2022 at 6:33 AM, shushustorm said:

Having a document palette and a shape that uses a color that's supposed to be transferred to a global color, the color's preview will be darker by the amount of 1.0-opacity.

I am not sure if you still think this is a problem (given other topics you've created or participated in), but isn't this simply another aspect of Global Colors not supporting Opacity or Noise?

[shushustorm]

@walt.farrell

Thanks for the reply!
Well yes, if it's still an issue with the current version of Designer, it should be fixed. If not, that's great!
I'm not sure I'd say this is due to no transparency support for global colors. In fact, I'd say if transparency was ignored completely, this issue shouldn't show up at all. So in fact, I guess up to some point, they do work with RGBA rather than RGB and the preview gets issues, since there's no full support for it. Seems like the color is just added to an rgba(0,0,0,255), so, for example, for a 20% green, you have:
rgba(0,255,0,51), but that's not just solidified to
rgba(0,255,0,255). Instead, it seems those are blended:
rgba(0,255,0,51) and rgba(0,0,0,255).

Also, maybe I should have described the issue a little more precise.
1. I have a shape and its fill is set to any color, with the color's opacity set below 1, for example, 20%.
2. I add a document palette.
3. With the shape selected, from the Swatches menu, I select "Add current colour to palette as a global colour."
4. The global color appears in the Swatches menu listed as the document's global color, but its shade is darker than what it's supposed to be.

[Old Bruce]

14 hours ago, shushustorm said:

I wanted to make a short version of this my signature, but I haven't found a way to set one, so I'll just post here:

Here on Mac OS with Safari it is quite well hidden. Go to the Account Settings and then look to the Left side for the Signature.

[walt.farrell]

12 minutes ago, shushustorm said:

Well yes, if it's still an issue with the current version of Designer, it should be fixed.

 

13 minutes ago, shushustorm said:

4. The global color appears in the Swatches menu listed as the document's global color, but its shade is darker than what it's supposed to be.

That's because Global Colors do not have Opacity (nor Noise).

And as far as I know, that's not a bug, just something to file a Feature Request for to get an improvement.

[shushustorm]

@Old Bruce
That's not too bad! I was looking for it on iPhone, also within Account Settings (or similar) and I didn't find Signature anywhere. Being on macOS right now, I can see it! Thanks for pointing out!
@walt.farrell
Well, the way I see it: If there's no alpha, why take the color's alpha into account when calculating the color's preview? So the preview's color somehow takes alpha into account, but it's not saved within that color anyway. From my perspective, that doesn't make sense at all. So I think it either should
- support transparency or
- show a color that only takes the RGB channels into account.

[walt.farrell]

53 minutes ago, shushustorm said:

Well, the way I see it: If there's no alpha, why take the color's alpha into account when calculating the color's preview? So the preview's color somehow takes alpha into account, but it's not saved within that color anyway.

Thanks. I see what you mean now.

The Global Color actually does include the Opacity setting, but the preview of it in the Document Palette does not. Thus, there is a mismatch between what you see in the Palette and what the swatch will actually assign to an object.

And yes, that seems like a bug.

[Lee_T]

This is a previously reported issue and due for consideration. It should be noted that previously when discussed, some users preferred to see the colour without opacity changes, as if you were to reflect this it would assume the background is white, which may not be the case for the user.

Lee