Adjust color of multiple objects at once

[MikeO]

I'm working on a portrait in Designer 2.0.3. The portrait is made up of several dozen objects, all of which have a unique fill color. I grouped everything and then decided that the whole portrait looked too dark since it would be printed so I used an adjustment layer to lighten it. I exported the file as an EPS since that's what the print vendor requires. The problem is that the adjustment layer is merged with the objects its affecting by rasterizing the whole thing. I need it to remain as vector art since it's going to be printed as a large mural.

Is there a way to adjust a grouped object of different colors in one go, as opposed to adjusting each object in the group individually which would be tedious and very difficult to retain the same contrast between objects? Thanks.

[NotMyFault]

Select same color might help.

Ideally, replace them by global colors so you can adjust the colors any time later in swatch panel.

If you have the group layer active, you can choose a new fill or stroke color in color panel, it will get assigned to all grouped objects.

[MikeO]

Here's most of what I'm working with. Changing all of these objects to global colors would take hours and still wouldn't accomplish what I'd want since I have to select each color individually to change them, when all I want to do is select the group and lighten or darken all of it. An Adjustment layer gets the  look I want but exporting the file with active adjustment layers will rasterize any objects associated with the adjustment. This is a 3m high mural so rasterizing it at 300dpi would lead to an immense file.

[NotMyFault]

• Maybe export to svg.
• then search for all colors (grep / find), 
• import to excel
• calculate lighter colors
• search and replace in svg (text editor, e.g. notepad++)
• import into new designer file
• export 

[NotMyFault]

If you export to PNG: files with large areas of solid colours will compress extremely well, try it out.

Did you you recognise the option to use "select same colour"? You can select all objects of same colour, and assign a new (global) colour to all in one click.

SO it depends only on the number of individual colours, not on the number of layers / objects.

[NotMyFault]

Is your question still relevant?

Im sure someone like @v_kyr can write a script based on https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60123309/sed-command-to-batch-change-fill-and-stroke-of-an-svg

to replace all colours in a SVG file by those who are x% brighter

SVG files are plain text and contain commands like 

<path d="M-0.305667,490C113.016,490 226.813,490.274 340.135, 339.714,489.891Z" fill="#3A0A46"/>

and the hex number behind fill is just the hex value for RGB colors.

Do you work on Mac (where sed is available) or on Windows?

 

[v_kyr]

Should be possible with a bunch of equally powerful tools (... like the above mentioned sed, or awk, perl, ruby, python ... and so on) which are all also available for Win platforms if needed. On Win even the Powershell can do mighty things via scripting. - One (as always) just has to know what exactly to do & perform and then to try that out with some of the before mentioned scripting tools, or something the like.

[Old Bruce]

On 1/31/2023 at 11:29 AM, MikeO said:

the whole portrait looked too dark since it would be printed so I used an adjustment layer to lighten it.

You could try adjusting the opacity of everything to, oh say 90 - 95%. That would mean less ink per colour and more white paper per colour meaning it would be lighter in tone.

[MikeO]

I'm using a Mac, and yeah I used the "Select by fill color" but there are very few objects that are the same color. 

Thanks for the suggestions though the idea of scripting makes my brain hurt.  I think what I'm going to do is wait till the vendor outputs a test piece and we see what it looks like under the lighting conditions in the space. At that point I can let the vendor deal with their converted version of the file. Which may be a PNG. 

[v_kyr]

21 minutes ago, MikeO said:

yeah I used the "Select by fill color" but there are very few objects that are the same color. 

What you would need in ADe is this overall missing functionality from Ai here ...

• How To Brighten Colors In Illustrator Globally (Youtube video)
• How To Brighten Colors In Illustrator Globally (Website tutorial)

[MikeO]

23 hours ago, v_kyr said:

What you would need in ADe is this overall missing functionality from Ai here ...

• How To Brighten Colors In Illustrator Globally (Youtube video)
• How To Brighten Colors In Illustrator Globally (Website tutorial)

Yep. I was hoping not to have to go back and forth. BUT, it's an option since I have both apps.

[Anyone2]

Um,  I may not understand, but if you group them then layer -> new adjustment whatever.  It changes all the layers in the group.

[MikeO]

16 hours ago, Anyone2 said:

Um,  I may not understand, but if you group them then layer -> new adjustment whatever.  It changes all the layers in the group.

That works of course, but I can't send the native file to our print vendor so I need to export it as vector art. Designer rasterizes it during the export when an adjustment layer is present. I need them to remain vector objects, both for file size and also if I need to make any object adjustments later to accommodate any wall and fixture irregularities. In any event the proof came out well, so I didn't need to do this. I'll try some of these scripting ideas now that I'm not under deadline. Thanks everyone!

[Godlessape]

Im having the same issue. Im uploading many files (over 800 currently) to Figma and now need to adjust the colours of every file. Doing it on Figma (or even in Rive) is easy cos when I select the file it gives me an overview of all the strokes and fills and their transparencies (per the document or per layer depending on what I select) So if I want to edit/change all of the same yellows its a simple two click process as they are grouped. But to edit the source files in Affinity is a laborious, manual process. Is there a colour overview feature like this in Affinity that I just don't know how to access? - If not, it would be a very handy feature to add. ?

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Godlessape said:

Is there a colour overview feature like this in Affinity that I just don't know how to access? - If not, it would be a very handy feature to add. ?

No, there isn't.

Feel free to make a Feature Request in the Feedback section of the forums.

[Dazmondo77]

I always start every job with a set of globals which are set as a default palette for all CMYK jobs, which is a good starting point for starting a piece of artwork similar to above (very nice MikeO). A workaround for not starting with a global palette, would be to copy paste into Vectorstyler and use maybe a channel mixer filter, which actually changes vector colours, then copy paste back into Affinity which will remain vector - quite handy for quickly doing muti-page/artboard colour variation mock ups - hopefully get something in Affinity in the future?

[mpstaton]

On 2/3/2023 at 1:54 PM, MikeO said:

Yep. I was hoping not to have to go back and forth. BUT, it's an option since I have both apps.

And now I'm installing illustrator.  

[NotMyFault]

On 6/24/2023 at 11:23 AM, Godlessape said:

But to edit the source files in Affinity is a laborious, manual process. Is there a colour overview feature like this in Affinity that I just don't know how to access?

If your source file uses solid colors (no gradients), this method might help to speed up the process, especially it creates global color to allow further changes with far less effort:

1. create a document palette from existing document
2. change all colors in that palette to global (one step per color)
3. create one helper object (rectangle)

Repeat for every color in color palette:

1. assign color of document palette to helper object fill
2. use select same fill color 
3. assign global color again as fill color
4. assign color of document palette to helper object stroke
5. use select same stroke color 
6. assign global color again as stroke color

repeat for every color you want to change:

1. edit the global color in swatches and assign the new color value.

[thomaso]

Alternatively to @NotMyFaults recipe:

1. Assign the wanted global fill + stroke to one of the objects.
2. Choose menu "Edit" > "Copy".
3. Select one of the objects you want to change.
4. Choose "Select Same Fill Colour" to select all those objects.
5. Apply fill + stroke as wanted via menu "Edit" > "Paste Style".