Affinity Photo - Color Picker Changes The Image Color

[Mainecoon364]

Although when I click somewhere on the image with Color picker on Affinity Designer nothing happens

 

On Affinity Photo It changes the image color to the color of the place I clicked.

 

Why? How can I stop this?

[walt.farrell]

You are probably working on an Image layer in one case (when it changes), and a Pixel layer in the other (when it doesn't). 

If you're using the Color Picker Tool, there's an option in the Context Toolbar that controls whether you apply the Fill or not. 

A screenshot would help provide us with more info, and without it this is a bit of a guess.

[Mainecoon364]

If I select auto apply It does this.

 

If I do not select auto apply It does not pick a color at all.

 

???

[walt.farrell]

What kind of layer do you have (screenshot of Layers panel, please).

Probably Image, based on the .afphoto file you provided in your other topic. And that's why, with auto-apply on, the color changes (as I mentioned before).

The color picker does pick a color, whether you have auto-apply chosen or not. But the color is not set in the foreground/background color wells (in the Color panel). Rather, it goes into the color-sampler well, and if you want to apply that color to foreground/background (or stroke/fill) you need to tap on that well, as described in the Help.

Help: https://affinity.help/photo2ipad/en-US.lproj/pages/Tools/tools_clrpicker.html 

 

[Mainecoon364]

Here is the layer panel screenshot;

 

???

[walt.farrell]

Thanks. As I said, you have an Image layer, and therefore you must set Auto-apply off if you want to use the color picker. Or, you must Rasterize that layer, or you must make sure it is not Selected.

After you pick the color, you must click on the Color Picker well in the Color panel to set/apply the color (as documented in the Help).

[Mainecoon364]

It works. 

 

Thank you very much for the answer.

[walt.farrell]

You're welcome.

 

[Daniel E]

Can I just say, as someone who just bought Affinity Photo, can we change this so it's not as maximally unintuitive as possible?  In the last 30 years I've never seen a color picker that didn't just pick the color when you left click and make it the foreground color.  Why go out of the way to make it this difficult?

[walt.farrell]

12 hours ago, Daniel E said:

Can I just say, as someone who just bought Affinity Photo, can we change this so it's not as maximally unintuitive as possible?  In the last 30 years I've never seen a color picker that didn't just pick the color when you left click and make it the foreground color.  Why go out of the way to make it this difficult?

Welcome to the Affinity forums, Daniel.

If you have just purchased Photo, then I would expect you are using version 2.6 or higher (2.6.2 is current) where the behavior discussed in this thread was modified (and some would say improved).

First, please note that this topic is about usage on the iPad, and at the time of posting the user was using V1 of Affinity Photo. The user interface is significantly different between the iPad and Desktop applications, so it would help us to know for sure whether you're using the desktop or iPad version, but in any case you've come into a discussion where things work quite differently from the way they work today in V2.

Next, there are two forms of color picker, and it can be difficult to be sure which one a user is talking about:

1. The Color Picker Tool, from the Tools panel. This Tool looks like an eye dropper. Using the Color Picker Tool, and the Desktop applications, you have an Auto-Apply check-box in the Context Toolbar (Desktop) or an Auto-Apply control (iPad) that controls whether the color is applied automatically to a selected object or not. If you don't want it applied, you can make sure there is no active layer/object selected (Layers panel) or simply make sure that Auto-Apply option is turned off before picking the color.
    
2. A Color Sampler from, e.g., the Color panel or the Swatches panel or some other panels. The icon for this sampler also looks like a small eye dropper with a small color well next to it. The behavior of that kind of sampler was modified in 2.6 to make it work more like the Color Picker Tool. Previously, it only assigned the picked color to the small color well, and to apply it to an object you then needed to click on the well. Over the years many users complained about this behavior, and wanted the color to auto-apply, rather than it being a 2-stage operation.
   
   Now, if you use one of those samplers, it will auto-apply the color to an object. If you would prefer not to apply the selected color (i.e. the previous behavior), simply hold down Alt or ⌥ whilst picking the color on Windows or Mac, or by using the command controller on iPad.

I suspect with your reference to left-clicking that you may be a desktop user, and you're probably referring to the Color Picker Tool (1 above).

Finally, this topic was also about a difference in behavior between Pixel layers and other kinds of layers when performing color picking/sampling and how Fill colors are assigned.

I agree that this tool works differently from its function in other applications. If you want to see it changed that would be an appropriate topic to post in the Feedback & Suggestions forum. I suspect there are other discussions there, perhaps about whether Auto-Apply defaults to On or Off, and whether the setting is remembered between uses of the tool.