How to make a recolor adjustment layer resulting in only a single color?

[scott2023]

Hi! I'm new to Affinity Designer. I'm trying it out for some print design work, where the final artwork will be single-color printed.

Is there a way to create an adjustment layer that could "recolor" layers (grouped) beneath it into a single, specific color?

The "recolor adjustment" looks close to what I want: https://affinity.help/designer/en-US.lproj/index.html?page=pages/Adjustments/adjustment_reclr.html?title=Recolor adjustment

But rather than drag sliders, I'd need to specific a specific color (a PANTONE print color, in my case).  For example, say the artwork layers include a logo file, some text, and some line drawings. They might all be slightly different shades of gray, but I'd want the adjustment layer to make them all exactly the same (say #cccccc).  

Having that ability would spare me from adjusting strokes and fills on all the individual elements to be consistent (e.g., set them all to #cccccc).

Thanks!

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, scott2023 said:

I'd need to specific a specific color (a PANTONE print color, in my case).
(…)
(e.g., set them all to #cccccc).

Don't use an adjustment + Don't confuse PANTONE with Hex colour.

Try a Layer (Layer) > Layer Effect -> Colour Overlay -> Colour -> #cccccc

[scott2023]

Nice, thank you!! This is exactly it! Thank you for the response and the visual, too.

As a test, I made some squiggly lines with lots of different colors, then grouped them, then applied the Layer Effect / Color Overlay to the group.  Every color within any of those layers in the group go to a single color (50% gray in my example). Perfect!

Thanks again.

[lepr]

2 hours ago, scott2023 said:

This is exactly it!

Note that that solution will result in rasterisation in the export. Maybe that is unimportant for your use case, of course.

[scott2023]

@lepr thank you so much for pointing that out. My particular need is for print design projects (primarily), so resolution is important. Is there a vector (non-raster) solution to this problem?  (If not, I may try this approach, but just ensuring high enough export resolution for print.) Thanks!

[lepr]

7 minutes ago, scott2023 said:

My particular need is for print design projects (primarily), so resolution is important. Is there a vector (non-raster) solution to this problem? 

You could simply apply a spot colour to the fill and stroke of objects or Groups or Layers. The colour will be propagated to members of a selected Group or Layer. However, the colour will not be propagated to clip-nested children of objects to which the colour is applied.

 

[thomaso]

19 hours ago, scott2023 said:

the artwork layers include a logo file, some text, and some line drawings.

38 minutes ago, scott2023 said:

Is there a vector (non-raster) solution to this problem?

Provided that all layout items are vector only (incl. "a logo file") then you could just apply the wanted PANTONE colour as their fill and/or stroke colours – while, anyway, any effect method would not work for spot colour output.

(In short: in Affinity effects get rasterized <-> Pantone is a spot colour <-> Pixel layers need to be Grayscale or K-only to become coloured and exported as a spot colour).

[scott2023]

This is super helpful, thank you both. I will do some tests!