Merge / Flatten... Help Please!

[Poorukko]

Hi all,

First post here. I've been using Affinity as a total digital novice since 2020 and have only followed a small number of token tutorials. As such my knowledge is lacking.

I am working on a vector piece that I eventually want to recolour. There are many components and to save me having to painstakingly change the colour of every individual element, I am hoping to God there is an easier way. Is there any means of flattening the image, for example? I mean reducing the piece into the most basic resulting components, as vectors?

I ideally wouldn't want to export as a PNG for example and lose all the crisp edges I am working so hard to achieve. Any way of maintaining those vectors would be a great help.

Advice? Many thanks in advance! 

[GaryLearnTech]

Hi @Poorukko and welcome to the forums.

3 hours ago, Poorukko said:

There are many components and to save me having to painstakingly change the colour of every individual element, I am hoping to God there is an easier way.

Try this: 

• select one of the objects you want to recolour
• then choose the following menu command: Select > Select Same > Fill Colour

Many other criteria are also available apart from Fill Colour and may suit better, but have a play with that option to get the hang of it.

https://affinity.help/designer2/English.lproj/pages/ObjectControl/selectByAttribute.html

The related help page may be worth a review too: https://affinity.help/designer2/English.lproj/pages/ObjectControl/select.html

Hope this helps!

[debraspicher]

It's also possible to define "Global" swatches, that will allow you to change the color from the swatch panels instead of having to do it meticulously by piece (in the future). This also helps to keep palette cohesive. (You can do it after following @GaryLearnTech's suggestions and that will allow more play for experimentation.

Global Colors: https://affinity.help/designer2/en-US.lproj/index.html?page=pages/Clr/globalClr.html?title=Global colors

[Poorukko]

@GaryLearnTech, @debraspicher many thanks to you both for the useful pointers. I will be sure to let you know how I get on when the time comes!

In the meantime, I'm finding some frustrating artefacts left behind when masking. Well, the mask seems to leave a noticeably small gap behind. Does anybody have any tips on troubleshooting this?

 

[Edit] To clarify, the olive green section should appear as a solid block, only part of it has a slight emerald green edging to it, from the layer below. In principle, the gap should not exist.

Edited August 27, 2023 by Poorukko

[thomaso]

On 8/20/2023 at 8:19 PM, Poorukko said:

I am working on a vector piece that I eventually want to recolour. There are many components and to save me having to painstakingly change the colour of every individual element, I am hoping to God there is an easier way.

In addition to the already mentioned options colour swatches definitions you also can recolour via adjustments, e.g. HSL | Selective Colour | Colour Balance adjustments applied to the entire drawing but adjusting certain colour ranges only. Adjustments will maintain your vector elements without a need to rasterize within the Affinity document but will finally get rasterized on export.

5 hours ago, Poorukko said:

In the meantime, I'm finding some frustrating artefacts left behind when masking. Well, the mask seems to leave a noticeably small gap behind. Does anybody have any tips on troubleshooting this?

It's hard to tell from this screenshot whether these lines result from a kind of imprecision in shape or mask drawing and/or from antialiasing. I would try to resize the causing/affected layer slightly or try if deactivating antialiasing would help (Layers panel > Cog icon > blend range options). However, I wonder if it appears on output at all, it seems to be thinner than 1/4 pixel.