Changing the Color of Text in a Textbox in Affinity Publisher

[Gerard Designs]

Hello,  I came across this by accident and wanted to share this to see if this is a bug. Affinity Publisher 2.2 latest update.

I had a small text box on my page with a bold heading and some lines of copy under the heading. I wanted to just change the color of the heading so I highlighted just the heading text and used the Color Picker to sample another color that I wanted but it changed the color of the whole paragraph, not just the highlighted text?  But if you highlight just the heading in the paragraph and use Color/Swatches from the side panel on the right side, it just changes just the color of the highlighted text.

Thanks Gerard

[Old Bruce]

20 minutes ago, Gerard Designs said:

Hello,  I came across this by accident and wanted to share this to see if this is a bug. Affinity Publisher 2.2 latest update.

Not a bug. You'll need to use the Character Panel to change the colour of selected text. Click on the Fill Colour colour indicator and it will bring up a colour panel.

[Gerard Designs]

Old Bruce,    I noticed in your response that the b is highlighted and you changed it to green.  When I used the Color Picker I thought the same thing should happen, but it doesn't. I guess being highlighted does not work for the Color Picker tool but it does work for the Style Picker Tool.  The Style Picker tool changes what is highlighted. You can use the Color or Swatches, or Character on highlighted text to change colors.  My point was that the Color Picker tool was changing the whole paragraph even though the text was highlighted.  All the other ways don't.

[Old Bruce]

49 minutes ago, Gerard Designs said:

 I noticed in your response that the b is highlighted and you changed it to green.  When I used the Color Picker I thought the same thing should happen, ...

If I understand what you are doing then you are using the wrong tool. 

Use the Text tool to select the text in the text frame. Now, still with the text tool active, use the Colour Panel to change the colour of the highlighted text.

When you chose the Colour Picker the selected text (in the text frame) is no longer the selection, the entire text frame is the selection. Hence all the colour of all the text in the text frame is changed.

[Gerard Designs]

Old Bruce,  You are misunderstanding my point!  In Illustrator if you have text that is highlighted in a text box if you use the eyedropper to click on a color anywhere on your desktop or anything, it changes to that color you click on.  Because it was highlighted just like your b.  The color picker was changing the whole paragraph and not the highlighted text like it should.   I know how to color text with color, swatches, or character panel, that was not the point.

[Old Bruce]

2 minutes ago, Gerard Designs said:

... In Illustrator ...

A different application from a different company has different tools which will work differently.

I explained how Publisher works to change the colour of selected text.

[carl123]

11 hours ago, Gerard Designs said:

I wanted to just change the color of the heading so I highlighted just the heading text and used the Color Picker to sample another color that I wanted but it changed the color of the whole paragraph, not just the highlighted text? 

If you highlight your text and use the Colour Picker in the Colour Panel, the colour you pick will be added to the small colour well/swatch next to that picker.

Clicking that colour well/swatch will then apply that colour to your highlighted text

[Gerard Designs]

carl123, 

 Thank you for your response. They are always more than one way to do things in a program, some are faster and better than others. My concern was that highlighted text in the program makes it active and whatever you do to that text, it should only affect that text.  The Color Picker on the toolbar on the left side did not do that, it affected the whole paragraph. It should have only affected what was highlighted.  I know the Color Panel works on the right side.

Thanks Gerard

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, Gerard Designs said:

The Color Picker on the toolbar on the left side did not do that, it affected the whole paragraph.

As @Old Bruce mentioned, when you use the Color Picker Tool it deselects (removes the highlight from) whatever text you had selected so if you have Apply to Selection enabled it will apply the sampled color to the entire text block. Consequently, if that text block includes more than one paragraph, it will be applied to all of them.

This is why you have been advised not to use this tool for what you want to accomplish & instead to use the picker in the Color panel for that -- or in the Character panel using the Font color button, although that requires several more actions so the Color panel option is quicker & easier.