Color wells don't work with drag and drop

[AdroitAndroid]

In Mac desktop apps, moving colors around is a simple matter of drag and drop. When I want to use a color in Publisher that I've defined in another application (for example in Color Slurp), I expect to be able to drag the color swatch (a macOS term) from Color Slurp into the Publisher Color palette and just drop it on the circle showing the foregound color of the selected object.

Unfortunately, this doesn't work. I also have not had success dragging into the Swatches palette, or into the "Fill" and "Stroke" color wells in the toolbar. None of the color picker options in the popup button of the Color tab of the popover which opens when you click these color wells accept drags either.

I would also expect dragging and dropping color swatches within Publisher to work, but it doesn't. Initiating a drag from the Swatches palette to a color well in the toolbar works, but the drop itself is rejected. Attempting to drag from a color well, which should produce a swatch which you can drop elsewhere, both in and outside of Publisher, seems to do nothing.

[AdroitAndroid]

A bit more data. The reason the drag from Affinity doesn't work is likely related to the fact that the Drag pasteboard isn't changed at all when the drag is initiated. So there's no way for other apps to access the color information.

[HCl]

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[walt.farrell]

36 minutes ago, Return said:

Use the picker from publisher to select a color from the other apps.

That's the right approach, but may not work for some users at the moment as there's some kind of unknown issue doing sampling outside the application for some, on Mac.

[HCl]

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[AdroitAndroid]

Thanks @Return. As Walt says, there's an issue with that right now. But I still think this bug is relevant, since this is how all other color wells behave on macOS. InDesign has drag and drop between elements within ID; I don't have a CS sub, so I can't test if it also uses the pasteboard to allow dragging to and from different apps. I would hope so, but it's Adobe, so… 🤷‍♂️

[HCl]

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[Dan C]

Hi @AdroitAndroid,

Welcome to the Affinity Forums

I can confirm this isn't a bug in the Affinity applications, simply this behaviour is not currently support - my apologies.

I'll move this thread to the Feedback section of our Forums, for our devs to see and consider adding support for this feature in a future update.

I hope this helps!

[AdroitAndroid]

Thanks for letting me know @DanC, I appreciate the reply. I'm sorry to hear that this is working as designed at present. One of the other pretty frustrating limitations of the existing implementation is that I can't find a way to easily share colors between Affinity documents in a tabbed interface. AFAIK, tabs are the default arrangement when creating new documents. But when you drag a swatch to the other document's tab, nothing happens. (The hovered tab should activate after a short delay and allow you to finish the drag in the second document.) And the eyedropper doesn't work either: the tool state seems to be isolated to the document, so as soon as you switch tabs, the context of the document you're trying to import the color into changes and the eyedropper is gone. Is a user really expected to:

1. Drag the tab out into a second window
2. Move the new window if needed so the relevant color isn't obscured
3. Use the eyedropper tool
4. Drag the tab back into place

If so, I hope you'd argee that this is quite painful and nonobvious UX! If I'm missing a trick, please do let me know.

I really feel like color sharing is not very well thought-out in the current interface, and I would encourage you to spend some time thinking about the most ergonomic way for a user to actually share colors (both in and out) between Affinity tools, documents and other apps. The eyedropper is great when it works, but sometimes it just isn't the right tool for the job.

[iconoclast]

Just to put my five cents to this topic: I like the way this is solved in GIMP. There is of course a color bucket too and also a pipette, but you can also easily pick colors with a brush if you hold the Ctrl-key (in GIMP it's the same key you are using for the clone tool), and you can drag colors directly from the color field of the color dialogue (panel) to fill. That's very easy and I don't understand why it should be more complicated.

[iconoclast]

One thing I'm actually thinking about: shouldn't color picking work by dragging the pipette from the color panel to the pixels you want to pick up? And after that you need to click on the field on the right side of the pipette to confirm the choice? And to chose a color from the swatches, simply click the swatch you want. That's not what I see on the screen recordings.

Possibly I interpret the problem wrong, but that's my last idea for this topic.

By the way, this is a thing that confused me too in the beginning. That was the reason for my post above.

[AdroitAndroid]

6 hours ago, iconoclast said:

One thing I'm actually thinking about: shouldn't color picking work by dragging the pipette from the color panel to the pixels you want to pick up? And after that you need to click on the field on the right side of the pipette to confirm the choice? And to chose a color from the swatches, simply click the swatch you want. That's not what I see on the screen recordings.

Yes, I am still new to Affinity and I attempt to drag a swatch to the eyedropper at one point. This isn't how it is meant to work, and doesn't acutally make much sense given how it's used; I didn't understand Affinity's ideosyncratic eyedropper mechanics at the point that I made the video. 🙂

Quote

And to chose a color from the swatches, simply click the swatch you want.

Yes, that works when the color is already in Publisher. But I was/am attempting to import a color from elsewhere, hence trying to drop onto the swatches area to then select it.

In playing around with this, I have discovered a possibility that no one has mentioned thus far: you can just drag and drop a color from another app directly onto an OBJECT in Affinity. Once the object has been given the color, it will show up in the Recent swatches list and you can use it like any other color. You can then add it to a palette if you want to keep it for later.

This is by far the easiest solution, especially because Affinity doesn't have to be frontmost when you start the drag.

I'm glad we got there in the end! I don't think this detracts from any of my suggested improvements above, but it does solve my problem in this case. Glad I could document this solution for anyone else trying to import colors in the future.

 

[iconoclast]

To drag the pipette to the point I want to catch a color, release the mouse button there and then click on the round field on the right of the pipette, works at least for me. In that case, the color is activated in the main color field and you should be able to add it to the swatches too. But not by simply dragging, but by simply clicking the icon on the left of the color history (on your screenshot, on the right side of the menu in the colour panel where "Colours" is activated - three squares and a plus sign).

If that doesn't work in your case, there must be something wrong. But I agree with you that Affinity's way to handle this is a little bit confusing.

Edit: By the way, in your screen recording, if you would click on the green sphere right of the pipette in the colour panel, the main colour field, the big sphere on the left, should turn to green.

An additional note for clarifycation: if I said "to drag the pipette..." I meant: Click on the pipette symbol and hold the left mouse key to drag it to the pixels. Then release the mouse button and click on the small sphere on the right of the pipette to activate the chosen colour that should now be visible there.

And a final annotation: I consequently ignored that you try to transfer a colour from another app. Sorry, I'm actually lying in bed with influenca. I don't remember if I have tried that in the past, and I can't try it at the moment, but in other apps (e.G. GIMP) I'm used to drag colours from outside the app with the pipette of the app I want to transfer the colour to. Can't remember any app that does it vice versa. Maybe this somehow helps.