Ability to change Asset Panel background colour

[Ash]

Apps: All
Platforms: macOS, Windows and iPad

You can now choose whether you want the background of the Asset Panel to be light, dark, checkerboard or automatic based on your current Light/Dark UI setting. This behaves in the same way as changing the background colour used for layer thumbnails.

This is primarily to be able to switch the background to achieve greater contrast for the particular assets you are looking at.

You can change the background colour from the burger menu at the top of the assets panel.

          

 

 

 

[iuli]

This is something iPad users have asked for years, because they don’t have a light interface to change to. It has been reported numerous times already that the assets panel cannot be seen in strong daylight outside for dark resources. Is there any chance to see it on the iPad too, sometimes in the future maybe?

[Chris B]

This is on iPad.

Go to Assets > tap the Preferences icon (3 lines) > Background > you can then choose from Dark, Light or Checkerboard.

Note that currently on macOS and iPadOS we have to choose either of those 3 options. However, on Windows, we can enable Checkerboard for either Light or Dark UI so we've logged this for the developers to discuss.

[Mithferion]

23 hours ago, Ash said:

This is primarily to be able to switch the background to achieve greater contrast for the particular assets you are looking at.

Hi!

I haven't installed the Beta but I'll ask blindly: is there an option to fix the background visualization for each Category? That way you'd have to adjust once for each Category.

If that's not the case, I think remembering that setting would be appreciated.

Best regards!

[iuli]

Indeed! Thank you so much for your reply. Only macOS and Windows are listed as platforms above so I thought it’s not on the iPad.

This is an amazing change. Thank you for this!

[iuli]

The background colour is being changed for all categories, but it is remembering the settings.

[Chris B]

15 minutes ago, Mithferion said:

is there an option to fix the background visualization for each Category?

No, but I think there should be an option to do this. I'll feed it back.

[MikeTO]

It would be nice to add this to the Styles panel, too. Most of my styles are white and with the light UI they're just invisible.

[lgoodwin]

Great improvement. Thank you!

[Chris B]

10 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

It would be nice to add this to the Styles panel, too. Most of my styles are white and with the light UI they're just invisible.

I will look into this. I'm currently seeing a crash when I try to Add a Style from Selection so could you attach one for me, please?

[MikeTO]

43 minutes ago, Chris B said:

I will look into this. I'm currently seeing a crash when I try to Add a Style from Selection so could you attach one for me, please?

What did you want me to attach, a style file? Here's a file for the styles I showed in that screenshot.

styles.afstyles

I'm seeing the same crash when creating a style from selection.

Thanks,

Mike

[Chris B]

This looks to be MacOS-specific. I'll get this logged with development - cheers MikeTo

[md_germany]

18 hours ago, Chris B said:

I will look into this. I'm currently seeing a crash when I try to Add a Style from Selection so could you attach one for me, please?

In my opinion, the Styles palette in Affinity is one of the few not-so-well-done features. I can't edit, search and replace styles and I can't sort the styles in the palette. The whole thing makes a somewhat unfinished impression.

[Return]

Can we have an inverted background option here as well?
Say I have an asset with transparent bg with white contents>it would show a dark thumb bg.
In the same category I have an asset with transparent bg and black contents this would show a white bg.
Now one has to sort it per color and switch thumb bg to match the contents.

Another point is the label color when using listview and light thumb bg, this will show a to faint textlabel.
 

[Chris B]

@Return we are hoping to make the subcategories changeable which should address your issue.

I think it would be almost impossible to make every asset in every category visible at all times but we will try our best!

[jmwellborn]

What is the difference between Auto and Light?  I use the Light UI.  When I switch the background for an Asset category to Dark and then back to either Light or Auto they have the same results.  
Also, is there any possibility that we could have a slider, giving us the ability to choose our own level of dark or light? 

[Ash]

30 minutes ago, jmwellborn said:

What is the difference between Auto and Light?  

Auto changes with your light / dark UI preference. So yes if you are on light UI then Auto and Light will look the same. However, if you set to light background then when you switch to Dark UI your asset panel background will remain light.

[Frozen Death Knight]

Speaking of visibility, any chance that mask only assets can be previewed in black and white instead of just being empty?

 

Might be a good idea as well to show a small icon of the object/layer type in one corner, which would help a lot with readability despite there being next to nothing in the thumbnails. If there are multiple layers in one asset I would simply use the top hierarchical layer that the other layers are nested inside, i.e. groups, symbols, clipping mask layers, etc.

[MoonaticDestiny]

Sigh. I can't believe this took 5 years to implement.