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  • Staff

Hi Susan,

Welcome to Affinity Forums,

There's no way to change the document background colour. Just do as FLOKK suggested. If you are referring to the pasteboard (the area around the canvas) go to Affinity Designer -> Preferences, User Interface tab and change the Backgroud Gray Level slider.

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  • 3 years later...
  • Staff

Hi VincentLakes,
Welcome to Affinity Forums :)
There's no way to define a background colour for the canvas in Affinity apps. You have to create a shape (rectangle) with the same dimensions as the canvas or a Fill Layer (affinity Photo only going to menu Layer ▸ New Fill Layer) and then selecting the colour you want from the Swatches panel. Not sure if I've addressed your question properly... Let me know if not.

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  • 4 weeks later...

The original OP didn't state Affinity Photo or Designer, Mac or PC so the answer was a bit more complicated

 

Likewise, are you talking about the user interface background colour, or the document background colour ? If you are specific, then it is possible to give a specific (and simple) answer.

 

In Photo, if you want to set a document background colour, just go Layer > New Fill Layer and click on a colour. Dead simple !  If you use it that often, you can even set a keyboard shortcut.

 

You can change the colour at any time, apply a gradient etc etc.

 

 

Windows PCs. Photo and Designer, latest non-beta versions.

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  • 4 weeks later...
1 hour ago, Roku said:

And in Designer?

As was mentioned in several of the posts here, add a rectangle shape with the desired fill color the same size as the document & send it to the back.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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  • 2 months later...
3 hours ago, impossiblecolor said:

The feels like a pretty clumsy solution. I expected something more modern from affinity for something that is used so frequently

If you mean the lack of a fill layer in Affinity Designer, it is just a consequence of its focus on vector based, resolution independent graphics. It isn't something that is needed for vector graphics all that often to begin with, but with snapping enabled, it takes maybe two seconds to create a rectangle snapped to the margins or spread (effectively, the page size) & send it to the back or wherever else in the layer stack you want it to be.

 

If you are outputting to a raster format, you can set the matte color at export time to anything you want -- there is no need to create any other background.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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12 hours ago, R C-R said:

If you mean the lack of a fill layer in Affinity Designer, it is just a consequence of its focus on vector based, resolution independent graphics. It isn't something that is needed for vector graphics all that often to begin with, but with snapping enabled, it takes maybe two seconds to create a rectangle snapped to the margins or spread (effectively, the page size) & send it to the back or wherever else in the layer stack you want it to be.

 

If you are outputting to a raster format, you can set the matte color at export time to anything you want -- there is no need to create any other background.

I can start a new file in Adobe Illustrator and have a white background from the start instead of a checkerboard without doing anything. Every second counts when you have a busy day

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1 hour ago, impossiblecolor said:

I can start a new file in Adobe Illustrator and have a white background from the start instead of a checkerboard without doing anything.

If you want a white background for new files, just make sure the Transparent background box is not checked:

5a90d7c92053a_NewDoc.png.1f9ffad7630cfea75d1573169ea249c3.png

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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  • 2 years later...
  • 5 months later...

I see that this is long dead, but there are reasons to want a real background color.  For example, if you are using a object as an "erase" mask and want the background color to show through, it's really the only way.  Otherwise, it exports as transparent area in a file format that allows transparency or as grey in a raster image.  Or, if you deselect a transparent background, then you get white.

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  • 1 year later...

This is a must have for the artboard. It's really difficult without this.

I'm on a project where I have 61 artboards, that all need to be resized a bit different to vertically fit the content, while the horizontal has to stay the same.

I have to adjust 61 rectangles up and down a bunch of times, if I accidentally make them too small.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 months later...
58 minutes ago, Dread Maps said:

In publisher how do I make a heading that has a background color which stretches across the length of the Text Frame

Use the Text Frame panel, View > Studio > Text Frame. The factory default is clear.

1274069275_ScreenShot2022-08-15at8_03_46AM.png.4353473d4964592c4077e318d6b83e4b.png

Note that there is an offset we can set for the Frame Text text frame but not for the Art Text text frame. Top is Art Text bottom is Frame Text;

735147404_ScreenShot2022-08-15at8_04_48AM.png.4a58e61141415f604875d7816df268b7.png

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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