Affinity Photo 2 | Eye Dropper for Bucket Fill

[Ruslan TV]

Another important thing for me. If you are using a brush, you have a hotkey "Alt + click" for Eye Dropper. But if you are using a Bucket Fill it isn't work. In many cases, when you are making flat coloring of line art, you are working with Bucket Fill, you need to quickly copy the color from a reference or another part of the image and fill in that shape. But hotkey doesn't work. It's annoying for ex-photoshop users. 

[M-Tee]

Am also coloring flat comic art.

Yes, I would very much like the alt+click of the brush tool/pixel brush tool to function when using the paint bucket/flood fill bucket tool.

[carl123]

The "I" key (shortcut for the Colour Picker Tool) works with the " paint bucket/flood fill bucket tool" for me (Windows)

With the Flood Fill Tool selected
Press and hold the "I" key
Pick a colour from the document
Release the "I" key to return to the Flood Fill Tool

[walt.farrell]

5 hours ago, carl123 said:

Press and hold the "I" key

That long-press support became possible in 2.2, released in Sept. 2023.

https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/whats-new/version-2-2/

[M-Tee]

Thank y'all so much!
That's great. It's actually much better than the alt key because a mis-press won't result in me accessing the menu bar. ^^

[FrankenGraphics]

The "hold I" solution aside, i still think it'd be best if alt for eyedropper would be consistent across brush and bucket. They're commonly used together.

[M-Tee]

On 7/2/2024 at 11:19 PM, FrankenGraphics said:

The "hold I" solution aside, i still think it'd be best if alt for eyedropper would be consistent across brush and bucket. They're commonly used together.

I've had more time to get adjusted, and I couldn't agree with you more, because I've since realized that it's currently impossible to use the same method for sampling colors for the brush and the paintbucket tool regardless of which method (hold I or hold alt) is used because (only?) the brush tool arbitrarily retains a separate memory of active/inactive color from the other tools (which I brought up here: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/224593-force-active-foregroundbackground-color-to-be-universal-instead-of-tool-based/)


To recap:

So, if I'm using the brush tool, I can hold alt to temporarily sample the active color.
But, if I'm using the paintbucket tool, I can't (because it's just not supported.)

Suggested solution from above: hold I while using the paintbucket tool. This is great, and it always works because if I swap active color with either the bucket or eyedropper tool.

Great!

So, I'll retrain muscle memory to long-press I instead of alt to sample colors.

Not a big deal, except...

If I hold I to sample while using the brush tool, it samples the eyedropper's active color, which (by design, apparently) is not always going to be the brush tool's active color. So, I'm using the brush tool; hold I, sample a color, and voila! Now there's a 50% chance of whether that color has replaced my active or inactive color. 
 

[fde101]

6 hours ago, M-Tee said:

If I hold I to sample while using the brush tool, it samples the eyedropper's active color, which (by design, apparently) is not always going to be the brush tool's active color

The brush tool defaults to the stroke color, while the fill and eyedropper tools default to the fill color - all of which makes sense logically and for most common usage.

One way around this is to switch the brush tool to use the fill color, to get it to match the other two - you can do this by clicking on the fill color (where the two circles are) in the Color panel.  Once it is switched it will then be using the same color as the eyedropper and the flood fill tool and you can use "I" to cover both.

[M-Tee]

Thanks, @fde101. The issue is that I toggle between the two colors frequently. The default upon which they start isn't an issue. The issue is that once you start toggling, the brush has a separate memory of active color. So, as it stands, your suggestion to toggle once so that they coincide with each other, and then forever forfeit the convenience of quick-toggle to prevent them from becoming misaligned is still an undesirable solution.
 

On 11/21/2024 at 5:20 AM, M-Tee said:

My workflow has me quickly alternating between the paintbucket and pixel brush tools. I frequently press X to toggle between foreground and background color, but find it annoying to toggle from one tool to another and suddenly my active color has changed as well (as active color seems to be connected to tool). Is there an option where I can disable this?

(Currently in Affinity Photo, btw)

[fde101]

4 hours ago, M-Tee said:

the brush has a separate memory of active color

Some tools use both colors and wouldn't share the concept of an "active" one (other than the one that is being modified in the color panel itself), such as the vector shape tools (pen as well)...  there are probably always going to be differences amongst the tools in how the colors are handled.  Still, an option to sync the "active" color amongst those tools which do have that concept (and a bit more consistency in how the others are handled) is probably a reasonable ask.