Layer Colors Aren't Applied to Objects on Layers

[Barry Southwood]

Specific colors were assigned to layers in the Publisher document, yet objects selected in the layers only highlight in the default blue. Tried doing it on a master page, and on a regular document page. No luck. 

Publisher v 2.3.1 on a 2021 MacBook Pro, Sonoma 14.3.1

Screenshot 2024-02-19 at 11.28.24 PM.pdf Screenshot 2024-02-19 at 11.27.08 PM.pdf Screenshot 2024-02-19 at 11.27.41 PM.pdf

[NotMyFault]

You cannot change the blue bounding box / curve color on that way. Assigning colors to layers is only marking them in the layer panel.

There are at least 3 levels where you can assign colors:

• stroke and fill by color panel (or swatch or style) - to change visible colors in document
• Layer panel - for organizing layers, not to change color visible in document
• Layer FX - add or override fill / stroke
• the colors of wireframe / outlines / selected layers or snapping candidates are fixed mostly and cannot be changed.

[Barry Southwood]

Here's a screenshot from Affinity Help showing what I'm trying to achieve. It helps keep track of what layers items are on. (https://affinity.help/publisher2/en-US.lproj/index.html?page=pages/Layers/layerColours.html&title=Layer colors) My Layers panel doesn't look like this, and I can't get items to stay on my preset layers now either.

[Alfred]

3 hours ago, Barry Southwood said:

Specific colors were assigned to layers in the Publisher document, yet objects selected in the layers only highlight in the default blue.

Confirmed in APub version 2 on iPad. The tag colour shows up in the Layers Studio, but not on the selected objects in the workspace.

 

2 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

You cannot change the blue bounding box / curve color on that way.

The Help suggests otherwise, but (as you can see from the above screenshot) it’s broken in version 2. I thought I’d seen it working in the version 1 apps, but I’ve just tried it in Designer on my iPad and it’s broken there, too.

Edit: Please ignore! See following post from @Hangman.

Edited February 20, 2024 by Alfred
Incorrect info

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, Barry Southwood said:

Here's a screenshot from Affinity Help

There are a couple of typos evident there (“all object’s path” instead of “an object’s path”, and “bounding boxes od [sic] objects” in the caption) but that probably merits a separate thread.

[Hangman]

Hi @Barry Southwood,

You achieve that by changing the Layer (Capital L) Colour, not the Tag Colour...

[Alfred]

24 minutes ago, Alfred said:

I thought I’d seen it working in the version 1 apps

I must have seen it in the desktop/laptop versions. In the iPad apps, I can’t find any Layer colour settings other than the tag colours.

[Hangman]

55 minutes ago, Alfred said:

I must have seen it in the desktop/laptop versions. In the iPad apps, I can’t find any Layer colour settings other than the tag colours.

Layer Colours don't appear to be an option on the iPad version, I'm unsure why as it would be a nice feature to have on iPad as well...

[Barry Southwood]

I think I've found some of what's been confounding me. I used a Master page to set up the layers with their colors that I wanted in my document, which is what I used to do in InDesign, and thought I did in earlier Publisher versions. I thought I'd be able to assign elements to those respective layers on pages created from that Master page, and they'd be highlighted in the layer's color, as Hangman showed how to accomplish. THANK YOU! (Sometimes Properties wasn't at the bottom of the Layers panel, just the color tags, which caused further frustration. Haven't figured that one out yet!) Not so fast grasshopper! Reading the Layers Help again, it does say, "Layers belong to the publication page and are not global."

On a regular page, highlighting the layer you want to use from the Master page doesn't work, the object goes to its own separate layer. Seems you have to create the layers on each page, again do the Properties color selection, then you can assign objects to those layers, and they're highlighted with the correct colors.

So I think the work-around is to create a pseudo-Master page using a regular page, then dupe that to create subsequent pages. Doing that, I was able to get the results I was looking for, with layers that I can add to, and have elements highlighted in the correct layer colors.

Page 1 is now the pseudo-Master Page.

 

 

 

That works but negates the efficiency of the Master page, and duping it for more pages. Only some elements will be on every page, and they'd go on the Master page, but I don't want to create multiple copy, image, or other layers, when I want to add unique elements to a page. All copy should go on the Copy layer from the Master page, all images should go on the Images layer from the Master page, etc. The work-around might create problems for multi-page documents with page numbers and sections.

Thanks for all the help!

[Hangman]

5 hours ago, Barry Southwood said:

On a regular page, highlighting the layer you want to use from the Master page doesn't work, the object goes to its own separate layer. Seems you have to create the layers on each page, again do the Properties color selection, then you can assign objects to those layers, and they're highlighted with the correct colors.

You can assign colours to Layers on a Master Page so you could assign a colour to Logos & Symbols, Images, Copy etc., but interestingly the assigned colour on the Master Page isn't inherited on the publication page which I think may be a bug so I'll raise that in a separate thread...

Bear in mind that a Master is designed for 'common' elements, i.e., elements that will appear on every page that the Master is assigned to so it may be a logo that appears on every page, a page number a text frame but any 'unique' items that only appear on one particular page would be added above the Master page elements and then you would have to assign Layer colours again on individual pages...

I think this could be improved but Master Page Layer colour inheritance would be a good first step...

[walt.farrell]

9 hours ago, Barry Southwood said:

Sometimes Properties wasn't at the bottom of the Layers panel, just the color tags, which caused further frustration. Haven't figured that one out yet!

It's only available for Layer layers (e.g., those created by Layer > New Layer).

9 hours ago, Barry Southwood said:

On a regular page, highlighting the layer you want to use from the Master page doesn't work, the object goes to its own separate layer. Seems you have to create the layers on each page, again do the Properties color selection, then you can assign objects to those layers, and they're highlighted with the correct colors.

You can create items inside a Layer inherited from a Master Page, but you must use Edit Detached to do so. And then, as the objects are part of the Master Page layer, you will need to use Edit Detached again if you want to make changes to them later.