Is it possible to Load the Style Picker from a layer which has no Stroke and no Fill?

[GarryP]

I don’t seem to be able to Load the Style Picker from a layer with no Stroke and no Fill, but I might be using it incorrectly.

After Unloading, I’ve tried:

• clicking within the boundary of the no-stroke-and-no-fill layer;
• clicking on the bounding box (if I can see it) of the no-stroke-and-no-fill layer;
• marquee-dragging the picker around the no-stroke-and-no-fill layer;
• clicking on either the name or thumbnail of the no-stroke-and-no-fill layer in the Layers Panel;

...but nothing seems to work, nothing seems to be ‘picked’ and the mouse pointer doesn’t change.

(All of the above was done with all of the settings in the Context Toolbar set to ON.)

Is there a ‘trick’ that I’m missing, or does it just not work?

Note: I don’t actually want to do this, I only got into this situation when trying something as a possible answer to another user’s issue.

(I did a quick search of the forums for style picker but didn’t find anything relevant in the first five pages of results.)

[Return]

I think it needs to have a color set but you could use 1% opacity to workaround it.

[thomaso]

22 minutes ago, GarryP said:

Is there a ‘trick’ that I’m missing, or does it just not work?

I don't know about the Style Picker's "design" but an alternative / workaround would be using Copy -> Paste Style. Also saving this 'invisible' Style in the Styles Panel does work. Both ways maintain layer effects which become effective/visible if you colour the object after style assignment.

[GarryP]

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

Also saving this 'invisible' Style in the Styles Panel does work.

I think that sounds like the better way to get the job done but I’m still curious as to whether the Style Picker should work in the above scenario or not. Maybe someone out there has the answer.

[thomaso]

15 minutes ago, GarryP said:

I’m still curious as to whether the Style Picker should work in the above scenario or not.

To me it feels like a bug, regardless of where "by design" or not: If the app can "copy" this attributes and/or "save" them in the Styles Panel it should accordingly be able to "pick" these attributes, assuming the app itself picks the attributes for copying and saving.

[GarryP]

I don’t know if I would go so far as to say it was a bug, ‘minor edge-case short-coming’ sounds better to me.

Maybe this is related to the situation where the user cannot select such a layer from the canvas without marquee dragging.

[thomaso]

40 minutes ago, GarryP said:

‘minor edge-case short-coming’ sounds better to me.

How does the Style Picker work for text that has no fill + no stroke assigned (but e.g. paragraph decoration / character background colour)?
Via Copy/Paste Style + as Style Panel style it transfers the attribute of the first character: no fill/stroke but both background colours (+ other font settings).

[GarryP]

I’ve never used the Style Picker with text layers – I’ve only really used it today, for this one thing, and might hardly ever use it again – so I don’t know how it’s supposed to work.

[R C-R]

8 hours ago, GarryP said:

I don’t seem to be able to Load the Style Picker from a layer with no Stroke and no Fill...

I only tried loading it from an ellipse 'quick shape' or a simple closed shape made with the Pen Tool, both with no stroke or fill. With either object selected in the Layers panel so I could see the bounding box & path, I could click on the path to load the picker. I could not click anywhere else to get it to load.

Attached is my Style Picker test.afphoto I used.

[GarryP]

Interesting.

On Windows I cannot get the Style Picker to Load from any type of layer* that has no Fill and no Stroke, even when the layer is already selected.

Sometimes I can click on where the Stroke should be and the mouse pointer changes to ‘loaded’ but when I click on another layer that clicked-on layer flashes but nothing else seems to happen.

* I’ve only tried Rectangle Quick Shapes, Rectangle Quick Shapes converted to Curves, and Curves drawn with the Pen Tool so far.

[R C-R]

6 hours ago, GarryP said:

Sometimes I can click on where the Stroke should be and the mouse pointer changes to ‘loaded’ but when I click on another layer that clicked-on layer flashes but nothing else seems to happen.

"Where the stroke should be" is what I was calling the path of a vector object, so you sometimes get the same thing I am getting consistently.

To apply the picked style to another vector object, I can either drag around it with the tool or click on its path, but if I click inside that object I get the same flash you do, so it seems buggy to me.

[GarryP]

I’m not entirely convinced that this functionality is working exactly as it should – the mouse pointer sometimes seems to change when I wouldn’t expect it to – but I don’t use it enough for me to have any strong opinions about it either way.

Like I said above, I hardly ever use this Tool, so I’m happy to leave this thread as not comprehensively answered but answered enough for me to get on with other things. (If other people want to continue with it, to ‘get to the bottom of the problem’, then I have no problem with that.)

[R C-R]

15 minutes ago, GarryP said:

I’m not entirely convinced that this functionality is working exactly as it should

Nor am I, which is why I said it seems buggy.

[DWright]

In the context tool bar for the Style Picker if you deselect the Stroke and Fill options are you able to select the layer.

[R C-R]

7 minutes ago, DWright said:

In the context tool bar for the Style Picker if you deselect the Stroke and Fill options are you able to select the layer.

Do you mean select it to pick up its stroke and/or fill or something else? The problem, as I understand it, is the picker will not load either "no fill" or "no stroke" so that style can't be applied to any other object with the tool.