Color Variable

[DarkClown]

It would be great if it would be possible to assign a colour value to a custom variable and give objects this variable colour value. This way you could change the colour of all objects that have been assigned this variabel in one go.

Cheers, Timo

[Bryan Rieger]

Could you not use Global colours for this? When I know I may need to change the colour used by multiple objects I usually create a global colour and assign it to each object accordingly. Then when I need to update all elements that use that colour, I simply edit the global colour swatch.

[DarkClown]

Sounds good...  I'll check that out! Thx!

[fde101]

Yes, global colors are the solution for this, but note that they currently do not play nice with gradients.

[Deperditus Cliens]

2 hours ago, DarkClown said:

It would be great if it would be possible to assign a colour value to a custom variable and give objects this variable colour value. This way you could change the colour of all objects that have been assigned this variabel in one go.

Aren't you looking for real graphic styles? Not presets, as styles are now, but styles that can be modified just like text styles. I've seen them requested here, and it would be the best news in a decade for Designer.

[Return]

Select same and the stylepicker in combo with globalcolors may do the trick.

[DarkClown]

I wonder if there's a way to convert global document colours into global application colours?
(I just realised, that apparently global document colours don't work in assets 😞 ...)

[walt.farrell]

16 minutes ago, DarkClown said:

I wonder if there's a way to convert global document colours into global application colours?
(I just realised, that apparently global document colours don't work in assets 😞 ...)

No, because Global colors must be in Document palettes in the Affinity applications.

[Brian_J]

19 minutes ago, DarkClown said:

I wonder if there's a way to convert global document colours into global application colours?

Application pallets can’t contain global colors. If a document pallet is exported, then imported as an application pallet, the colors will be converted to standard, non-global colors.

Edit: you beat me to it, @walt.farrell  🙂

[DarkClown]

So global colours simply don't work in assets (since they are available application wide ....)
Bummer .... I'm screwed ....

[Frozen Death Knight]

1 hour ago, DarkClown said:

So global colours simply don't work in assets (since they are available application wide ....)
Bummer .... I'm screwed ....

Do you have any examples of software that does this? Anyway, it shouldn't be that hard to select all objects based on colour fills/outlines in any document and create a global colour swatch that replaces the non-global ones. You could also work in a single document and use multiple Pages/Artboards. Have had massive project files with multiple Artboards before, so depending on the size of your project Affinity should be able to handle the workload as long as you have solid specs for your work machine. 

Another alternative is using Symbols from Designer. They can be saved in the Assets panel, so you could take your objects and save them as assets, then make the colours sync by linking multiple objects together with the Links panel in Photo if they are separate Symbols.

[fde101]

There are too many ambiguities which can result from application-wide global colors.

Consider that you might have a global color defined as blue, and someone else might define the same global color as red.

If they are application-wide and you import a document that other person sent you, should the color be red or blue?  If it is red, then it is either inconsistent with everything else, or everything else you have gets updated to red for that color in spite of the fact that you wanted it blue; if it is blue, then it won't match what the other person was looking at when they sent you the document.

This could be resolved by prompting every time you open a document that you were not the last one to save and ask if the colors should be imported as-is and replace yours, if they should be imported with a different name, if they should be updated to match yours, etc...  but that doesn't address the other problem, and would probably get old rather fast if you do a lot of collaborative work.

If you save a document while a global color is set to blue, and later start changing it to green for your newer documents, when you re-open the old one, it will be green and may not match your intentions when the document was created.  Sometimes this may be what you want, other times... not so much.

There are of course ways to get around all of these things, but they all add complexity to the product, both technically and from a user perspective.

[DarkClown]

Thanks for your explanations!

Actually I already do work with plenty of artboards so I can export all of them easily in one go . Each of them holds an Icon. I do use these Icon in the asset panel as well to have them available in other documents. But changing a global colour in the document obviously only changes the colour on all icons as defined (but not in the asset panel since apparently all global colours get converted in normal colours when an object is added to the panel). I do see the problem from you explanations. It would need some global colour attached/assigned to the asset panel to get this working.

@Frozen Death Knight: I have not fully understood how working with Symbols can overcome this problem ("Another alternative is using Symbols from Designer. They can be saved in the Assets panel, so you could take your objects and save them as assets, then make the colours sync by linking multiple objects together with the Links panel in Photo if they are separate Symbols." )

[Deperditus Cliens]

On 5/7/2024 at 8:25 PM, Aldus said:

Aren't you looking for real graphic styles? Not presets, as styles are now, but styles that can be modified just like text styles. I've seen them requested here, and it would be the best news in a decade for Designer.

I agree with myself. There is a lack of dynamic genuine graphic styles for similar uses. That would be awesome!