[V2 Affinity Suite] Request: New Dynamic Color Palette Generation Feature

[Mark Oehlschlager]

I would like to suggest new dynamic color palette generation features for the Affinity Suite. An improved means by which designers can quickly explore and generate color palette options. Something in addition to the current "Add Chord to Swatch" command that is currently available via the Color Panel.

The inspiration comes from the color blending figures found in Johannes Itten's "The Elements of Color", wherein Itten creates stepped color blends between any 2, 3, or 4 "anchor" colors from a 3-D color space.

Consider this 7-step blend between two endpoint "anchor" colors:

Presently, there is no direct way to generate this palette within the Affinity apps. One work around is to fill a long rectangle with a linear gradient (where the two end stops are your anchor colors), then fill seven smaller neighboring rects using the Eyedropper tool to sample from the large gradient rect.

It's also possible to make use of the Voronoi filter in Affinity Photo to "posterize" the linear gradient into intermediate colors, like this middle image, but the result is irregular:

The built-in Gradient tool makes it easy to draw out a linear gradient between two stops. But three- and four-color gradient blends, conceived of as a plane between color points within a 3-D color space, have to be built by stacking gradient filled shapes set to the Linear Burn blend mode. For example:

 

Again, one could then make use of the Voronoi filter from Affinity Photo to posterize three-color blends, and four-color blends like this:

But the effect of the Voronoi filter produces an irregular pattern, and it's laborious then to sample the results by hand to fill in regular shapes.

 Is it possible for there to be a newly developed variation of the Voronoi filter that would produce perfect subdivisions of rectangles, triangles and squares for the purpose of generating 2-, 3-, and 4-color palette blends? Something like this:

Maybe the posterizing effect of the Voronoi filter gets built into a new color palette generating tool that allows designers to dynamically build 2-, 3-, or 4-color palette blends.

Maybe the new color palette generating feature gets its own panel. Maybe it presents as a modal dialogue box editing window.

The new feature should allow the designer to first indicate a 2-, 3- or 4-color blend, then to indicate the number of subdivisions in the blend (3 or more), and finally to specify the "anchor" colors at the extreme ends (or corners) of the blend shape. The new feature would present an image of the configured blend. At any time, the designer could change any of the "anchor" colors, and the color palette blend would dynamically update.

Once satisfied with the generated color palette blend, the designer could save the result as a document palette, or export it as a vector or raster image.

 

[ronnyb]

I believe under the Palette studio’s hamburger menu there is an option to generate a palette from the current image… that might speed up the process of sampling the doors generated by the voronoi filter, until/if Affinity adds this feature.

i asked for something similar back in v1.x, similar to what Deluxe Paint 2 and Dazzle Draw offered on Apple //GS’s 16 color palette —out of 4096 max colors 😂

Imagine we are almost in 2025 and still some basic color mixing told are not available…. Oh well….. 🤷‍♂️ 

[ronnyb]

48 minutes ago, Mark Oehlschlager said:

Once satisfied with the generated color palette blend, the designer could save the result as a document palette, or export it as a vector or raster image

It would be cool if this generated global AND live colors, ie, if you changed the anchor colors, it would automatically update the respective swatches in the Color Studio’s palette, as well as being able to link the generated color swatches to Global document colors, allowing for a very quick way to try out and change an entire document’s color scheme in a non destructive, global way. Of course you can do something like that with Adjustment layers, but that ends up being rasterized upon output, negating the advantages of vectors…

[R.I.P. Affinity 26.03.2024]

All you mean is the blend tool. It's been asked for 10+ years on this very forum. They know about this and even teased it before 2.4 and Canva incident. However, we got nothing so far. Mb, they wait for 3.0.

[ronnyb]

4 hours ago, R.I.P. Affinity 26.03.2024 said:

All you mean is the blend tool. It's been asked for 10+ years on this very forum. They know about this and even teased it before 2.4 and Canva incident. However, we got nothing so far. Mb, they wait for 3.0.

Yes i know i asked for it! 🤣