Select Same fill and stroke color not working in Affinity Designer on iPad

[HesMari]

Hi, I am having trouble selecting objects using select same fill, same stoke color and select same fill and stroke color. With some objects in my design it is working and with others not. Is there a setting I should change?

[Paul Mudditt]

On 4/23/2025 at 12:38 PM, HesMari said:

Hi, I am having trouble selecting objects using select same fill, same stoke color and select same fill and stroke color. With some objects in my design it is working and with others not. Is there a setting I should change?

Welcome the forums !

I am not understanding your problem, and without seeing your layers structure I find it difficult to follow. Perhaps you can name and save an example .afdesign file then upload it here for others to test.

[HesMari]

Hi, thank you for your response. For that document in the video, i copied  the designs to a new document and then it worked, but I tried it in a different document (which I attached) and I have the same issue. My problem is when I select certain objects then Select Same fill and stroke color, it does not select the objects with the same fill and stroke color, it selects everything. In the document I have attached, if I select the dark blue flower, and say select same fill color or select same fill and stroke color it selects more than just all the blue flowers.

Master 2000 Copy.afdesign

[Paul Mudditt]

On 4/26/2025 at 1:44 PM, HesMari said:

Hi, thank you for your response. For that document in the video, i copied  the designs to a new document and then it worked, but I tried it in a different document (which I attached) and I have the same issue. My problem is when I select certain objects then Select Same fill and stroke color, it does not select the objects with the same fill and stroke color, it selects everything. In the document I have attached, if I select the dark blue flower, and say select same fill color or select same fill and stroke color it selects more than just all the blue flowers.

Master 2000 Copy.afdesign 2.06 MB · 0 downloads

Looks to be a bug to me, I see the same behaviour on the iPad and even on the desktop version as well when this flower is selected, yet works correctly when other flowers are selected. Hopefully Serif QA @stokergwill look at this tomorrow.

EDIT: Not a solution to the bug in select same fill but the workaround I would use would be to use extra symbols to be contained within the tile symbol so that all your turquoise flowers are one symbol so you never have to use the select same fill function. I attach my suggestion with 2 extra sub symbols contained within your tile symbol. 

 

 

Master 2000 Modified.afdesign

[GarryP]

20 hours ago, HesMari said:

if I select the dark blue flower, and say select same fill color or select same fill and stroke color it selects more than just all the blue flowers.

On Windows it looks to be, sort of, up-to-a-point, working as expected for me.

Selecting the “dark blue flower” is selecting a Group, and the Group doesn’t have a Fill (even though some of its child layers do), so selecting the ‘Same Fill’ as 'None' should select all layers that don’t have a Fill.

It doesn’t seem to working quite as I expect (some layers without a fill are not selected) but my expectations might be wrong as I don’t often use this functionality.

[walt.farrell]

22 hours ago, HesMari said:

In the document I have attached, if I select the dark blue flower,

There are multiple dark blue flowers. Which one are you selecting and how are you selecting it?

As Garry has mentioned, each of them seems to be a Group, so if you're selecting from the screen rather than from the Layers panel you may get unexpected results unless you've actually given the Group itself a stroke and/or fill. You might need to select some part of the flower using the Layers panel to get what you want.

[Paul Mudditt]

3 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

There are multiple dark blue flowers. Which one are you selecting and how are you selecting it?

As Garry has mentioned, each of them seems to be a Group, so if you're selecting from the screen rather than from the Layers panel you may get unexpected results unless you've actually given the Group itself a stroke and/or fill. You might need to select some part of the flower using the Layers panel to get what you want.

Hi Walt, selecting on screen or the  specific layer and then trying to use select same colour on the turquoise flower has unexpected results, others it’s fine. 

[walt.farrell]

1 minute ago, Paul Mudditt said:

 selecting on screen or the  specific layer and then trying to use select same colour on the turquoise flower has unexpected results, others it’s fine. 

Which of the many turquoise flowers demonstrates this problem?

[carl123]

17 minutes ago, Paul Mudditt said:

Hi Walt, selecting on screen or the  specific layer and then trying to use select same colour on the turquoise flower has unexpected results,

All Layer layers (container layers) have the same turquoise colour assign to their fill (and stroke). So, when you select that colour, either on the canvas or in the layers panel, and do a select same fill, you are selecting all the Layer layers in the document, which contain every other layer. 

So, changing the colour at that point changes every layer that is in a Fill layer which is effectively everything

[Paul Mudditt]

49 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Which of the many turquoise flowers demonstrates this problem?

Open the symbol layers panel, tap on any layer OTHER than the ones I tap above in my screen recording and select same fill correctly selects other layers of the same colour only. Only the 3 layers one of which I recorded tapping on shows this problem. 

[HesMari]

On 4/27/2025 at 10:57 AM, Paul Mudditt said:

Looks to be a bug to me, I see the same behaviour on the iPad and even on the desktop version as well when this flower is selected, yet works correctly when other flowers are selected. Hopefully Serif QA @stokergwill look at this tomorrow.

EDIT: Not a solution to the bug in select same fill but the workaround I would use would be to use extra symbols to be contained within the tile symbol so that all your turquoise flowers are one symbol so you never have to use the select same fill function. I attach my suggestion with 2 extra sub symbols contained within your tile symbol. 

 

 

 

Master 2000 Modified.afdesign 2.09 MB · 1 download

Thanks for helping, I am still very new to designing. Your layers in the file you attached are very organized. When I try to merge some layers that I have selected, it does not let me. How do I merge them?

[HesMari]

On 4/27/2025 at 1:21 PM, walt.farrell said:

There are multiple dark blue flowers. Which one are you selecting and how are you selecting it?

As Garry has mentioned, each of them seems to be a Group, so if you're selecting from the screen rather than from the Layers panel you may get unexpected results unless you've actually given the Group itself a stroke and/or fill. You might need to select some part of the flower using the Layers panel to get what you want.

Thanks. I selected parts of the flower from the layers panel and then select same fill and stroke color and that worked fine.

[Paul Mudditt]

2 hours ago, HesMari said:

Thanks for helping, I am still very new to designing. Your layers in the file you attached are very organized. When I try to merge some layers that I have selected, it does not let me. How do I merge them?

Best not to use Groups, instead select the curves or shapes you want to join and use Geometry->Merge Curves or if that doesn’t work correctly use Geometry -> Add. I also placed everything within your 2000x2000 rectangle so as to act as a clipping mask. Finally I created symbols out of flowers you were using more than once then duplicated and shifted in the transform studio by +/-2000 trick to ensure correct placement for the repeating pattern. Tip: Curves that only have a stroke and no fill will not join with geometry->add so use geometry->merge curves on those. The shapes with fill can be joined with geometry->add or geometry->merge curves.

[NathanC]

Apologies for the late reply, just catching up with this thread.

On 4/27/2025 at 12:26 PM, Paul Mudditt said:

Hi Walt, selecting on screen or the  specific layer and then trying to use select same colour on the turquoise flower has unexpected results, others it’s fine. 

This appears to be the result of the Vector Layer having the same fill and stroke RGB values assigned as the turquoise flowers nested within the Layer, so the result is the Select Same -> Fill command selects the entire Layer on each artboard, similar to the situation with the Dark Blue flower group, which is the expected behaviour.

It's a bit difficult since changing or removing the fill from the Vector Layer will cause the child layers to also inherit these attribute changes, but slightly deviating the RGB values of the turquoise flowers fill (even by 1) would stop this.