Color picker: can I stop it from switching colors?

[Andhedrew]

Hello! I use the brush and the color picker tool to paint, but every time I start the program (or switch to another document) the color picker doesn't select the color for the brush. When I switch to the color picker tool, the colors switch too, unless I manually switch them back.

 

 

 

So I have to manually switch the color every time. Is there a way to prevent the color picker from switching the colors every time?

 

Thanks!

[toltec]

Not 100% sure this is what you mean but you can go Edit > Defaults > Save.

 

Affinity will remember what two colours you are currently using and start with those, or use them in a new document. Although the documents will start with the Primary colour (bottom right) selected.

[Andhedrew]

But is there a way to prevent the primary/secondary colors from switching when I change back and forth between the brush tool and the color picker tool? I want to be able to use the sampled color immediately with the brush tool. Here's what it does:

 

 

...as I switch between the two tools, the selected color changes. So if I want to sample a color and immediately paint with it, I have to manually switch the colors every time I start the program or open a new document. Is there a way to prevent it from doing this, so by default I can select a color from my canvas, and immediately paint with it?

[MEB]

Hi Andhedrew,

Welcome to Affinity Forums

While using the Paint Brush Tool press and hold ⌥ (option/alt) + ⌘ (cmd) and drag the mouse to bring up a loupe (colour picker) to select a colour and start using the picked colour immediately with the Paint Brush Tool.

[toltec]

2 hours ago, Andhedrew said:

But is there a way to prevent the primary/secondary colors from switching when I change back and forth between the brush tool and the color picker tool? I want to be able to use the sampled color immediately with the brush tool. Here's what it does:

 

 

Yes, it does seem some tools go to Primary, some to Secondary. MEB ?

 

You can always just press the x key to swap between the colours, but it won't solve the problem.

[R C-R]

5 hours ago, Andhedrew said:

But is there a way to prevent the primary/secondary colors from switching when I change back and forth between the brush tool and the color picker tool?

As I understand it, each tool retains the last primary/secondary color choice independently of the other. So for example, if both the Paint Brush & Color Picker tools are set to use the primary color & you switch from one to the other, if you change that tool to use the secondary color (like with the X key keyboard shortcut), when you switch back to it after using the other tool, it will still be set to use the secondary color.

 

However, since the Paint Brush tool paints but the Color Picker tool just (optionally but by default) applies the sampled color to the currently selected primary or secondary color (or Fill or Stroke color for shapes), there is no reason to use the Picker tool to switch between any primary or secondary color pairs once they have been selected & appear in the large circular color wells. Instead, just use the X key shortcut to switch between them when using the Paint Brush tool.

 

Alternately, & much more flexibly, use the Swatches Studio panel to choose colors. You can use the Color Picker tool to add a picked color to the document palette (or create one if none exists), or manually or automatically create document, application, or system color palettes to populate the Swatches panel. Like the other Studio panels, the Swatches panel can be undocked, moved to any convenient location in the workspace, resized to show more or fewer palette colors, & even assigned a keyboard shortcut to toggle it on & off quickly so you can hide it when undocked & it would otherwise obscure part of the work area.

[toltec]

26 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Like the other Studio panels, the Swatches panel can be undocked, moved to any convenient location in the workspace, resized to show more or fewer palette colors, & even assigned a keyboard shortcut to toggle it on & off quickly so you can hide it when undocked & it would otherwise obscure part of the work area.

 

How do you assign a keyboard shortcut to a studio panel ?

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, toltec said:

How do you assign a keyboard shortcut to a studio panel ?

In AP, Keyboard Shortcuts > Photo > Miscellaneous look for the section beginning with "Toggle." There is one for each panel. There are similar ones for most other Personas & for AD.

 

I may have read somewhere that this is currently implemented only in the Mac versions but I am not sure about that.

[toltec]

Yes. 

 

Very well done, it works, even for us poor Windows folk.

 

That will actually save me a load of time on a little project I am currently working on. Thanks very much.

 

Isn't this forum great ?

 

[Andhedrew]

23 hours ago, MEB said:

While using the Paint Brush Tool press and hold ⌥ (option/alt) + ⌘ (cmd) and drag the mouse to bring up a loupe (colour picker) to select a colour and start using the picked colour immediately with the Paint Brush Tool.

 

Unless I'm mistaken, this shortcut cannot be re-assigned, making it a hand-killer because I'm sampling colors from the canvas hundreds of times throughout the course of a project. 

 

17 hours ago, R C-R said:

Instead, just use the X key shortcut to switch between them when using the Paint Brush tool.

 

Alternately, & much more flexibly, use the Swatches Studio panel to choose colors. You can use the Color Picker tool to add a picked color to the document palette (or create one if none exists), or manually or automatically create document, application, or system color palettes to populate the Swatches panel. Like the other Studio panels, the Swatches panel can be undocked, moved to any convenient location in the workspace, resized to show more or fewer palette colors, & even assigned a keyboard shortcut to toggle it on & off quickly so you can hide it when undocked & it would otherwise obscure part of the work area.

 

I utilize the swatches panel, but it doesn't fit my needs to be able to sample quickly from the canvas over and over again.

 

 

[MEB]

Hi Andhedrew,

No, that shortcut can't be reassigned, but it's better than relying on the Colour Picker Tool. Feel free to request a customisable shortcut for this in the Feature Requests section (not sure if it's possible though).

[Andhedrew]

4 minutes ago, MEB said:

Hi Andhedrew,

No, currently that shortcut can't be reassigned, but it's better than relying on the Colour Picker Tool.

 

Yeah, it works really well – if I could re-assign the shortcut it would be a dream to paint with, but it doesn't work for me to use that shortcut over and over again - I have my other shortcuts set up so they're on the home row – adjusting my whole workflow is more of a hassle than working with the color picker tool. Hopefully it will be re-assignable at some point, until then I'll have to stick with the color picker.

 

Thanks so much!

[toltec]

I don't know if this will help.

 

If you select the brush tool and make sure the foreground colour is at the front (important) you can press "i" to select the eyedropper. Pick a colour and press "i" again to reselect the brush and paint immediately in the selected colour.

 

You can assign a different shortcut, rather than "i" in preferences if you want.

 

 

[Andhedrew]

2 hours ago, toltec said:

I don't know if this will help.

 

If you select the brush tool and make sure the foreground colour is at the front (important) you can press "i" to select the eyedropper. Pick a colour and press "i" again to reselect the brush and paint immediately in the selected colour.

 

You can assign a different shortcut, rather than "i" in preferences if you want.

 

 

 

Yeah, that is what I have been doing – but every time I open the program or switch to another document I have to re-select the foreground color, I was just looking for a way to make the foreground color stay put, always. It's a small annoyance, but I end up running into it a lot. I was just hoping that there was an quick fix so I wouldn't have to mess with the colors any more. Thanks everyone so much for trying to help me out, unfortunately it looks like it's not going to work the way I want it to. 

[toltec]

7 minutes ago, Andhedrew said:

 

Yeah, that is what I have been doing – but every time I open the program or switch to another document I have to re-select the foreground color, I was just looking for a way to make the foreground color stay put, always. It's a small annoyance, but I end up running into it a lot. I was just hoping that there was an quick fix so I wouldn't have to mess with the colors any more. Thanks everyone so much for trying to help me out, unfortunately it looks like it's not going to work the way I want it to. 

 

It will stay put if you select the foreground colour (bottom right) first, then the colour picker tool. If the background colour (top left) is selected when you select the eyedropper, then it will keep swapping around.

 

Ah, maybe not between documents. The foreground should be selected, but not the colour.

 

Yes, I just tried and the foreground stays selected, but defaults to white. Interestingly, the colour I picked was still in the small well in colours

[Andhedrew]

25 minutes ago, toltec said:

 

It will stay put if you select the foreground colour (bottom right) first, then the colour picker tool. If the background colour (top left) is selected when you select the eyedropper, then it will keep swapping around.

 

Ah, maybe not between documents. The foreground should be selected, but not the colour.

 

Yes, I just tried and the foreground stays selected, but defaults to white. Interestingly, the colour I picked was still in the small well in colours

 

Yeah, and if you move to another document, you have to select the foreground color again:

 

This makes working with a batch of files sort of a headache.

 

[Andhedrew]

I've figured out a partial solution for the problem, using Better Touch Tool, a program that lets you program shortcuts. I wanted "S" to be my loupe/color picker, so in Affinity Photo, I mapped "S" to "Option+Command+Mouse click".

 

 

This way I can instantly and consistently select the color under my cursor and have it set as the active/foreground color. This isn't a perfect solution because I can't take advantage of the magnification of the loupe, but speed is more important than precision in this instance.

[toltec]

15 minutes ago, Andhedrew said:

 

Yeah, and if you move to another document, you have to select the foreground color again:

 

 

This makes working with a batch of files sort of a headache.

 

 

It doesn't do it when I try. The foreground is always selected ? It must be in something you have set. Try resetting maybe? Hold down Ctrl when you launch Affinity and Clear Data. You will lose custom brushes etc, so be warned.

[toltec]

Yes. The foreground is always selected for a new document. But that would be normal behaviour, surely. Not everything has a foreground and background colour. 

 

If you are using the secondary colour as your main colour, and expecting Affinity to default to a secondary colour. Surely you would be better off painting only in the primary colour? Then it seems to keep selected, no matter what. So if you are painting in hundreds of colours, you would be fine in the main document and the normal Affinity defaults would suit you. At least I think so.

 

It is not very hard to just press X and swap colours for a new document if it does not default to primary for some reason.

 

Still, at least you found a solution