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Opening one swatch at a time. A query.


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34 minutes ago, HagensWatch said:

I'm trying to understand the logic of using Affinity Designer with only one swatch at a time.

 

I'm trying to understand where you're seeing only one swatch at a time. Are you perhaps looking at the Colour panel instead of the Swatches panel? :/

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
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I can see the swatches panel but I can only choose one swatch to be open. That's the issue. For example, if I wanted to create a document palette I'm currently forced to remember opening up a color swatch and choose one color and then being immediately taken back to the document palette. Then I have to remember the color swatch I used to get that color and then once again switch to that color palette to select another color. This gets tedious and in my opinion tremendously clumsy and inefficient. Don't you think it'd be easier to simply open up a different palette and have it be open at all times to allow the user to select the different color shades to be used in the document palette than the current workflow?

I think it would be a lot simpler to allow the user to open a different color palette and then choose the colors all at one go rather than picking a color only to see the swatch disappear and being brought back to the document palette you're trying to create.

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22 hours ago, HagensWatch said:

I can see the swatches panel but I can only choose one swatch to be open. That's the issue. For example, if I wanted to create a document palette I'm currently forced to remember opening up a color swatch and choose one color and then being immediately taken back to the document palette. Then I have to remember the color swatch I used to get that color and then once again switch to that color palette to select another color.

 

Thanks for the clarification. I thought you were talking about being able to see only one swatch (i.e. colour square).

 

I agree that it would be useful to be able to open up more than one swatch category at the same time.

 

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
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21 hours ago, HagensWatch said:

For example, if I wanted to create a document palette I'm currently forced to remember opening up a color swatch and choose one color and then being immediately taken back to the document palette. Then I have to remember the color swatch I used to get that color and then once again switch to that color palette to select another color.

I am not sure I understand what you mean by this. Why do you have to switch to another palette to select another color? Are you trying to populate an initially empty or partially filled document palette with color swatches from one other specific existing palette? If so, why? If not, why do you have to remember which palette the last color swatch came from?

 

Can you explain a bit more about that?

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If I'm forced to constantly switch to the color swatch I'm trying to create in an empty document...it's tiring to constantly select the drop down dialog to get back to the color swatch I'm using to locate that color. Opening up a separate color swatch would eliminate this problem as I could position the swatch using the colors I want so I could easily click away at the colors I want to populate my empty document palette. I shouldn't be forced to create a document palette from an image to sample my colors not when I can simply open a separate color swatch to choose the colors I need. 

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2 hours ago, Alfred said:

I agree that it would be useful to be able to open up more than one swatch category at the same time

In this respect, I think it might be more useful to be able to open more than one instance of the Swatches panel instead of multiple palettes in just one instance of that panel. The reason is a palette can have dozens or hundreds of color swatches, so something like @rubs suggested could be hard to use because it could take a lot of scrolling to get to any particular section of it. It would be particularly bad if the Swatches panel is set to list view and/or to use large swatches.

 

Better still I think would be some kind of 'palettes manager' that allowed freely moving or copying swatches between palettes, ideally supporting multiple swatch selections & optionally retaining swatch names when moved or copied.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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This issue needs more attention. I definitely think the Affinity team needs to take a look at this and figure something out. just using one swatch to locate the colors isn't very efficient and it fact is somewhat awkward. Without question allowing multiple swatches open simultaneously (I don't care how they implement it...just so long they do it) would go a long way to making the workflow in Designer much easier.

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4 minutes ago, HagensWatch said:

If I'm forced to constantly switch to the color swatch I'm trying to create in an empty document...it's tiring to constantly select the drop down dialog to get back to the color swatch I'm using to locate that color. Opening up a separate color swatch would eliminate this problem as I could position the swatch using the colors I want so I could easily click away at the colors I want to populate my empty document palette. I shouldn't be forced to create a document palette from an image to sample my colors not when I can simply open a separate color swatch to choose the colors I need. 

First, may I suggest it would be easier to follow what you are saying if you did not sometimes refer to color palettes as color swatches. (A palette is a collection or set of swatches.)

 

Anyway, what I sometimes do to populate a palette for an empty document is to start by drawing a small, filled & stroke-less rectangle. I set that fill to one of the colors I want the document palette to have, using whatever color source is convenient (existing palette, color picker, RGB values, whatever) for that. I then duplicate that rectangle & repeat setting its fill to another desired color, & continue until all the colors I want are added. Then I just use one of the "Create palette from document" options in the Swatches panel (document, application, or system) to automatically populate the palette. Then I delete the rectangles & go from there.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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5 hours ago, R C-R said:

First, may I suggest it would be easier to follow what you are saying if you did not sometimes refer to color palettes as color swatches. (A palette is a collection or set of swatches.)

 

Anyway, what I sometimes do to populate a palette for an empty document is to start by drawing a small, filled & stroke-less rectangle. I set that fill to one of the colors I want the document palette to have, using whatever color source is convenient (existing palette, color picker, RGB values, whatever) for that. I then duplicate that rectangle & repeat setting its fill to another desired color, & continue until all the colors I want are added. Then I just use one of the "Create palette from document" options in the Swatches panel (document, application, or system) to automatically populate the palette. Then I delete the rectangles & go from there.

This is a good workaround for the time being but still...I think it can only be called that...a workaround. Not a permanent solution to the problem.

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1 hour ago, HagensWatch said:

This is a good workaround for the time being but still...I think it can only be called that...a workaround. Not a permanent solution to the problem.

To avoid the problem completely, for some the solution is to develop a set of application or system color palettes, or use ones others have developed & shared or sell. There are a few of these in the Resources forum. The Grade UI - Fills.afpalette & Grade UI - Gradients.afpalette are available through Affinity. At least on Macs, some are 'inherited' from other sources, like the Apple System or Crayon palettes or various 'web safe' ones that are mostly obsolete.

 

Developing one's own set of palettes can take some time on the back end but save a lot of time on the front end, particularly when consistency across different files is important. For example, for my own amusement I make vector drawings of Simpsons, Futurama, & South Park characters & settings, so I have created color palettes for each of them.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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