Adding Textures to the Swatch Pallette

[costacupcake]

Hi very new to Affinity recently upgraded from Serif Draw  - I have some glitter jpg files that I use as text fills these were easily imported into the swatch board as textures in the previous Serif version, but I cannot work out how to add them using Affinity?  Whenever I try it is only searching for Affinity files and not allowing me to add jpg files? 

 

Any ideas please? 

[toltec]

Affinity what ?

 

Designer and Photo are a bit different.

[R C-R]

As far as I know, you can only import .afpalette files into the Affinity Swatches panel. However, you can use the Gradient Tool (Affinity Photo) or Fill Tool (Affinity Designer) set to Type: Bitmap on the Context toolbar to fill text or other shapes with a jpg, png, or other raster image texture:

 

The attached Bitmap example.zip contains an Affinity Designer document & the small jpg file I used to fill a text sample with its bitmap texture:

(A larger, higher resolution raster image file would produce better results, but this should do for demo purposes.)

 

If you want, you could select the text or whatever object you have filled with your bitmap texture & add it to the Swatches panel (into an application, document, or system palette) but I prefer to just use the bitmap fill method on an ad hoc basis whenever I want a flexible way to map the raster image onto an object.

Edited December 3, 2017 by R C-R
fixed image formatting

[costacupcake]

On 03/12/2017 at 5:36 AM, toltec said:

Affinity what ?

 

Designer and Photo are a bit different.

Designer

[costacupcake]

On 03/12/2017 at 0:03 PM, R C-R said:

As far as I know, you can only import .afpalette files into the Affinity Swatches panel. However, you can use the Gradient Tool (Affinity Photo) or Fill Tool (Affinity Designer) set to Type: Bitmap on the Context toolbar to fill text or other shapes with a jpg, png, or other raster image texture:

 

The attached Bitmap example.zip contains an Affinity Designer document & the small jpg file I used to fill a text sample with its bitmap texture:

(A larger, higher resolution raster image file would produce better results, but this should do for demo purposes.)

 

If you want, you could select the text or whatever object you have filled with your bitmap texture & add it to the Swatches panel (into an application, document, or system palette) but I prefer to just use the bitmap fill method on an ad hoc basis whenever I want a flexible way to map the raster image onto an object.

 

This will work  thank you 

[toltec]

If you create a shape first (any shape will do), select the Fill tool

 

On the Context toolbar, (third menu bar from the top) under Type, choose Bitmap and load your texture from the filer.

 

Right click on the shape and choose, Add To Swatches > From Fill.  That will add your texture to the Swatches panel. Repeat this to add as many textures as you want.

 

 

It would be a good idea to make a new palette first. Make an Application Palette and your texture will appear in any document you open. To make an Application Palette, click on the hamburger icon to the right of the Swatches panel in the Studio and choose Add Application Palette. 
 

A Document Palette only creates a palette that will appear in the current document, an Application Palette creates a palette that will appear in all documents. (should you be wondering )

 

Your new palette will appear in the palettes dropdown menu. The swatch will show a mini thumbnail.

 

Go back to the menu and Rename Palette to give it a sensible name, like "Textures". You can Export the palette to save it so you only have to do this once, or want to use on a different PC etc.

 

To fill anything, text or shape, just select the appropriate palette and click on the swatch.