Rectangle fill colour 'noise'

[NielsRey]

Hi,

 

Affinity Designer newbie here, using desktop version on an iMac.

 

I've opened a couple of the sample Designer files to see how they work and everything looks fairly familiar, or at least intuitive.

 

One thing that's puzzled me is the fill colour in the background blue in the sample file 'Prison of Arts'. It's a dark blue colour, but has a slight graininess to it, rather like adding noise in Photoshop. A new rectangle, filled with a colour also takes on this graininess.

 

I quite like the effect, but can't replicate it in a new file - nor can I turn it off in the sample file 'Prison of Arts'. I've explored settings, effects and all sorts, but can't find how to add or turn off the effect - any help gratefully received.

 

Screenshot at 200% scale attached.

 

 

 

 

 

[Alfred]

The Opacity well at the bottom left of the Colour panel does double duty as a switch for toggling between opacity and noise. In the Windows version of the app, hovering over the Opacity well reveals a tooltip which says 'Switch to noise', but I understand from Mac users here that the Mac version rather less helpfully just says 'Switch' without telling you what it will switch to when you click on it.

 

[NielsRey]

Great - spot on Alfred, many thanks!

 

Nice tool/effect.

 

 

[KathleenM]

I am having this issue too -- I must've accidentally turned something on that adds noise, and now I cannot turn it off. AlRed's explanation is awesome, but I don't see anything about switch the Opacity slider to a Noise slider. Help Please?  :-/

[Guest]

Hi KathleenM,

Simply click on the "Opacity" button to switch to "Noise" (and vice versa).

[Pšenda]

https://affinity.help/designer/English.lproj/pages/Panels/clrPanel.html

[deeds]

In an era in which words are buttons, it is absolutely insane that the words "Noise" and "Opacity", when clicked on, are not buttons, but the little circle of colour that looks like a part of the slider is a button for the state of the slider, not a value of the slider... surely someone is having a lark.

[Fixx]

Yes, this is too hidden.

[Gear maker]

FYI I have had pretty good luck changing the looks of the noise by using blend modes.

[R C-R]

5 hours ago, Fixx said:

Yes, this is too hidden.

What do you think about not hiding it at all, at least in the Color Studio panel, maybe something like this?

Also, in the large Color Chooser window (the one that appears when you double-click on a color well), there is a lot of unused space on the right, above the Close button. That could be used for a pair of Opacity & Noise sliders, with the % field next to the names above the sliders so it all fits in the width of that space nicely.

[Aammppaa]

Why have a tab for Noise that takes up as much space as the noise slider itself?

Just show both!

The only benefit of tabs would be if Noise had other options such as grain size, uniformity, monochrome etc.

Which hopefully one day it will have!

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, Aammppaa said:

Why have a tab for Noise that takes up as much space as the noise slider itself?

Because there has to be a name label for each slider somewhere. In the Color Studio panel, part of that space already is used for that, so why not use more of it for the tabs?

[firstdefence]

Just have 2 sliders one above the other, you get instant visuals and you don't have to keep on clicking to see what the other is set to.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, firstdefence said:

Just have 2 sliders one above the other, you get instant visuals and you don't have to keep on clicking to see what the other is set to.

There has to be space for the localized name labels too -- otherwise, how would users know which slider was for which function? There also has to be space for the numeric entry field. So if all three items were on one line, either the sliders would be very short, making them hard to use, or the minimum width of the Studio panel would have to be increased, leaving less room for the document workspace.

If instead the names were above the sliders, the minimum height of the panel would have to be increased, leaving less room for other Studio panels when docked. I suspect that is why they went with the current layout.

[firstdefence]

This is what I meant, pretty simple and neat. the space overhead far outweighs the reduction of space for other panels and gives usability and informational feedback and I'd rather have this than tabs or the obscure "you'd never guess unless you actually clicked on it by accident" button. 

[R C-R]

4 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

This is what I meant ...

Well, if you are going to do it that way, you don't need the color dots on the left, so by eliminating them the sliders can be wider & thus easier to use. If you don't mind adding a little more extra height to the panel, you could move the numeric entry fields up into the empty space next to the name labels & make the sliders even wider.

[Alfred]

53 minutes ago, R C-R said:

make the sliders even wider

A wider slider, huh? That reminds me of a word game I learned at my mother’s knee, with clues leading to rhyming answers (e.g. an “odoriferous digit” is a “stinky pinky”). 

[Pšenda]

3 hours ago, firstdefence said:

 



As with the color designation (R, G, B, or H, S, L,.... ), the label could be only one letter - N, O. If someone did not understand it, and did not recognize the slider, the tooltip would tell him.

[firstdefence]

I'll leave the refinements up to the dev's 

[Fixx]

14 hours ago, Pšenda said:

the label could be only one letter - N, O

O, N would be more positive :-)

Besides, Opacity is more important and should be first. Noise could have optional Options section below (grain size, monochromality, lumpiness...) 

[firstdefence]

33 minutes ago, Fixx said:

lumpiness...

That should definitely be a feature title 

[R C-R]

On 6/2/2019 at 7:35 AM, Alfred said:

A wider slider, huh? That reminds me of a word game I learned at my mother’s knee, with clues leading to rhyming answers (e.g. an “odoriferous digit” is a “stinky pinky”). 

So might the clue for a "wider slider" be "broader pitch" or "fatter sandwich" or some such?

[Fixx]

9 hours ago, firstdefence said:

That should definitely be a feature title 

I still miss the old Photoshop plugin Lumpy noise. It created beautiful texture.

[Friksel]

After working with Designer on a daily basis for over a year now, I Just heard about a noice-feature (which is nice to have btw), but never would have found it in the interface until now I found this thread. So thanks for this! I agree this feature is way too hidden and I would never expect clicking that little colorcircle would change the whole slider into something completely different.

Great UI work in this thread here to change the UI layout to show both sliders instead! That would definitely help others to find the noice sooner than I / others did!