Fill Layer

[kjs]

How do I make a Fill Layer in Affinity Designer?

[toltec]

There are no "Fill" layers in Designer.

 

The best solution is to create a Rectangle shape the size of the page and fill that. That is almost exactly the same thing. If you need bleed, remember to make the rectangle a bit bigger than the page all round.

[v_kyr]

There are several ways to do this, either use a rectangle which covers the document area, fill it with a color or gradient and adjust it's opacity to your needs, or use/add an adjustment gradient layer.

[kjs]

Ok thanks. Why aren't there fill layers in Designer? 

[v_kyr]

Since with vectors you can size and fill any object accordingly, aka make a big covering rect and fill. Also there are gradient fills and adjustment gradients, which can be customized and pretty much offer the same then in a more flexible manner from simple to complex.

• Complex Gradients

[toltec]

3 hours ago, oceanpearls said:

Ok thanks. Why aren't there fill layers in Designer? 

 

As I see it, Designer is really a page layout program. You don't colour whole pages, normally.

 

Photo is an image program, It is common to colour the background of an image.

 

But I don't really know 

[Cristian Dragos]

The funny thing is that when you import a PSD file with a fill layer it will get imported as a fill layer in Affinity Designer as well which is a borderless layer just like in Photoshop.

So something's fishy around here! Any explanations for this weird phenomenon?

[walt.farrell]

9 minutes ago, Cristian Dragos said:

The funny thing is that when you import a PSD file with a fill layer it will get imported as a fill layer in Affinity Designer as well which is a borderless layer just like in Photoshop.

So something's fishy around here! Any explanations for this weird phenomenon?

You can also creat a document in Affinity Photo, add a Fill Layer, and open that document in Designer. It will have the Fill Layer.

Fill Layers are not a foreign concept to the Affinity suite, or to Designer specifically. It's just that you can't create one from scratch in a document in Designer because the different Affinity applications have different sets of tools available. But the file formats are compatible, and if you have something created in one of the applications, you can use it in the other Affinity applications even if you couldn't create it there.

The functions are partitioned to try to provide a manageable set of functions, and a managable UI for the users, without causing problems by including functions that are never or seldom needed in a particular application. (That's my understanding, anyway. Some users would probably suggest that there's also an aspect of revenue flow, given the low price of each application individually and the Affinity "buy once" model vs some other vendors' subscription models. Only Serif staff would know how much that plays into their decisions about which applications get which functions.)

[Cristian Dragos]

On 11/6/2019 at 1:32 AM, walt.farrell said:

You can also creat a document in Affinity Photo, add a Fill Layer, and open that document in Designer. It will have the Fill Layer.

Fill Layers are not a foreign concept to the Affinity suite, or to Designer specifically. It's just that you can't create one from scratch in a document in Designer because the different Affinity applications have different sets of tools available. But the file formats are compatible, and if you have something created in one of the applications, you can use it in the other Affinity applications even if you couldn't create it there.

The functions are partitioned to try to provide a manageable set of functions, and a managable UI for the users, without causing problems by including functions that are never or seldom needed in a particular application. (That's my understanding, anyway. Some users would probably suggest that there's also an aspect of revenue flow, given the low price of each application individually and the Affinity "buy once" model vs some other vendors' subscription models. Only Serif staff would know how much that plays into their decisions about which applications get which functions.)

Thank you for the explanation, Walt! But it's still weird to have a type of layer like Fill imported from Photoshop but at the same time without the possibility to create one yourself in Affinity Designer. Since Designer is mainly a vector creation tool, my suggestion would be to convert the Photoshop Fill layer to a vector rectangle the size of the canvas/artboard because it would make the most sense in my view.

[v_kyr]

On 11/6/2019 at 12:17 AM, Cristian Dragos said:

...a fill layer it will get imported as a fill layer in Affinity Designer as well which is a borderless layer just like in Photoshop

New Pixellayer or Shift-Cmd-N then fill with a color or gradient, it's a borderless layer.

[Cristian Dragos]

38 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

New Pixellayer or Shift-Cmd-N then fill with a color or gradient, it's a borderless layer.

I've already tried that with either the Bucket Tool in the Pixel Persona or the Fill Tool in the Designer persona and yes, it fills the pixel layer but it's not borderless like the Fill Layer. It's a layer the size of all the further away artboards, technically the size of the canvas, which is pretty weird now that I mentioned it. It should be the size of the artboard where the pixel layer exists.

[Old Bruce]

1 hour ago, Cristian Dragos said:

It should be the size of the artboard where the pixel layer exists.

But we can drag pixel layers onto other Artboards so I think it is good that they are the size of the whole area.