Color swatches do not link to objects?

[Thomahawk]

Can someone confirm if this behaviour also works wrong for others?

I set a CMYK color swatch (document palette) and apply it to text or form fillings. Then when I change the color in that swatch, oddly, that change does not get reflected to the objects it has been set with.

[walt.farrell]

Are you sure that you defined your swatch as a Global color?

[Thomahawk]

No of course I did make it a document color. Why would I define a global color if I only need it in that specific document? Anyway this must not make a difference. The very reason why there does exist a palette is to link a color to objects and have the objects change together with changes of that color.

[Thomahawk]

So again: Why do object fillings that were set from a palette color not change their color when the palette color is changed? This is a major flaw here.

[R C-R]

Global colors are only "global" to the document. The Swatches panel does not work like you think it does.

[Fixx]

Swatches is quite bad design at the moment. It should be much easier to drag colours to swatches and define them global.

Possibly all swatches should be global from the start, and if you need to keep some elements with original colour you just make a copy of a colour for editing.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Fixx said:

It should be much easier to drag colours to swatches and define them global.

How would you want that to work? Currently, I know of no tool that drags colors from the canvas into the Swatches panel, but if there was there would have to be some way to choose between global & ordinary types, & for shapes to choose between stroke & fill colors. Also, since you can only add global colors to a document palette, but not to application palettes (or on Macs to the system-wide palettes), you at least need to have created a document palette before this would work.

I'm not saying the panel does not need work because it certainly does, just that it could be tricky to implement an improvement that does not add complexity that ends up not making anything easier to do.

2 hours ago, Fixx said:

Possibly all swatches should be global from the start, and if you need to keep some elements with original colour you just make a copy of a colour for editing.

I am not sure that is such a good idea. There could be hundreds of different colors in a document (including in gradient color stops), so it could be tedious to make non-global copies of every color swatch to use with what could be any number of things whose color you would like to edit independently of the document's global colors.

[MikeW]

1 minute ago, R C-R said:

...

I am not sure that is such a good idea. There could be hundreds of different colors in a document (including in gradient color stops), so it could be tedious to make non-global copies of every color swatch to use with what could be any number of things whose color you would like to edit independently of the document's global colors.

There is a reason all other layout applications have what is called in Affinity applications "Global Swatches" as the default, or only, method for swatches. The current model in Affinity applications is cumbersome and counter-productive in a real-world working shop.

I think that "hundreds" is a straw-man argument. And it could be turned on its head: Who wants to create "hundreds" of global swatches if that is what is needed? It's a cumbersome process. As is, global swatches is not efficient.

You should try working as a layout person for a time. Heck, that applies to the decision makers at Serif as well. We likely wouldn't have had what the present beta is but a rather more efficient layout application.

[R C-R]

6 minutes ago, MikeW said:

I think that "hundreds" is a straw-man argument.

I am not sure I understand what you mean by that. I often encounter documents with hundreds of different colors, including files attached to posts in these forums, the workbook downloads, & so on. As I understood it, the suggestion was to make every color a global color in Affinity, which does not seem like a good idea because it indeed would be very cumbersome.

Also, don't forget that the Affinity apps are not just intended for print, so whatever method they adopt, it has to work for web output or anything else users might use the apps to create.

[MikeW]

8 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I am not sure I understand what you mean by that. I often encounter documents with hundreds of different colors, including files attached to posts in these forums, the workbook downloads, & so on. As I understood it, the suggestion was to make every color a global color in Affinity, which does not seem like a good idea because it indeed would be very cumbersome.

Also, don't forget that the Affinity apps are not just intended for print, so whatever method they adopt, it has to work for web output or anything else users might use the apps to create.

And how many APub documents have you seen using "hundreds" of swatches?

I have used QXP for HTML5 documents. Does that count as for web output? I have helped at least a dozen QXP users solve HTML5 document issues. I have yet to see "hundreds" of swatches in their documents.

So I think, at least in the purview of APub, my last paragraph from the post you quoted applies.

[R C-R]

34 minutes ago, MikeW said:

So I think, at least in the purview of APub, my last paragraph from the post you quoted applies.

But I don't think it makes a lot of sense to consider only the purview of the Affinity Publisher app, which after all isn't even out of beta or ready for production work.

However they end up doing it, they must somehow make this work across all three Affinity apps. Among other things, that means it has to be in some way compatible with photo retouching work done in Photo, or maybe with the Photo Persona in Affinity Publisher, whenever that makes it into the beta. They have to provide support for the 1.7 version of the 'universal' native Affinity file format & preserve compatibility with three OS's (Windows, MacOS, & iOS); support OS level features like the Mac system-wide color palettes; & probably some other stuff I haven't thought of or know much about.

As I said, I agree that the Swatches panel needs work; I just don't see any simple, straightforward way to improve it without wholesale revisions to the entire product range, which brings its own set of problems to the mix.

[MikeW]

1 minute ago, R C-R said:

But I don't think it makes a lot of sense to consider only the purview of the Affinity Publisher app...

Layout applications are unique in what they do and how they (ought) to do "it." I don't really care about the others having / not having the same swatch behavior—though how swatches work in AD was one of my first complaints I made in the forum. Even then I argued they should behave as other vector drawing applications I use (which is the same as I have argued here for APub). Heck, I've also argued about their one-size-fits-all approach to the color definitions of the default swatches (in particular the black swatches).

To me, having done this stuff commercially for a fair number of years, there is zero down-side to changing swatch behavior. I really meant that last paragraph. We are having decisions made by people at Serif who potentially have never done layout work in a slam, bam commercial environment. Now, before it is mentioned, I agree it is their application to do with as they want. And I'll add they don't seek or need my input to do that. But not doing X function in Y manner despite others whom have worked commercially criticizing these things is at odds with a goal of both calling these applications for professionals and professional adoption.

But again, they neither necessarily want nor seek my opinion about such matters. And I am OK with that.

[R C-R]

3 minutes ago, MikeW said:

Layout applications are unique in what they do and how they (ought) to do "it."

Doesn't that depend on what the "it" is?

While output to physical media is still very important, these days so is all-digital output, including to applications that did not exist in practical terms a few years ago, like augmented or virtual reality.

I do not know how many people at Serif have done the kind of commercial layout work you have done (although I would be surprised if none of them had). But I do not see why any of the Affinity products should be optimized for that. They have made it very clear they are not trying to compete head-to-head with Adobe, Corel, Quark, or anybody else. For all the reasons I am sure you already know about, that would be foolish from a business standpoint, & they do not strike me as foolish people.

Instead, I think they are focused on what for a better description I will call the "underserved market," which includes many but certainly not all professionals. I don't see anything wrong with that.

As always, YMMV.

[lepr]

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