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[ADe] Select same color / fill / stroke / appearance


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43 minutes ago, Oval said:

No, because MattP wrote “'Select Same' is one of the next things I'm going to be implementing... ”.

In case someone wants to read the original post:

And there are some more informative posts on this topic below.

d.

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I think Oval was referring to this much more recent post which implies it will be appearing in the forthcoming Affinity Designer 1.9.0 beta

On 4/29/2020 at 9:39 PM, MattP said:

The first version will be very simple but functional - along the lines of Illustrator, as mentioned by MikeW. It will not be a Find + Replace, that will come later. It will be, as stated, a 'Select Same' with a number of variants and easily assignable to keyboard shortcuts for productivity's sake...

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  • 2 weeks later...

doing decals for airplane models this time I've done all my work in AD. Well almost....

... now comes the time to change the white forms/elements to a special color value the printshop asks for. The color "white" can not be printed by CMYK printers per se. Since this feature in AD is still missing I have to switch back to AI. But that's not my intention; working with another program to replace AI is key.

Strange to see that this thread is open now since 2014, mhh

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12 hours ago, DomD said:

You  must be kidding. how  many more  decades can  it take?

What is the problem? Nobody waited a decade and without an EToA Serif decides … They did not try to implement, but Amit1423 wrote “tried and tried”. So simply wait for the 1.9 beta or not.

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I love how I can appoint a tag to every object in XAra . They call it "names"     and then with special names pane   I can click a name  and have all objects sharing  same "name"  tag  selected.  You can appoint same tag to unrelated objects too , bitmaps  etc. 

It's a very flixible system allowing to recreate Layer compositions for Photoshop for example  and all the features this tread asking too.

And in fact Affinity is very close to that if  do just two things:   Make layer appointed color (in layers panel) be inherited by every new duplicate automatically and  making a checkbox  for selecting all layers sharing same color in layer panel or at least making those layers only showing  through color  filter  Photoshop style

 

 

 

 

 

 

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23 hours ago, kirk23 said:

I love how I can appoint a tag to every object in XAra . They call it "names"     and then with special names pane   I can click a name  and have all objects sharing  same "name"  tag  selected.  You can appoint same tag to unrelated objects too , bitmaps  etc. 

It's a very flixible system allowing to recreate Layer compositions for Photoshop for example  and all the features this tread asking too.

And in fact Affinity is very close to that if  do just two things:   Make layer appointed color (in layers panel) be inherited by every new duplicate automatically and  making a checkbox  for selecting all layers sharing same color in layer panel or at least making those layers only showing  through color  filter  Photoshop style

Sounds great... but completely irrelevant to this thread?

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2 hours ago, fde101 said:

.. but completely irrelevant to this thread?

Not neccessarily. If tags get added automatically according to an object's properties the tags could be used to select all elements with the same tag (a.k.a. 'select same'). I wrote about this idea a couple of pages ago in this thread. Tags also could be used to filter the layers panel. And of course one could 'group' elements with custom tags without changing their stacking order.

d.

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1 hour ago, dominik said:

Not neccessarily. If tags get added automatically according to an object's properties the tags could be used to select all elements with the same tag (a.k.a. 'select same'). I wrote about this idea a couple of pages ago in this thread. Tags also could be used to filter the layers panel. And of course one could 'group' elements with custom tags without changing their stacking order.

d.

Indeed it can be used that way. But selecting by the colour or attribute is way faster and doesn't clutter your workflow by organizing things. It should be a timesaver, an automated tool. Not even mentioning the User Interface clutter it would create; Serif would have to add an additional Tag Studio Panel, probably would have to add a tag selection to the context toolbar and also modify the whole Layers Studio Panel to note user of the tags the layer use - while the Select by attribute system is clutter free. A few menu items in currently existing Select menu or a simple dropdown like in Inkscape, Vector Styler or Illustrator does the whole trick without organizing anything. Fluently.
I still do believe that designers should design stuff without being forced to spend half of their worktime by organizing, tagging and clicking around the UI.

Tag system might be useful when you're creating a new design or illustration from scratch, but definitelly not for the very usecase this thread is all about (either working on an imported design, older design or something somebody else designed or paid for and gave you to work on).

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9 hours ago, CLC said:

But selecting by the colour or attribute is way faster and doesn't clutter your workflow by organizing things

Organization as clutter...  hmm...

 

9 hours ago, CLC said:

It should be a timesaver, an automated tool. 

Both of these suggestions are arguably "automated"... yet neither of them is.  Both require user action for anything to happen.  The suggestion @dominik is making to include "smart tags" of a sort would result in layers automatically being tagged based on their properties (but what good would this be unless you actually do something with those tags), and the typical "select same color/fill/whatever" function is "automated" in that it automatically finds matches when it is asked to.  I think there is room for both, as they serve different purposes.

The tags would be useful if you could perform "bulk actions" on them such as making all of the layers with that tag hidden, etc., in a like manner to hiding a layer they are on.

The direct "select same..." behavior is useful for a more limited, but still quite useful, task of merely selecting the matching layers in one step.

 

9 hours ago, CLC said:

Serif would have to add an additional Tag Studio Panel

Yes, which could be hidden if you don't use them.

 

9 hours ago, CLC said:

probably would have to add a tag selection to the context toolbar

No, I don't think it should go there.  More likely added to the context menu of the layers panel and/or tags panel for "manually assigned" tags; if "smart tags" are provided the criteria would be edited from some window opened from within the Tag panel and as these would adjust their content automatically they would need no additional interface.

 

9 hours ago, CLC said:

and also modify the whole Layers Studio Panel to note user of the tags the layer use

Probably best displayed as a single "tag" icon much like the "fx" icon which is displayed when there are layer fx applied; the specific tags could be shown in a tooltip when hovering over that icon, or highlighted somehow in the Tag panel to show which tags apply to the selected layer(s).  Maybe a green dot if all selected layers have that tag and a yellow dot if a smaller subset of them do?

 

9 hours ago, CLC said:

I still do believe that designers should design stuff without being forced to spend half of their worktime by organizing, tagging and clicking around the UI.

Depends on the project.  Sure they should be able to, but sometimes taking that extra time to organize at the start of a large project in particular can safe far more time later in the project.

 

9 hours ago, CLC said:

Tag system might be useful when you're creating a new design or illustration from scratch, but definitelly not for the very usecase this thread is all about

Agreed, which is why I still am of the opinion that the tag discussion, while useful on its own, serves a different purpose than the subject of this thread and should be carried out in a different one.  Tags are for organizing and then performing bulk operations on layers/objects while working on a large or complex project being created from scratch.  The "select same" features requested in this thread are primarily for dealing with imported works that either never had an appropriate organization or lost them as a result of the export/import process (though either feature could certainly be useful in the other situation at times).

 

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12 hours ago, CLC said:

Not even mentioning the User Interface clutter it would create

I agree that the representation of 'tags' or 'labels' requires some thought since they can provide a substantial amount of information. And of course I do not think of a solution that ends up with interface clutter 😉  But there are ways of filtering lists with huge amount of detail. A developer could find inspiration there.

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2 hours ago, fde101 said:

Agreed, which is why I still am of the opinion that the tag discussion, while useful on its own, serves a different purpose than the subject of this thread and should be carried out in a different one.

Perhaps. Both topics have a lot in common. Automatically assigned tags are - in my eyes - just a different kind of visual representation of object properties with the advantage that they can be expanded with configurable tags. But an elaborated 'Select Same' dialog could be for many users a more aproachable solution because it is reduced to just a subset of properties.

d.

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8 hours ago, fde101 said:

Organization as clutter...  hmm...

Yes, it's UX cluttering if you're forced to click 20 times because dev took the wrong approach.

8 hours ago, fde101 said:

No, I don't think it should go there.  More likely added to the context menu of the layers panel and/or tags panel for "manually assigned" tags; if "smart tags" are provided the criteria would be edited from some window opened from within the Tag panel and as these would adjust their content automatically they would need no additional interface.

Well, they should go there, since it's a context-related thing. Having another panel open just for that would not help there.

8 hours ago, fde101 said:

Probably best displayed as a single "tag" icon much like the "fx" icon which is displayed when there are layer fx applied; the specific tags could be shown in a tooltip when hovering over that icon, or highlighted somehow in the Tag panel to show which tags apply to the selected layer(s).  Maybe a green dot if all selected layers have that tag and a yellow dot if a smaller subset of them do?

That would be the biggest mistake they could make. Having to click an icon just to find out what tag is attached to certain object would be another UX disaster, especially if it would be something like fx modal, that you can't hide, you can't even move the view once it's on the screen.
Having the interface clean doesn't always mean good UX.

But if the tagging system wasn't automatic as @dominik mentioned, it would be a great alternative to what many people, including me, are hoping for for a long time - basically a global layer system alternative as we imagine it. That would be quite awesome.
Another thing I'm afraid of would be the automatic tagging thing - on what criterion would the app decide how to automagically tag stuff?
Would it employ machine learning, since every single user prefer a different system? Or some kind of AI? Wouldn't this itself be a bit too much hassle?

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48 minutes ago, CLC said:

But if the tagging system wasn't automatic as @dominik mentioned, it would be a great alternative to what many people, including me, are hoping for for a long time - basically a global layer system alternative as we imagine it. That would be quite awesome.
Another thing I'm afraid of would be the automatic tagging thing - on what criterion would the app decide how to automagically tag stuff?
Would it employ machine learning, since every single user prefer a different system? Or some kind of AI? Wouldn't this itself be a bit too much hassle?

First off, I can't contribute much about UI design because this is not my domain. In this regard I trust the experts.

Wether tags are automatically added could be a user option. Basically I see automatic tags as a representation of object properties. Dimensions, colors, line widths. Selecting all objects with a certain tag would then work like 'Select Same'.

About criterion which tags to add automatically? Make this user configurable as well.

Think of the tag system very similar as tags in a DAM are used with images.

d.

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12 hours ago, dominik said:

colors

This could be tied into global colors easily enough by adding an option to the context menu for a global color swatch to "Select Objects Using this Color" - maybe along with separate ones for fill vs. stroke color?

Obviously this is not a complete solution but it would in theory be low-hanging fruit since the software obviously needs to be able to find those quickly anyway in the event that the global color is redefined, so all of the basic pieces should already be there, and that context menu seems like a logical place to put such an option (though again not the only place, particularly since someone working on an imported document is unlikely to be working with global colors).

 

13 hours ago, CLC said:

basically a global layer system alternative as we imagine it

That is actually the context in which I originally suggested the tagging feature, not knowing that someone else had already suggested it a few years prior.  Yes, manually defined tags would cover a lot of what "global layers" should provide, but not everything - there would be a lot of overlap but neither feature need completely replace the other.

For example, with "global layers" you could put content on a master page that would be both above and below the content on an individual page, by placing it on layers above and below that content.  Tags are independent of layer order and so will not help with that.

Tags have an edge over global layers when creating content in multiple languages, as the content for  given language could be spread out across multiple global layers (if both are provided) and still be toggled on and off in one place.

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On 9/6/2020 at 8:15 PM, CLC said:

Tag system might be useful when you're creating a new design or illustration from scratch, but definitelly not for the very usecase this thread is all about (either working on an imported design, older design or something somebody else designed or paid for and gave you to work on).

The layer colors in layer panel   are already tags by its nature  and perfectly importable  from Photoshop at least . My guess from Illustrator too probably.      It's of course not a finial solution to what this thread is about  but still provide something we could work with . 

Serif just need to add  something like  Alt+click in layer panel to select all similarly "colored" layers at once or  make "color filter" in layer panel  like in Photoshop .     I would prefer Alt+click . Surely  it shouldn't be lots of coding or interface change.

With a such feature we could get  something close to  'later compositions" too  when we could switch a document  appearance  without  relying to snapshots  which are  not suited well for that really.

 

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2 hours ago, Oval said:

probably not if files with different formats are imported

I am not sure what you mean but I am interested to find out about possible problems with the concept of tags.

As long as the objects from a different format are imported and turn into objects (=layers) in Affinity they do have properties. 'Automatically added tags' are a different representation of these properties (like dimensions and colors). In this regard they should work with imported files, too. This may be different with placed files but this is something different.

d.

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On 9/7/2020 at 12:49 PM, CLC said:

Would it employ machine learning, since every single user prefer a different system? Or some kind of AI?

I’m not sure what distinction you’re trying to make here. Are you talking about whether or not to include heuristics as part of the equation?

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1 hour ago, Oval said:

But we have no indication for this feature, only for Select Same.

In regard to Select Same imported files could be a problem if even small details are not the same.

My posts and suggestions about tags were intended on a more general level to a different approach to selecting and filtering. It was not inteded to a real feature in development.

But anyway, thanks for the answer.
d.

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On 9/8/2020 at 2:48 AM, fde101 said:

For example, with "global layers" you could put content on a master page that would be both above and below the content on an individual page, by placing it on layers above and below that content.  Tags are independent of layer order and so will not help with that.

Well, in this hypothetical Tag Studio Panel, it should be quite easy to add a switch on top or bottom and master layer switch with a drop-down that would allow you to select master page(s) it should belong to, don't you think? 😉

 

 

On 9/8/2020 at 2:48 AM, fde101 said:

 

Tags have an edge over global layers when creating content in multiple languages, as the content for  given language could be spread out across multiple global layers (if both are provided) and still be toggled on and off in one place.

On 9/8/2020 at 5:21 PM, Alfred said:

I’m not sure what distinction you’re trying to make here. Are you talking about whether or not to include heuristics as part of the equation?

heuristics would be useable for analyzing existing documents to add automatic tags the way @dominik suggests, but what I had on my mind would be advanced automatic tagging of object based on user activity / workflow, thus sort of machine learning (AI) would be appropriate case I believe.

Following paragraph:

Quote

Would it employ machine learning, since every single user prefer a different system? Or some kind of AI? Wouldn't this itself be a bit too much hassle?

I should rephrase to make my thoughts clearer 😉

Thus: Would it employ machine learning, since every single user prefer a different system, in another words some kind of AI? ...

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8 hours ago, CLC said:

Well, in this hypothetical Tag Studio Panel, it should be quite easy to add a switch on top or bottom and master layer switch with a drop-down that would allow you to select master page(s) it should belong to, don't you think? 😉

No.

Tags would be applied to arbitrary layers within a document and would be independent of the ordering of the layers - they would not be layers themselves, so such a "switch" would have no meaning.

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