Picking a color from other apps

[casterle]

I'm watching a tutorial in which the author selects a brush, then shows how to use the Alt key to select colors from an image. But then he goes on to use the same technique to pick colors from his Windows desktop. I can't get this to work. Suggestions?

[firstdefence]

Click and hold on the colour picker in either the colour or swatches panel and move the cursor over the screen, it will select whatever colour it is over on the screen, the only place the colour picker won't work is on the workspace.

The colour Picker Tool Appear to be focused to the the Affinity space. See posts below for correct answer

[casterle]

7 hours ago, firstdefence said:

Click and hold on the colour picker in either the colour or swatches panel and move the cursor over the screen, it will select whatever colour it is over on the screen, the only place the colour picker won't work is on the workspace.

The colour Picker Tool Appear to be focused to the the Affinity space.

Perfect, thank you. I don't suppose there is a document that lists UI changes to help us along?

I wonder why the feature was removed from the brush tool. These seemingly unnecessary changes make the product harder to learn (what you see in the tutorials do not work). This is one of the main reasons I switched from learning image editing with Photo Raw to AP (I'm not giving up on PR, it's very different than AP).

[R C-R]

33 minutes ago, casterle said:

I wonder why the feature was removed from the brush tool.

What feature? I'm not sure about the Windows versions but in the Mac ones, holding down the Alt key & dragging with the Paint Brush Tool allows picking a color from anywhere on the screen, including from the desktop, & IIRC it always has.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, R C-R said:

What feature? I'm not sure about the Windows versions but in the Mac ones, holding down the Alt key & dragging with the Paint Brush Tool allows picking a color from anywhere on the screen, including from the desktop, & IIRC it always has.

Works the same way on Windows. The eyedroppers in the Color panel or the Swatches panel, or pressing Alt and dragging with the Paint Brush Tool will pick from anywhere on the screen. Clicking with the Color Picker Tool (I) is restricted to the Affinity workspace, but dragging it also works anywhere on the screen.

Edited March 1, 2019 by walt.farrell
Corrected usage of the Color Picker Tool.

[firstdefence]

I concur, the colour replacement tool also picks up colour from any part of the screen when Alt (⌥)is pressed on Mac

[casterle]

Thanks, all. I was holding Alt but releasing my mouse button before I moved my cursor over my desktop. If I continue holding both down when I move over the desktop it works as expected. In fact, it even works with the Color Picker Tool!

[walt.farrell]

46 minutes ago, casterle said:

In fact, it even works with the Color Picker Tool!

Thanks. You're right. And you don't even need Alt with the Color Picker. Dragging it will work anywhere on-screen.

[firstdefence]

24 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Thanks. You're right. And you don't even need Alt with the Color Picker. Dragging it will work anywhere on-screen.

Works for me now didn't before very odd, looks like a strike through on my post above lol!