persona shortcut

[retrograde]

Is there anyway to set a persona shortcut? Some sort of toggle for draw and pixel persona?

[Aammppaa]

Yes

Edit > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts

Look a little way down the list and set your own shortcuts (there are none by default).

[retrograde]

Cool thanks Aammppaa, although it looks like there isn't the ability to have a designer or draw persona shortcut.

[walt.farrell]

16 minutes ago, retrograde said:

Cool thanks Aammppaa, although it looks like there isn't the ability to have a designer or draw persona shortcut.

Each Persona has its own set of keyboard shortcut keys. So, for the File Menu in the Draw Persona, you have:

and in the Pixel Persona you have:

and in the Export Persona you have:

 

 

[retrograde]

Yep I found it, finally. Thanks!

[Intuos5]

I was hoping to set the shortcuts to 1, 2, 3, etc for to switch between personas, however these keys for some reason won't switch between personas. How could I make this work?

[retrograde]

1 hour ago, Intuos5 said:

I was hoping to set the shortcuts to 1, 2, 3, etc for to switch between personas, however these keys for some reason won't switch between personas. How could I make this work?

That's because they are already assigned by Designer for the opacity settings. 

I mapped my designer/photo persona toggle to the shift>tilde keys, works great. 

[Mithferion]

1 hour ago, Intuos5 said:

I was hoping to set the shortcuts to 1, 2, 3, etc for to switch between personas, however these keys for some reason won't switch between personas. How could I make this work?

6 minutes ago, retrograde said:

I mapped my designer/photo persona toggle to the shift>tilde keys, works great. 

 

I have mine as:

Ctrl + Shift + Number

So, if I'm in Affinity Designer, the commands I use for the Personas are:

• Designer: Ctrl + Shift + 1
• Pixel: Ctrl + Shift + 2
• Export: Ctrl + Shift + 3

Best regards!

 

[Intuos5]

3 hours ago, Intuos5 said:

I was hoping to set the shortcuts to 1, 2, 3, etc for to switch between personas, however these keys for some reason won't switch between personas. How could I make this work?

 

2 hours ago, retrograde said:

That's because they are already assigned by Designer for the opacity settings.

I figured that that would be the case, I'll file a feedback post for them, because the fact that these opacity settings cannot be overriden disables the ability to set shortcuts to these keys (without modifiers).

 

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, Intuos5 said:

I figured that that would be the case, I'll file a feedback post for them, because the fact that these opacity settings cannot be overriden disables the ability to set shortcuts to these keys (without modifiers).

They can't be used for anything else because they are not just regular 'one press' keyboard shortcuts. So while pressing 1 sets opacity to 10% you can set it to 12% by pressing 1 quickly followed by pressing 2. Pressing the sequence 99 sets it to 99%, 71 sets it to 71%, & so on. Pressing zero sets it to 100% & pressing zero quickly twice sets it to 0%.

This makes it possible to set opacity to any integer percent using only the keyboard, but since the app has to wait to see if there will be a second number key pressed for this to work, it eliminates using the number keys alone for any other keyboard shortcut.

You can of course use them with one or more modifier keys as others have suggested. On my Mac, I use the option key & the letters D, P, & E respectively for switching to the Designer, Pixel, & Export personas. I do the same for AP, using the option key plus P, L, D, T, & E for its 5 personas. For me, it is easier to remember than using the numbers, although to be honest, I rarely use keyboard shortcuts to change personas. Instead, I just click on the icon buttons on the toolbar.

[Pšenda]

5 hours ago, R C-R said:

They can't be used for anything else because they are not just regular 'one press' keyboard shortcuts. So while pressing 1 sets opacity to 10% you can set it to 12% by pressing 1 quickly followed by pressing 2. Pressing the sequence 99 sets it to 99%, 71 sets it to 71%, & so on. Pressing zero sets it to 100% & pressing zero quickly twice sets it to 0%.

... For me, this way of changing Opacity is a nightmare, and I'd be glad to turn it off. Especially in the context of with non-standard behavior of editing box. The standard behavior of the edit box (in Win) is to click on it (jump to it with the Tab key), enter a value, and press Enter. This accepts/processes the entered value, but the cursor remains in the edit box. So I can immediately correct or specify the value just entered. In the case of Affinity, however, after pressing Enter, the edit box is exited, and entering the correction begins to inadvertently change the Opacity 😞

[Old Bruce]

11 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

... For me, this way of changing Opacity is a nightmare, and I'd be glad to turn it off. Especially in the context of with non-standard behavior of editing box. The standard behavior of the edit box (in Win) is to click on it (jump to it with the Tab key), enter a value, and press Enter. This accepts/processes the entered value, but the cursor remains in the edit box. So I can immediately correct or specify the value just entered. In the case of Affinity, however, after pressing Enter, the edit box is exited, and entering the correction begins to inadvertently change the Opacity 😞

You and I are at odds. I want the enter or return key to accept, set the value and exit the box. If I want to not exit the box I use the Tab key to go to another value box or just accept and set the value with the field still active. Shift + Tab will return me.

I am finding that the value fields / boxes are not accepting return or enter as an accept, set and exit key. Sometimes. There is no consistency. Occasionally my method works the way I need it to work then it won't the next time I try it.

[R C-R]

39 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

For me, this way of changing Opacity is a nightmare, and I'd be glad to turn it off. Especially in the context of with non-standard behavior of editing box.

These shortcuts are intended as an alternative to having to enter anything in a text field, which is typically a multi-step process beginning with making the field active, then typing numbers into it, & then exiting the field & moving the mouse pointer back to wherever it needs to be to do the next thing. It may even be necessary to open the panel with the field before any of that can be done, & possibly to close it afterwards.

It is essentially the same reason all the other keyboard shortcuts exist, that being to reduce the number of actions needed to do something.

[Intuos5]

8 hours ago, R C-R said:

These shortcuts are intended as an alternative to having to enter anything in a text field, which is typically a multi-step process beginning with making the field active, then typing numbers into it, & then exiting the field & moving the mouse pointer back to wherever it needs to be to do the next thing. It may even be necessary to open the panel with the field before any of that can be done, & possibly to close it afterwards.

It is essentially the same reason all the other keyboard shortcuts exist, that being to reduce the number of actions needed to do something.

While it reduces input actions for setting the opacity, the functionality also takes away the option to use 10! keys for other keyboard shortcuts. This is aggravated by the fact that the numeric and numpad keys are not differentiated. Therefore, I strongly advocate for making this an optional behaviour (even if it is enabled by default), the first set of number keys is easily reached with the left hand when rested down on the keyboard and is thus in an ideal position to assign shortcuts to. Alternatively, I could see use for pressing a shortcut to change opacity (e.g. O, if not taken by default) after which the cursor moves to the input box for opacity where the value can be entered.

 

9 hours ago, Pšenda said:

... For me, this way of changing Opacity is a nightmare, and I'd be glad to turn it off. Especially in the context of with non-standard behavior of editing box. The standard behavior of the edit box (in Win) is to click on it (jump to it with the Tab key), enter a value, and press Enter. This accepts/processes the entered value, but the cursor remains in the edit box. So I can immediately correct or specify the value just entered. In the case of Affinity, however, after pressing Enter, the edit box is exited, and entering the correction begins to inadvertently change the Opacity 😞

Well, also on Windows, I am used to pressing enter for exiting the value box. If there's a live preview for the values entered, then there is no need to confirm, instead confirming would allow you to continue working, whilst tab confirms and goes to the next value box.

[Pšenda]

11 hours ago, R C-R said:

These shortcuts are intended as an alternative to having to enter anything in a text field, which is typically a multi-step process

I wouldn't mind at all, because I only adjust Opacity exceptionally, and only for specific purposes / layers. So I really don't need super-fast Opacity adjustments - so I'd like to turn it off.

11 hours ago, R C-R said:

It is essentially the same reason all the other keyboard shortcuts exist, that being to reduce the number of actions needed to do something.

Yes, but unlike standard shortcuts, it can't be turned off (unfortunatelly).

 

12 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

I want the enter or return key to accept, set the value and exit the box.

I just wonder what you see as such a huge advantage? Identical state (loss of focus of the edit box), I will achieve by pressing the Esc key.
Despite the fact that the Affinity method is not standard (as other Win applications behave), so you have to suffer in other applications (as I do in Affinity :-).
The standard is that if the edit box is part of a form where individual items are entered one by one (name, address, X, Y, ...), then after pressing Enter it jumps to the next item so that the user can immediately continue entering and does not have to select the item with the mouse (for example, in the spreadsheet/Excel, where it jumps to the next row of the table after pressing Enter). So this is how I would expect and understand entering X, Y, W, H values in the Transform panel - but definitely not losing focus. And if the edit box is separate (not part of the form), something like Stroke / Width, then the focus should remain on the edit box until I press Esc or select another element.

[Pšenda]

2 hours ago, Intuos5 said:

If there's a live preview for the values entered

But it is matter of course, that after pressing Enter the value will be accepted and the desktop will be redrawn. For that, however, the selected Edit box does not have to lose focus.

[Intuos5]

47 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

But it is matter of course, that after pressing Enter the value will be accepted and the desktop will be redrawn. For that, however, the selected Edit box does not have to lose focus.

That could be an option, although, I think that I'm missing the use-case for keeping it in focus 😅

[Pšenda]

34 minutes ago, Intuos5 said:

I think that I'm missing the use-case for keeping it in focus

For example:

- I set visually exactly (depending on the surrounding objects, texts, ...) the Stroke width. I select the edit box, enter a value, and check the input result on the workspace. Because it needs to add a little more, they'll start entering a new value right away. In the case of Affinity, I have to turn away from the workplace being monitored, select the appropriate edit box on the other side of the monitor, and finally enter a new value. Going back to the workplace, find that the value is already too big, so again ......

- I need to set the exact position/dimension according to the surrounding objects, which I would achieve very easily and quickly by repeatedly and uninterrupted (constantly re-selecting the edit box) by entering a value.

- etc. 

[R C-R]

7 hours ago, Intuos5 said:

While it reduces input actions for setting the opacity, the functionality also takes away the option to use 10! keys for other keyboard shortcuts.

It only takes away the option to use those keys alone, without modifiers. You still have the option to use any of them with any combination of one or more of the modifier keys (CTRL, Shift & Alt on Windows; CMD, Shift, CTRL, & Option on Macs) so there are still a lot of shortcuts available using those keys.

It may not be what you want if you rarely change the opacity of selected objects but it is not as if you are totally prohibited from using those keys in shortcuts for other actions. 

[Intuos5]

2 minutes ago, R C-R said:

It only takes away the option to use those keys alone, without modifiers. You still have the option to use any of them with any combination of one or more of the modifier keys (CTRL, Shift & Alt on Windows; CMD, Shift, CTRL, & Option on Macs) so there are still a lot of shortcuts available using those keys.

It may not be what you want if you rarely change the opacity of selected objects but it is not as if you are totally prohibited from using those keys in shortcuts for other actions. 

True, but it's a restriction nonetheless and as a power user of keyboard shortcuts for a dozen different pieces of software, it's a major hurdle to overcome (I am already short on single button keys as it stands).

Though some commands such as select previous/ next, move forward/ backward and canvas rotation take precedence over the opacity functionality. It is just that switching personas is one that does not, for some reason, though I don't feel like testing which tools/ commands can be assigned and which cannot. So it may not be as bad as it seemed, nevertheless it's inconsistent.

[R C-R]

32 minutes ago, Intuos5 said:

Though some commands such as select previous/ next, move forward/ backward and canvas rotation take precedence over the opacity functionality.

I am not sure what you mean by that. Are you saying you can assign a number key alone (without adding a modifier key) to any of those actions? I cannot do that -- if I try it I get the usual error triangle & the popup saying the key is already assigned to opacity.

Of course, if no object is selected using the number keys alone does not do anything since changing the opacity via those shortcuts can only be applied to selected objects.

39 minutes ago, Intuos5 said:

So it may not be as bad as it seemed, nevertheless it's inconsistent.

Yes, the opacity shortcuts are inconsistent to the extent that they are the only ones that will accept a sequence of two quick single key presses, but like many others they can be used in combination with modifier keys, so it really is not that bad.

[Intuos5]

4 hours ago, R C-R said:

I am not sure what you mean by that. Are you saying you can assign a number key alone (without adding a modifier key) to any of those actions? I cannot do that -- if I try it I get the usual error triangle & the popup saying the key is already assigned to opacity.

Yes, I mean that you can assign certain shortcuts directly to the number keys (on Windows). With inconsistency I mean that some functions do execute whereas others don't as you will set opacity instead. I don't think this has to do with any selections, since opacity also affects brush settings.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Intuos5 said:

Yes, I mean that you can assign certain shortcuts directly to the number keys (on Windows).

I am not able to do that in the Mac versions of the Affinity apps.