Foreground/background colors changes place

[Nifflas]

When I go between, say the paint brush tool, color picker tool, and the fill tool, the foreground and background colors in the color selector changes place. How can I disable this, so that everything I do always uses the foreground color like I've set things up in Photoshop?

 

[Callum]

Hi Nifflas,

Welcome to the forums

There is no way to disable this I'm afraid. The colour wells are swapping between the fill and stroke colour depending on which you would normally use with that tool.

Thanks

Callum

[R C-R]

8 hours ago, Callum said:

The colour wells are swapping between the fill and stroke colour depending on which you would normally use with that tool.

How could the app possibly be programed to know how I would normally use the Paint Brush Tool vs. the Fill Tool? As often as not, I want to paint on a layer with a brush, create a marching ants selection (or reselect the previously created one), & then fill that selection with the brush color.

[Callum]

10 hours ago, R C-R said:

How could the app possibly be programed to know how I would normally use the Paint Brush Tool vs. the Fill Tool? As often as not, I want to paint on a layer with a brush, create a marching ants selection (or reselect the previously created one), & then fill that selection with the brush color.

When I said you I meant that as a general term and not each specific user. For example when using the Brush Tool the app will switch to the stroke colour as you can't create closed curves with the brush so there is nothing to fill.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, Callum said:

When I said you I meant that as a general term and not each specific user. For example when using the Brush Tool the app will switch to the stroke colour as you can't create closed curves with the brush so there is nothing to fill.

But for the Paint Brush & Fill tools there is no stroke color, just Primary & Secondary colors. So say I have a pixel layer I have painted with various colors, two of which are a mustard yellow & a lime green. They are currently the primary & secondary colors, respectively.

Then I switch to the Fill Tool because I want to fill some color region with the same mustard yellow I was just moments ago painting with, not with the  lime green that switching to the Fill Tool causes. I consider this as no less normal than any other workflow switch between those two tools.

[Nifflas]

I always like when software does the minimal number of things to carry out each task. Swapping foreground/background colors seems to me an arbitrary extra step. On top of the problems described above, it's really confusing when I use the color picker, then the next tool isn't using that color I just picked.

[R C-R]

8 minutes ago, Nifflas said:

Swapping foreground/background colors seems to me an arbitrary extra step.

It isn't arbitrary -- @Callum explained the logic behind the swap. But it does make an assumption about how users most often use the Flood Fill Tool in combination with the other tools, which is true only for certain workflows.

With that in mind, I think it would be useful to add a "sticky" setting to that tool's context toolbar, perhaps named simply "Swap," with a checkmark that if unticked would not automatically do the swap.

Do you think it is worth making a feature request for that?

[Nifflas]

Definitely!

[R C-R]

Done!