Affinity Designer offers several ways of choosing colours for your design.
About selecting colours
An essential requirement for efficient design is the ability to access colours easily and intuitively. Designers may have a preferred method for colour selection, so Affinity Designer provides a choice:
Context toolbar—for selection of Fill and/or Stroke colours from the context toolbar that displays when a vector object is selected.
Colour panel—for selection from colour wheel, sliders, or boxes using different colour models.
Swatches panel—for selection by swatch from different preset or custom categories, including PANTONE® Colours.
Gradient Tool—apply or edit a colour gradient across your object. Choose from the tool's context toolbar.
Using the object's context toolbar:
For quick access, Fill and Stroke swatches are available from the context toolbar of any selected shape, line, or stroke.
To apply a fill or stroke colour to a vector object:
Select the object.
From the context toolbar, click either the 'Stroke' or 'Fill' swatch.
From the pop-up menu, choose colour from a Swatches, Colour, or Gradient pane.
Using the Colour panel
With the Colour panel, colours can be applied to an object or adopted by a tool in just a few clicks. Opacity and noise are further colour attributes which can be applied. Colours can be saved to a palette in the Swatches panel.
To select a stroke/fill colour (using default HSL Colour Wheel):
Click the Stroke or Fill swatch at the top left of the panel.
Click for a hue on the outer ring.
Click in the inner triangle to set the combined Saturation and Lightness.
The relevant swatch updates to the selected colour.
To switch colours between the swatch selectors:
Click the double-headed arrow. The colours switch (but the active swatch selector remains the same).
To adjust opacity or noise setting:
Select the Switch to opacity/noise toggle button at the bottom-left of the panel.
Drag the slider to set the value.
To use a different colour model:
Click the Panel Preferences menu, and select Sliders from the menu.
At the top right of the panel, click the current colour mode displayed, e.g. RGB, to reveal a pop-up menu.
Select a different colour model from the menu.
To apply a colour tint:
Click the Panel Preferences menu, and select Tint from the menu.
Drag the slider to the left or right to increase or decrease the colour tint, respectively.
To use a different colour mode:
Click the Panel Preferences menu, and select 8 bit, 16 bit or Percentage from the menu.
To save colours to Swatches panel:
Click the Panel Preferences menu, and select one of the following:
Add Colour to Swatch—adds the current colour to the currently loaded palette in the Swatches panel.
Select a chord type from the Add Chord to Swatch pop-up menu—adds a chord of the current colour to the currently loaded palette in the Swatches panel.
Using the Swatches panel
The Swatches panel provides colour swatch presets that are selectable from various categories. You can easily apply greys, solid colours, or gradient colours as presets.
To use a colour swatch:
Do one of the following:
Choose a palette category from the category pop-up menu and click a colour swatch in the palette.
Click a swatch from the Recently used swatches.
Click a None swatch to make the colour completely transparent.
Accessing PANTONE® Colours
PANTONE® Colour palettes are available from the main Swatches panel, and will automatically become a global spot colour in the document palette when applied. They are also available from the pop-up Swatches panel on the context toolbar when a shape, line, or stroke is selected.
To access PANTONE® Colours:
On the Swatches panel (or pop-up Swatches panel), from the category pop-up menu, select your preferred PANTONE palette.
To display the PANTONE® Colour name and number, click on the Swatches panel's Panel Preferences menu and select Appearance > Show as List. Alternatively, you can select a category from the Swatches panel (for example, PANTONE® Formula Guide Solid Coated V4) and use the search window to locate a specific colour (e.g., 129) within that category.
Registration colour
Printing to PDF will allow you to include printer marks, including registration marks assigned with registration black (100%C:100%M:100%Y:100%K). Registration black will appear on any PANTONE or additional spot colours added. You can add this registration colour as a swatch that can be assigned to an object on the page, creating an on-page registration mark.
To add a registration colour as a swatch:
From the Swatches panel, click Panel Preferences, then select Add Registration Colour.
You can then apply the swatch to an object on the page.
To use a different colour model: