There are several ways of choosing colors for your design.
Sampling color with the Color Picker Tool.
About selecting colors
An essential requirement for efficient design is the ability to access colors easily and intuitively. Users may have a preferred method for color selection, so Affinity apps provides a choice:
Color panel—for selection from color wheel or sliders using different color models. A Swatches section in the panel lets you select swatches from different preset or custom categories, including PANTONE® Colors.
Color Picker—for sampling colors anywhere on your screen; great for complementary color work.
Context toolbar—for selection of curve or brush color when using various drawing and painting tools.
Gradient Tool—apply or edit a color gradient across your layer content. Choose a gradient type from the tool's context toolbar.
To select a color (using default HSL Color Wheel):
Select the Foreground or Background swatch at the top left of the Color panel.
Tap-drag for a hue color on the outer ring.
Tap-drag in the inner triangle to set the combined Saturation and Lightness.
(Optional) Set Opacity and Noise values using the lower sliders.
The active color selector updates to the selected color.
To switch colors between the swatch selectors:
Tap the Foreground or Background swatch to make it active—the frontmost swatch is considered to be active.
To use a different color model:
Tap the navigation buttons above the panel's Color Wheel to use RGB, CMYK, HSL, LAB or Gray sliders instead.
Using swatches
The Swatches section of the Color panel provides color swatch presets that are selectable from various palettes (Colors, Gradients, PANTONE® colors) including a custom document palette.
To create a document palette:
Open the Color panel's Swatches section.
From the Panel Preferences, select Add Document Palette.
To save a color to a palette:
Choose the color from the HSL wheel or equivalent.
Open the Swatches section, and select a palette (e.g. your created Document palette) from the Swatches category pop-up menu (or use left/right navigation buttons).
From the Panel Preferences, select Add Current Fill to Palette. The swatch is added to the palette.
To use a color swatch:
Choose a palette category from the Swatches category pop-up menu.
Do one of the following:
Tap a color swatch in the palette.
Tap a swatch from the Quick Colors or Recent Colors swatches.
Tap the No fill swatch from the Quick Colors swatches to to make the color completely transparent.
Using the Color Picker
The panel's Color Picker lets you sample colors in your document and then use them for complementary design.
To use the Color Picker:
Drag the Color Picker icon to the color you want to sample. The swatch next to the Color Picker updates to the picked up color.
Tap the swatch selector you want to apply the picked up color to.
Tap the picked up color swatch to apply the color.
For more advanced color picking, you can use the Color Picker Tool instead of the panel's color picker.
Using context toolbar (Painting tools only):
For quick access, you can choose a brush stroke color in advance of painting from the brush tool's context toolbar.
To apply a color to brush strokes:
From the Photo Persona, select the Paint Brush or Pixel Brush Tool.
From the context toolbar, tap the Color swatch and set the color from the pop-up panel.
Accessing PANTONE® Colors
A wide selection of PANTONE® colors are available in Affinity Photo 2. You can choose from Goe, GoeBridge and Color Bridge palettes as both coated and uncoated.
To access PANTONE® Colors:
From the Swatches section of the Color panel, navigate the category list (or double-tap), and select your preferred PANTONE palette.
Recoloring/tinting images
There are a number of ways to recolor or add a tint to an image, for example, for rebranding purposes, or to help it blend in with the rest of your page.
To recolor a placed image:
With the image selected, do one of the following:
Apply a color directly to the image from the Color panel.
For press-ready CMYK documents only, enable K Only on the context toolbar to apply a tint of the color chosen from the Color panel. If the color is a Spot color, then, on PDF export, the image will print using a single color palette.
From the Layer FX panel, check the Color Overlay effect and adjust the image to your preferred color and opacity using the opacity slider and color swatch.
To create a document palette:
To use the Color Picker: