Color panel Color panel

The Color panel is used to choose color for various brush tools and to apply color to the stroke and fill of vector shapes, lines, and text.

About the Color panel

The panel can operate in several color modes—RGB, HSL, CMYK, LAB and Grayscale—and has various ways of presenting color options—as sliders or as a color wheel (HSL only).

Color panel
Color panel: (A) Foreground/Background color selectors, (B) Color Picker and picked color swatch, (C) Color model selection, (D) RGB sliders, (E) Opacity control associated with color, (F) Noise control for graininess effect, (G) Easy access commonly used 'Quick' colors (None, K-only Black, Mid-gray, Black and White swatches) and recently used colors and (H) Swatches section for storing colors and palette control.

The active color selector is shown at the front of the two color selectors. Choosing a new color will apply it to the active color selector.

For vector shapes, lines and text, the color selector is for stroke and fill color instead of Foreground and Background color, respectively.

Panel pin Tap the pin icon in the top right of the panel to hide the panel automatically when you are no longer focusing on it.

Using the Color panel

With the Color panel, colors can be set for use by a tool in just a few taps. Opacity and noise are further attributes which can be applied with a color.

Color display options and color models

When choosing colors in the Color panel, you can choose different ways to present color options (e.g., by wheel or slider) and different color models. For example, if you want to design a hi-res CMYK print document, you could select color using CMYK Sliders to match with a CMYK color profile chosen at document setup. This doesn't change the working color profile of the document, but changes the input values for the colors only.

The following color options are available using the navigation buttons.

To set the color of a selector:
  1. Tap the selector you want to apply the color to. It will show at the front of the two color selectors.
  2. Do one of the following:
    • Select a color from the color wheel or slider.
    • Tap the picked color swatch (if you've previously color picked).
    • Select one of the five most Recent Colors.

Once your color has been chosen and applied to a tool or content, there are several ways to preserve this color for later use.

Panel Preferences The following options are available from the Panel Preferences menu within the Swatches section.

Using swatches

The Swatches section stores your recently used colors and lets you access a range of predefined palettes, each containing solid or gradient fill swatches. These can be selected for use with various tools and for applying directly to objects. You can also create and store your own swatches in custom color palettes either for the document or the app.

Swatches are organized into color palettes by category.

Swatches
Swatches section (Color panel): (A) Primary/Secondary color selectors, (B) Color Picker and picked color swatch, (C) Panel Preferences, (D) Palette selection, (E) Swatch or list view, (F) Palette swatches, (G) Easy access commonly used ‘Quick’ colors (None, K-only Black, Mid-gray, Black and White swatches) and (H) Recently used colors.

Palettes

The following types of palette exist within your Affinity app:

You can permanently store custom colors and gradients that you use most often in any of the palettes or you can create custom Document palettes to host them. We recommend the latter.

Saving chosen colors for later use

Once your color has been chosen and applied to a tool or content, there are several ways to preserve this color for later use.

Creating and saving to custom color palettes

Panel Preferences To create a new palette:
Panel Preferences To save a color or gradient to a palette:
  1. Choose the color from the HSL wheel or equivalent.
  2. Open the Swatches section, and select a palette from the category list.
  3. From the Panel Preferences, select Add Current Fill to Palette.
To rename or delete a saved swatch:

Importing and exporting custom color palettes

Custom color palettes can be exported to and imported from external files (add-ons) via the Swatches section's Panel Preferences menu. For more information on add-ons, see the About add-ons topic.

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