Affinity Photo offers several ways of choosing colors for your photo edits and design.
About selecting colors
An essential requirement for efficient editing and design is the ability to access colors easily and intuitively. You may have a preferred method for color selection, so Affinity Photo provides a choice:
Color Studio—for selection from color wheel or sliders using different color models. A Swatches section in the Studio 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 brush color when using various painting tools.
Using the Color Studio
With the Color Studio, colors can be adopted by tools (or applied to vector content) in just a few taps. Opacity and noise are further color attributes which can be applied. Colors can be saved to a palette in the Swatches section.
To select a color (using default HSL Color Wheel):
Select the Foreground or Background swatch at the top left of the Color Studio.
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 swatch 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 Studio's Color Wheel to use RGB, CMYK, HSL, LAB or Grey sliders instead.
To save a color or gradient to a palette:
Choose the color from the HSL wheel or equivalent.
Open the Swatches section, and select a palette from the category list.
From the Studio Preferences, select Add current fill to palette. The swatch is added to the palette.
Using swatches
The Swatches section of the Color Studio provides color swatch presets that are selectable from various categories (Colors, Gradients, PANTONE® colors).
To use a color swatch:
Do one of the following:
Choose a palette category from the Swatches category pop-up menu and tap a color swatch in the palette.
Tap a swatch from the Quick Colors swatches.
Tap a No fill swatch from the Quick Colors swatches to make the color completely transparent.
Using the Color Picker
The Studio'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 Studio'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. 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 Studio, navigate the category list (or double-tap), and select your preferred PANTONE palette.
To save a color or gradient to a palette:
To use the Color Picker: