Author | Jackie

Adding your own colour palette is one of the quickest ways to transform a digital planner template. And working with colour in Affinity Publisher is incredibly easy.

In this post, I’ll outline all the colour elements you need to be aware of to add colours to your own digital planner design.

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Swatches Panel

You can manage everything you need to with regards to colour from the Swatches Panel.

Here, you can:

• Add, delete, or create a colour palette.
• Add and delete a colour fill to objects, text and table cells.
• Add and delete a colour stroke to an object, text or table lines.
• Create and use global colours.
• Set the opacity, hue, saturation, lightness, and tint of a colour. 

How to open the Swatches Panel

If you Reset your Studio to the default layout (Window – Studio – Reset Studio), you will find the Swatches in the top-right corner of your screen, alongside the Color and Stroke Panels.

If you are not working with the default studio layout, you can open the Swatches Panel from the Window Menu (Window – Swatches). The panel will dock in the top-right corner.

Swatches Panel Layout

On the Swatches, you will find:

1. The Fill and Stroke Colours alongside the Eyedropper tool.
2. Recently used swatches.
3. Preview of the colours in the currently selected colour palette.
4. Swatches Panel menu.
5. Fill or Stroke Opacity setting.
6. Shortcuts to no-fill/stroke, black, mid-grey, and white.

If you double-click on any colour thumbnail, it also has its own options:

1. Sliders for inputting specific colours, e.g. RGB, Hex, CMYK etc
2. A colour wheel which includes a hex code input box.
3. Hue, saturation and lightness settings for the selected colour.
4. Greyness and Tint settings for the selected colour.
5. Access to swatches and palettes, and noise settings.

Colour Picker

The colour picker tool is available from the Tools Panel on the left (shortcut I), or the Swatches Panel.

Sampling a Colour

To sample a colour on your page:

• Double-click, hold and drag the Eyedropper icon over the page.
• As you move over the page, you will see the area magnified and the RGB colour code shown below the colour.
• When you have the colour you want, let go of the eyedropper.

Picked Colour Swatch

The colour you have chosen isn't automatically applied to the fill or stroke.

It will be shown in the tiny circle thumbnail next to the Eyedropper Tool in the swatches panel.

To apply the colour to your fill or stroke settings:

• Click on the Fill or Stroke swatch to the left of the eyedropper.
• Click on the tiny eyedropper circle with the colour you just grabbed.
• This colour will now be applied to the Fill or Stroke.

Colour Palettes

Default Palettes

Affinity Publisher comes with a set of default colour palettes:

• Colours and Pantone Swatches
• Gradients - standard gradient styles you can add your own colours to
• Greys

Document Palette

You can also create a Document palette, specific to the document you are working on.

When I create a template, I use a Document palette. This keeps all the colours for the digital planner together.

To create your own Document Palette:

• Click the hamburger menu on the Swatches Panel.
• Choose Add Document Palette…
• Give your new colour palette a name.
• The Document Palette will appear at the top of the list, above Colours.

Once you have created a Document Palette, you can add your own colours.

Global Swatches

What is a Global Swatch

A Global Swatch is a colour that is created and then applied, as with any other colour, to items in a document. 

If you then change the Global Swatch colour, that change will automatically ripple through your document, changing the colour of everything it has been applied to.

Global Swatches are great for digital planners and other templates. If you purchase a digital planner template, always make sure the designer has used Global Swatches in the document setup. If it isn’t stated in the description, ask. It will save you a lot of work!

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Changing a Swatch to Global

To give an existing palette colour swatch Global properties, right-click on the colour thumbnail and choose Make Global. You will see a tiny white triangle in the bottom-left corner of the Swatch. This signifies that it is a Global swatch.

If you want to add a new colour to your palette as a Global swatch, just have the colour selected in your Fill/Stroke thumbnails and click the icon: Add current colour to palette as a global colour.

Replacing a Non-Global Colour in a Document

Global swatches don’t work retrospectively. If you apply a non-global colour swatch to an object or text, then change that non-global colour swatch to a global colour swatch, that will not change any of the objects or text you use the original non-global colour on.

If you have applied a colour to multiple objects and you now want to apply a global colour, you can use the Select Same option:

• Click Select on the top menu and choose Select Same.
• Choose from Fill, Stroke, or Fill & Stroke.
• This will pickup all the items with the original non-global colour.

Once selected, you can apply a global colour to them. If you then go on to change that global colour, all the objects will also change.

Working with Colour in Affinity Publisher

As you can see, there isn’t anything too complex about working with colour in Affinity Publisher.

If you use a document palette coupled with global swatches, you have powerful colour settings that make working with a big document like a digital planner quick and easy.

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