Photoshop: Supporting Global Color on the Swatches panel

PLEASE ADD GLOBAL COLOR IN PS AS WELL. I WOULD SIMPLY LOVE IT.

No denying that »linked« Styles, Swatches or even Adjustment Layers could be beneficial in some (or even many) situations and I support this Feature Request.

As for Mr.Cox: I have come across quite a few posts of his here and over on forums.adobe.com and I find that his behaviour is usually above reproach. Maybe his humour is not for everybody but whose is?

Mostly his comments in another suggestion I made, but I wouldn't say he's that being polite here either. He compared the idea to a ridiculous irrelevant example and has yet to consider that this idea would save so much time and effort that it might be worth it.

PS might be a pixel program at heart, but it has an expanding set of vector features. For example the Paragraph / Character styles that came with CS6. While they are no where near as refined as ID's, they are still a major time saver. If PS can have those, then why not do the same thing with the layer styles?

No PS can't and shouldn't have swatches that are truly global for even when the brush tool uses them, but this is more about having vector like swatches when using PS's vector abilities (Shape layers, Text layers, Layer Styles, like Stephane Baril said). For example a web design mockup. Say I make a bunch of shape layers for the buttons using blue fill, but then the client decides that they need to be red or a different blue. There's no good reason for me to have to go in and change the fill color of every shape layer one at a time. To my knowledge, there is no way to change them all at once. But if PS had vector swatches, then I could just use that swatch as the fill and change the swatch.

Though I think the UX of vector type swatches in PS would probably be a little wonky at best. Hence my suggesting global layer styles, since it has parameters like color fill, it would fix the problem. Or maybe if I define a layer style on one layer, can I tell another layer to always copy the styles of the first? Basically linked layer styles. You can apply layer styles to a whole group, so PS already has the ability to apply the same set of layer styles to multiple layers. The only difference is for this use case the layers are in different groups for the sake of sanity.

Another thought: You could also create it so the layer styles link to styles in the styles panel, but really what it's doing is copying and pasting the layer styles automatically to the layers "linked" to that style. Just define what style to link back to in a field/column/whatever that old versions of PS will ignore if you want old versions of PS to be able to open the file.

Gosh I write too much stuff. Sorry for long reply. I guess my point is there are many different ways to go about solving this problem.

»Why should PS?«
I’m no programmer so maybe this would be no concern at all anyway, it just seemed like a possible source of problems to me.
So far the psd format (with »Maximize ... Compatibility« at least) has maintained backwards compatibility fine so maybe adding that extra information would be no problem to begin with.

»Maybe you should look for the advantages in suggestions instead of just being rude to Adobe's customers.«
What a strange comment – which of his utterances exactly seems rude to you?

As for the question on why vector oriented programs may offer features pixel oriented ones may not (or at least less easily) I think Mr.Cox’ first post in this thread may not have been fully comprehensive but valid nonetheless.

I believe the standard practice when two things are named the same is to 1 tell the user and ask if the they want to rename or replace, or 2 don't use the name as the unique identifier (use it as a string label, maintain the unique key in the bg and always assume one should change if two are the same).

As far as backward compatibility, Ai and ID (and probably many more) haven't let worrying about that hold them back. Why should PS? Just give users the option to save docs in the old format like other adobe programs.

If maintaining a relationship between the layer styles and layer is such a problem, then why can Ai maintain a relationship between objects in the document and graphic styles and why can ID maintain relationships with it's more than hundreds of parameters in it's character, paragraph, table, cell, and objects styles? Having ID's "object styles" ability in PS for the layer styles would be killer since it would save designers so much time.

Cox, making PS in the first place I would have to guess was more than quite difficult. Maybe you should look for the advantages in suggestions instead of just being rude to Adobe's customers.

I see some merit in the Feature Request (particularly with regard to Solid Color Layers and Color Overlays) but I guess I see some of the problems, too.
As Swatches and Styles currently are Application presets would a file have to also include all used Styles/Swatches and how should it handle identically named items that have been changed in the Application in the meantime and how to handle the additional data while maintaining backwards compatibility and ...?

Because after you apply the style to a layer, there is no relationship between the preset and the contents of the layer. Trying to maintain such a relationship with the hundreds of parameters for styles would be quite difficult.

With PS expanding it's vector abilities to better serve web/graphic designers using it, I'm honestly surprised this hasn't already been included. Yes it would be impossible have global color on things like brush strokes in PS, but for the vector items (shape layers being a big one) it only makes sense.

On a related note, if we create a style (using the 'Styles' panel) why can't we later edit it and have those changes applied to all the layers using that style?

Though maybe in a few years Muse will be powerful enough to actually replace PS as a mock up tool. But at this point that's merely a dream and a hope, so those features would be great for PS.