Multicoloured Text Converts Into Single Coloured Shapes

Is something not working like it should? Let us know.
User avatar

2018-03-06 21:50:33

(Pixelmator Pro 1.0.8 on macOS 10.13.3 on a MacBook (Retina, 12-inch, Early 2015))

Starting with this text:
Image
and using Convert Into Shapes to fix that horrible kerning between the 'Y' and the 'o' results in this:
Image
User avatar

2018-03-07 10:02:29

This could be considered more of a feature request rather than a bug — as text layers are converted into single shape layers with multiple shape components, the style applies to the overall shape. Obviously, if the shapes are on separate layers inside a layer group, they can have different styles applied and I don't see why this shouldn't be possible in these cases, so I've added it to our bug tracker.
User avatar

2018-03-07 11:19:12

Thanks for all the responses this morning. That you guys are friendly, easy to get hold of, and usually quick to reply are three of the reasons that I love Pixelmator and Pixelmator Pro. (edit: and helpful so make that four.)

Your comment made me have another look at the problem and I'm really not sure what the best answer is.

Scenario 1 If you're styling all the letters in a text object the same you want to be able to style the result of Convert into Shape as a single object. So you want the output to be a Union (Unite) of all the letter shapes. This is the current behaviour.

Scenario 2 If you're styling the letters/words differently you want the output of Convert into Shape to be a Group so that you can treat the letters as individual shapes. This is my preferred behaviour.

Whichever option you choose, there are going to be people who think you are doing it the wrong way. I can now see the rationale behind either choice so I now agree with you: this is not a bug. It's more of a request for a change in functionality: that text converted to shapes should be a group of shapes, because it's easier to move from a group of shapes to a union of shapes than the other way around. Plus you don't lose information (such as different colour letters) if you convert to a group wheras converting to a union will lose that data.
User avatar

2018-03-08 08:44:16

Yaay, that's music to our ears — you're a dream user yourself with all these super detailed and very clear bug reports!
User avatar

2018-10-19 08:47:59

With the arrival of SVG fonts, I'd like to dig this one out and dust it off. As it stands (Pixelmator Pro 1.2) I can't see a way of transforming text that is written in an SVG font into a group of editable objects. I can convert it into a shape but that loses the colours; it even loses the shape of the coloured areas so I can't even convert then recolour.

Now that I've wrapped my head around it (and this is definitely a feature request rather than a bug) what I'd really like is a menu option next to Convert into Shape, called Convert into Group. That would allow me to convert a text object with different coloured letters into a group of shapes with the same properties or convert some SVG text into the group of shapes that make up the text.

Hope you can help.

- Stef.
User avatar

2018-10-19 11:27:01

Heheh, I was waiting for this one! :smile: We definitely checked whether it's possible to get that data from the SVG fonts, but we basically have access to the exact same data as with regular fonts — the characters and their shapes. The shape and separate color data isn't available, which made this feature a non-starter, as much as we would've liked to add it.
User avatar

2018-10-19 11:37:25

Awwww... :cry:
Thanks for effort, though. :smile:

It would still be useful for non-SVG fonts, though. :wink: (edit: just re-read your text... so this wouldn't be possible for normal (non-SVG) fonts either?)
User avatar

2018-10-22 11:58:16

You mean converting multicolored text into a shape group with differently colored letter shapes? There probably aren't any technical stumbling blocks here, it's just a matter of priorities. The feature is on the request list, but there are definitely a few things that take precedence over it.
User avatar

2018-10-22 12:35:58

Understandable. In cost/benefit this is probably quite low down the list. Glad it's on there, though. :grinning: