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bart13
New Participant
June 22, 2023

Variables: Color alias with alpha / opacity (rgba ideally)

  • June 22, 2023
  • 113 replies
  • 13889 views

hey there!

variables seems to be super nice but what i am missing is that if i make a colour alias to a specific collection - i can’t set the opacity separately (e.g. colour 50 with 20% opacity)

So basically i want the colouyr to be from another collection and i want to set the alpha seperatly (controlled as rgba - since i dont need it as opacity)

Example how we can fix this in token studio:
image

So what i want is that i can set blue/5 and then the opacity (which i dont want to capture in another colour variable)


Now its only possible if i break the link with gray/75 - and then i loose the reference to that colour

113 replies

April 3, 2024

Yes, please add this one!

Josh_Kriese
New Member
April 11, 2024

Please add this! Really critical to variable inheritance, and would provide much better parity with how variables work in a dev environment.

RickvandeSande
New Member
April 15, 2024

This would be a great idea! Just give the option to decouple opacity from a colour variable in the fill!

AntonioB
New Participant
April 23, 2024

I found myself with this problem specially when defining colored shadows based on existing color variables in my palette. It makes perfect sense that in case you change the primitive color variable, the shadow color get updated but keeping a separate value for the opacity. This…

image

We could even discuss about to also allow opacity variables, like this…

image

But for shadows I think it a must to, at least, separate the color from the opacity value, because we can consider that the opacity, in that case, is a property of the shadow itself and not of the color.

So, more thoughts, maybe, instead of complicate things in the color variables part, like proposed in this post, it would be enough to allow every where Figma allow to choose a color from a library just keep the opacity as a separate value, and then, even allow opacity variables.

For those colors defined with an opacity value in the “primitive palette” it could do the work to translate the value to the opacity to the opacity field, then, you can override the opacity value with an opacity variable if you want, or just over-apply the opacity.

May 19, 2024

+1 It would be great feature.

June 1, 2024

Agreed this functionality would be so beneficial!

Philip_Hodges
New Participant
June 5, 2024

Yes please! Alpha must be decoupled from color variable! For all the reasons listed above.

FilipaGo
New Participant
June 5, 2024

++ 1
We really need this!

Bob_Medcalf
June 6, 2024

+1 for flexibility and reduced # of semantic tokens

June 14, 2024

+1 Yes, please!