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dmstraker

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Everything posted by dmstraker

  1. Load .jpg file attached. Switch to Develop Persona. Background white area goes red. Possibly a factor, this is a flattened version of the .afphoto, also attached. Happy New Year / Blwyddyn Newydd Dda ! HSL_4_colour_wheels.afphoto
  2. Not offended or worried. I'm busily 'retired' on a Welsh veggie smallholding (spent the morning squeezing apples), while indulging photo hobby ('art for engineers'), doing InAffinity videos (best way to learn is to try to teach), and tinkering on websites (currently boning up on Bootstrap Studio while waiting for Bootstrap 5). I studied and wrote books during the 'real' career both as a means to learn and to help professional credibility (they did help me get jobs). Overall I feel very lucky to have had a very varied and interesting career. These days there's more stuff to look back on than look forward to :\.
  3. > Usability is nothing without context. Yes. Indeed nothing is anything without context. > User experience is the experience that the user brings, not the tools. Yes, and it is how the user thinks and feels while using the tools. > (instead of some here on the forum who keep on persisting that the tools are at fault) Hands up here, occasionally, but not persistently (I am always open to be proven wrong). I've also found a reasonable number of real bugs.
  4. Yes. Curiosity. And attendant tenacity. The HP inkjet came out of the curiosity of an engineer that noticed a pipette of ink leaning on a soldering iron had spattered the ink across the bench. Common sense is a strange misnomer that is often used to mean 'I am right but am unable to prove this'. It also has the double-bind implication that 'If you do not agree you have no sense and are hence stupid'. Many people desperately want to appear to be right, which is often based in status needs. This could be a long conversation...
  5. When working in strategy, our planning horizon went from ten years to five to two to one... In a dynamic, hypercompetitive marketplace, strength can be beaten by speed and we worked on such as 'inertialessness' to sustain our ability to respond to the pressures of all stakeholders, including customers, competitors, partners and shareholders. This meant getting closer to all of them and developing competencies to up our game on all fronts. I understand not publishing a roadmap, yet there surely must be plans of some kind, even if the longer term is simply the directionality of intent or vision. In such schemes focus, flexibility and speed are essential. The current Covid context has caused many rethinks, especially in lean value chains where single supplier limitations can break the whole operation. Words like resilience and robustness are making a comeback.
  6. Interesting story, including that it was psychologists who found the usability defect. In the quality field, there's an approach called 'Poka yoke', which means 'mistake-proofing', plus a whole psychology of error, eg in Reasons' work. It's impressive that you've hired UX pros and shows a true appreciation of its importance. In my career I drifted from tech to psychology, partly because that's where most problems happen and partly because it appealed to my engineer's determination to get to the root of things. It's a field which has developed hugely over the past half century, going from such as rats in a maze to a business essential. The marketing equivalent of UX-led design is branding, where how your customers think and feel about you, both in experience and recall, drives plans and actions. Again, it is often misunderstood and underestimated. This is a bridge where tech and marketing people can meet. I worked on both sides of the chasm and sometimes wonder how wide the gap remains.
  7. Good questions, though non sequitur. The same question faces all product developers, software and otherwise. In Fred Brooks' famous Mythical Man Month, he talks about the Chief Surgeon approach, perhaps now called Chief Architect or somesuch. One person who holds together the vision, structure and method. This is often needs a loose-tight balancing approach, where integrity and progress is maintained alongside the ability to listen, experiment and explore. The successful Chief could be a dictatorial manager, but is more effective as a servant leader, with a key attribute in wisdom, being able to hear all options and making sound choices for both the short and long term. Photo editing is a highly competitive space and Serif have been very successful in carving out a niche against such as the Adobe gorilla, the Luminar marketing machine and the open source Gimp. I have invested heavily in Affinity, contribute as I can, and have great hopes for their future.
  8. Of course. I suspect the good Serif folk do engage with UX/customers/users before/during/after but I don't know how other than what we see here on the Forum (which I think is really great). I love APh as an integral part of my photographic passion and adopted it after a deep analysis of editing software three years ago. Nothing else comes close, still, (other than Photoshop, where I detest their subscription strategy). I have made suggestions in the forum which Serif have considered and sometimes adopted. Can't see that happening with Adobe. Trying out new features does have a cost and I'd guess Serif already do something internally. Having lived at the code face I can't imagine engineers who don't now and then pull an all-nighter just to say 'Hey, look at this, what do you think?' Perhaps Serif would consider a pre-Beta Alpha programme, where a panel of keen users try out quick hacks to support a rapid feedback and development cycle.
  9. Interesting lifecycle. Thanks! ps. I totally agree with the importance of UX. Back in the 20th century (in 1980s HP), we had a usability lab with cameras trained on people using our software. It was called things like 'Human Factors' then. Quality was defined as 'FLURPS+', or Functionality, Learnability, Usability, Reliability, Performance, Supportability, plus whatever else made sense. We also consulted with Barry Boehm and used variants of his spiral development model. I got to present papers at several of the global software development conferences where such luminaries appeared. I'm still friendly with Tom Gilb and go to his annual private conference.
  10. Darn. He noticed. Still good reasons to offer it, particularly that it's easy to implement and use. Start with HSL option and extend when CSS4 adopts it. Here's another proposal: Implement 'trial' features in Betas. Ring-fence the code and flag as 'what do you think'. Then listen to opinion and decide.
  11. Proposal: Implement the HWB colour model Why: It's easier to understand than HSL or HSV It is simple and intuitive in use (see CSS4 page below) It has less problems, such as 'extrema' issues (see Alvy paper below, and black issue here) It is easy to calculate It is a standard in CSS4 How: Preferred: as parallel to other colour models, HSL, CMYK, etc Alternative: just as extra option in HSL control, similar to HSV (probably easier to implement) Perhaps: Start with alternative and assess reaction Do not remove HSL or HSV as these are familiar to many References: Alvy's original paper on the subject W3 CSS4 standard
  12. The calculation of saturation, and that at just off-black, saturation varies significantly. Hence if you are investigating a dark part of the image, the saturation values are unhelpful.
  13. Fair comment. Maybe I was mixing 8 bit with 0..1 or it was just too early (insert appropriate excuse here). But then it's ratios, so rescaling to 0..1 and still S=(max-min)/(max+min): min=0, max=0.01, S=0.01/0.01=1 min=0.01,max=0.02, S=0.01/0.03=0.33 Mmm. Issue remains. For interest I did a spreadsheet map of max vs min with saturation calc, 0.01 steps, and conditional formatting as attached, with red=1, yellow=0.5 and green=0 (also as jpg for visual). You can see the issue discussed down and near the left hand axis. Practically, it causes problems when you create a saturation map from an image in order to mask other effects. saturation calc max vs min.xlsx
  14. Thanks @thomaso. I suspect it's in the L<.5, S=(max-min)/(max+min) formula, if AP is using this, so: min=0, max=1, S=1/1=1 yet a rapid change in S happens with small changes in values min=1,max=2, S=1/3=0.3 The underlying issue seems to occur any time when min=0, as min=0, max=n, S=max/max=1 In other words, what defines a 'saturated' colour in this case is not the colour range but whether the minimum is 0. The defining algorithm at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSL_and_HSV#From_RGB catches the case where max=0 to prevent a div0 error, but does not address the issue where min=0. To catch this, presumably some threshold needs to be defined, which may then also need some kind gradient to cloak sudden transition effects.
  15. Set up a shape or fill layer you can change easily with RGB sliders. Get up the Info panel and set to show HSL. Now: RGB=0,0,0, Saturation = 0% RGB=1,0,0, Saturation = 100% RGB=1,2,0, Saturation = 100% RGB=1,2,1, Saturation = 25% In other words, a tiny change in RGB makes saturation go all over the place, which can be something of a pain. So if saturation is a measure of distance from grey, it seems it should have the same effect on alternative inter-RGB distances, yet the same gaps here give more expected results: RGB=50,50,50, Saturation = 0% RGB=51,50,50, Saturation = 1% RGB=51,52,50, Saturation = 2% RGB=51,52,51, Saturation = 1% Which raises the question of where all the dark confusion starts. So trying just above zero RGB=10,10,10, Saturation = 0% RGB=11,10,10, Saturation = 4% RGB=11,12,10, Saturation = 9% RGB=11,12,11, Saturation = 5% This makes sense, so it seems the chaos only happens very close to black. I suspect this is an algorithmic thing. I am hence wondering: Wwhat algorithm is used Whether the same effect is seen in PS What alternatives there might be (such as in the Wikipedia page on colourfulness) What arguments there are for the various alternatives. Thanks!
  16. Good grief. I didn't know that. Thanks, Walt! You learn something new every day.
  17. Real estate (if you'll pardon the American term) on a screen is at a premium, and being able to say 'make this smaller for now' is useful. This can be particularly applied in the right-hand panel groups where, for example, you can easily run out of visual space for layer. A simple solution to this is to allow panel groups to be collapsed with a single click. The top left corner of panels currently doesn't seem to be in use. This would be an ideal place for a little triangle. Collapse the group but still show the panel tabs so clicking any one will open it up again. You could even have it so that when you open a collapsed group by clicking the tab (rather than the top left corner) and then click away or on another panel group, the temporarily opened group collapses again. Or even do this with a hover. Thanks!
  18. New image. Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V. No problems, copy made. Works fine in other situations too. New image, Live Procedural Texture layer. Select original pixel layer. Crash. Note: Needs PT layer as child. Tried it with other filters which worked ok. Tried adding content to PT, still crashed. Affinity Photo 1.8.5.703. Also happens in 1.9.0.820.
  19. Thanks for the thought, Phil and I would love to do this, but... I've written a few books in the past and know how much work it is. There just aren't the hours in the day. While retired from office jobs, I live on a smallholding where we try to grow as much of our own food as possible. And then there's all the other stuff, from family to local voluntary work to web stuff. And photography, of course. I do still occasionally write -- I agreed to write a book for a publisher friend a couple of years ago, and it's just about done, which means I can now hopefully return to a couple of other books I have half-written.
  20. It would be great if the Customise Toolbar allowed the creation of buttons to do things buttons don't currently do, like access menu items. Offer a basic set of button designs and/or allow the user to load their own bitmap. Even better, let custom buttons kick off macros. So much easier than getting the library up (which occupies significant screen real estate) and searching for the specific macro. And even allow adding of new toolbars... Thanks!
  21. I've spend the Summer indexing all 550+ YouTube videos on Affinity Photo I've done via my InAffinity channel. This includes web pages (in my ChangingMinds website) for... ...every video, including brief notes and links to categories (effectively 'tags') in which it is included ...each category, with links to every video in that category ...a list of every video, by date of publication The online InAffinity index is here: http://changingminds.org/disciplines/photography/affinity_photo/inaffinity_video_index.htm The video describing the index is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L7ZciRiO3M
  22. <tiptoes away> I did claim confusion. However, I have confidence the good Serif folks will fix what needs fixing.
  23. Cheers, though a bit confused now as @Jowday said origin top left is as used by PS. Happy with whatever is 'right'.
  24. For my YouTube InAffinity channel, it's more accurate to say 'enter x and y' than 'move shadows up a bit' (though the latter is also appropriate when communicating this intent). Also useful when I'm making personal notes about 'recipes'. I didn't see it in the release notes. I just noticed it, perhaps because it was already on my wish list. Good point about the ruler.
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