GarryP

Huh, well... would you look at that. You're right Alfred. Shows how little notice I take of what the icons actually are when I'm not really looking at them properly. Monkey clicks where monkey usually clicks. Just goes to show that - for me at least - the actual picture isn't really relevant. Its location in respect to the others could be more important. E.g. If you want Paste, click the one that's two away from the one that you normally click for Cut. Or something like that. I'm sure paste used to be a glue pot at some point in the past. Or am I going potty? (No pun intended.) Paste function, Pot of Paste icon. It makes sense, but was it ever true? Can anyone remember a paste icon that was a glue pot? My memory is quite bad but I'm sure I didn't just make that up. I've a feeling that this memory has come from ancient times - well, late 80's anyway - but I can't find any proof. Damn this ever-changing internet! R C-R: Like it. I've never seen it before, but I don't get out much.

Yup, absolutely. As long as I don't get them mixed up then I'm happy. Making them look like something I can relate to is just a bonus. On a related - but possibly not interesting - note, the first time I saw the crop icon many (many) years ago I had no idea what it was supposed to be. I didn't come from an illustration/publishing background so it made no sense to me. Some weird-looking rectangle with a line going though it didn't match the action I was using it for which was taking part of a picture away. It took me a while to learn what it was about. The same thing goes for cut and paste. We don't use scissors and glue in a word processor but the icons still hark back to a time when that's how documents were put together.

I haven't used Affinity as much as other people so I don't know where would be the best place to put something like this but I think the current menu items should be retained as it makes them easier to find when being instructed. However, an additional icon could be added to the main toolbar in a similar way to the "Arrange" function - without having to OK the changes (which I frequently forget to do) - giving the user a simple check-boxed list of panels. Click the icon to get the list, click on panels to hide/show, click away to hide the list. P.S. The names "Studio" for the whole of the UI and "Panels" for parts of the UI are fine with me. As with others I see no reason for renaming these.

R C-R, I like that quote and I agree with you. As long as the icons give a reasonable idea of what they are for and they are easily distinguishable from each other then that's fine with me. As I said above, my rotation suggestion was just a quick fix rather than wanting to get into some kind of debate about icon design (even though it's been an interesting discussion so far). I like your idea about having a separate thread related to alternative icon sets. They don't even have to be actual icon sets, just a collection of icons displayed in a grid (or something similar). With the artistic skills evident in the forum I'd think some people could come up with some cracking ideas. Could there be a stipulation that only Affinity products should be used to create them? It might be interesting to see what people can create for Affinity with Affinity.

Alfred, you're quite right to point that out. Some people have different writing styles and so their pen may be oriented differently to mine. Maybe the pen was a bad example. As an alternative, I think most people use an eyedropper in pretty much the same way, I.e. with the "business end" of the dropper in front of their hand so they can see what they're doing, and that would have a top-right to bottom-left orientation (for a right-handed person) as the icon shows. Without trying to push this any further than it probably should go (too late? ), the Smudge tool now looks a little odd. I don't think I would ever have my hand in that position to smudge something - it looks quite uncomfortable. Maybe other people would, I don't know, it's not really that important. Anyway, I don't want to take the thread away from its main thrust which was about making the selection brush icon easier to differentiate from the paint brush icon. (Apologies evtonic3.) Maybe someone can come up with a better icon, my suggestion for a rotation was just something simple that could be done quickly - except for changing the documentation of course.

No need to apologise A_B_C, it's my fault really. I should have given the image in the first place and made my point more clearly. I see what you mean about changing the direction of the icon but since the Move, Node, Corner, Dodge, Zoom (and the one in your image that looks like a magic wand) tool icons are all in a bottom-right to top-left orientation I don't think there's too much of a problem with that. A precedent has already been set. I'm all for consistency in the UI but I prefer usability over consistency pretty much every time. For example, if a machine has both a start and stop button that are both the same size and shape and red in colour they might look aesthetically pleasing together but it doesn't help the operator much in figuring out which to use in an emergency. Obviously, icons on an illustration software toolbar isn't an emergency situation but I hope I've managed to get the idea across reasonably well. For icon design, on the rare occasion when I have done any, I try and make the icon look like the tool as it would be in use in my right hand. So, to take two examples, a pen would be oriented top-right to bottom-left - as it would look as if I was writing with it - while a magnifying glass would be oriented bottom-right to top-left - as it would look as if I was examining something. With that in mind, since the selection brush is a "broad strokes" tool - at first use, at least - then it might make sense to orient it bottom-right to top-left in the same way that a paint brush would be if you were using it to paint a fence (or whatever). To think of it another way, you're not selecting things with the tool, you're painting an area which the software uses to figure out what to select. Less "select this", more "select stuff from in here". That's all just my opinion though; I could very easily be talking complete rubbish.

You're welcome misguid3d. I think they look nice as T-shirt designs. However, it might be good to see them overlaid onto some blank T-shirt images, just to get a better feel for how they would look in the real world. Also, I've never had anything printed on clothing before but I imagine there might be issues with how the designs work when draped over an actual human form. For example, the "Blackwood Sinners" version has a very wide logotype which would have to be seen in full across the chest (or back, depending on where it was printed) while the T-shirt was bring worn. This might mean that the whole thing would need to be shrunk to a point where some detail was lost. Also, the top "corner flourishes" (whatever the correct name is for them) might be warped in strange ways across the shoulders and therefore not match-up with the bottom "flourishes", if you see what I mean. It's a bit like designing a flat label to be wrapped onto a bottle; it might look great flat, but on the bottle it might look weird as the viewer can't see all of the label at once. If you really want to model what something will look like in real life then you could look at something like http://www.makehuman.org/but that might be taking things a bit too far. Like I said, I've never done this myself so I could easily be wrong. Maybe something to think about though. P.S. I agree that those rodeo posters are really great. I'd have a big grin on my face all day if I created something that was even just a tenth as good.

Yeah, the Fill Tool is a bit confusing at first. As you say, it defaults to gradients (its keyboard shortcut is "G") and is mostly about gradients but it also offers other options - such as bitmap - as sort of added extras (if you notice them). Maybe this is just a hangover from how the software evolved. As with the Vector Crop Tool, once you find out how to use it properly these strange things become less of a problem but they're not easy for beginners to easily grasp (or discover). I guess it's the age-old problem of: "Do you keep things as they are so the experts can use things the way they're used to, or do you change things around so it's easier for beginners but the experts have to change their ways?" That's very rarely a good position to be in and there's no correct answer. This isn't a modern problem. Motor car controls used to change every time a new design came out until the industry semi-standardised sometime in the 1930/40's (or thereabouts). The Affinity family of products is still very young so there's still a bit of room for change where necessary though. Maybe version 2.0 will bring major changes. Who knows?

You're welcome.

Nice video. I didn't realise that the Vector Crop Tool could also crop raster images. I had assumed - wrongly - that it was a tool for cropping vectors rather than a vector tool for cropping. Having looked at the help files I now see that it can also crop objects and grouped objects. An easy way of cropping almost anything to a rectangle without putting it inside another rectangle object, which is what I learned to do. I think the tool should be renamed as I don't think I'm the only person who will have been confused by this.

They both look really nice. As far as I'm concerned they are indistinguishable from anything I'd see in a magazine or on a billboard. I have no criticisms. I have only one minor suggestion but it seems petty to say it, so I won't (unless persuaded).

A_B_C, actually I suggested rotating it 90 degrees clockwise which would make it look like the attached screen-grab (where I've also re-coloured the brush "handle" to make the difference more noticeable). I think it's important to note this as it keeps all the tools' handles/bases on the same side. This way, the "functional ends" of the tools are all at the same side. It's a little less jarring that way.

I have no issue with the comments given above. The UI needs some tweaks here and there to make various things more consistent while also making other things more differentiable. I think all of the arguments given are valid and more discussion will be a good thing that I am looking forward to reading more about. This is all very interesting and also very important if the Affinity family is trying to draw in users of other products. However, just getting back to the original problem - that of the selection brush being too similar to the paint brush - can I suggest that the selection brush icon be rotated by 90 degrees clockwise? It would still be the same icon but it would look sufficiently dissimilar to the paint brush that the user will be able to more easily spot the difference. A lot of advanced users will probably just use the keyboard shortcuts and not even notice the icons anymore but beginners need to be given a little bit more help, and making the icons look sufficiently different to each other will be useful.

I agree with both evtonic3 and A_B_C; the icons look too similar in 1.5.3 (I don't have the beta so I can't check the light UI but it sounds as though the issue persists across both). I think icons that look significantly different would be better. (I don't think recolouring it would make much difference and it certainly wouldn't in monochromatic mode.) Maybe Serif could ask the users what they think it should look like. A little "design your own icon" competition might be a nice way to get people involved. A quick "workaround" that I've used is to add a divider line both above and below the selection brush to make it stand out more from the other tools. It's not an ideal solution but at least it gives a visual clue that something is different.

Lovely. I like them all but my favourite is the shopping cart one. It certainly goes well with the concept of "make better" but there might be certain health and safety conciderations. :)

This second album cover has the theme of tiles on a floor slowly gliding apart (well, sort of). It's a bit "vertiginous" if you stare at it for a while. As with the first, I didn't have any real reason to create this aside from trying various techniques but if you think any changes need to be made then just tell me. (If I come up with any other abstract covers I'll add them to this thread so I don't pollute the forum with lots of similar threads.)

I thought I would have a play around with some features of AD and try my hand at some abstract art so I started to come up with various album covers (for albums that don't exist, for a band that doesn't exist). This first one is about branes (from string theory) colliding and merging. I'm not entirely sure about the whole thing so constructive comments/critisisms/suggestions are, as usual, welcome. If I get some good suggestions I might make a second version. Colours, fonts, composition, whatever you think is right or wrong, shout up.

Quite simply: Brilliant.

You're welcome It123, I'm glad my comments have helped a little. I'm really not an expert in this area, the things I've learned have just come from experience. Most of what I do with this is just for fun, as a kind of hobby. In case you're interested, I've attached samples of some silly things I did a while back. They're not perfect by any means but my aim was to see if I could add one image into another in such a way that a casual viewer wouldn't notice anything was going on at first. The main photos - I can't remember where I got them from but you can find examples here: http://www.clevelandseniors.com/people/vjday-kiss.htmand http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2405277/Dr-Jesse-Marcel-Jr-claimed-handled-alien-debris-Roswell-crash-dies-reading-book-UFOs.html - were greyscale and of mixed quality and the "interloper" photos were full colour and much higher resolution. Perhaps you could practice on similar sorts of images, trying to blend one with another, rather than trying to get a lot of images working together at the same time. I found that concentrating on getting just two images looking reasonable together was helpful.

I don't have AP so I don't know how easy/difficult it is to do this sort of thing in AP but I've tried similar things in GIMP. I'll throw some comments out into the world and see what you think but please don't take anything I say as being part of an expert's definitive guide or anything like that. They're just things which I've spotted that, if it was my own image, I would try and look at for the next iteration. And I'm not an expert either. I agree with paristo that the edges between elements would look better "blended" in some way. When using multiple images it's usually good to make sure that you have them all at the same - or very similar - resolution. This makes it harder to spot the join and gives the overall image a more consistent look. There's a strange cream-coloured shape hovering over the tree just over the top-left of the second lamp from the left. Probably just a leftover from something else. I like the overall composition by the way. The elements have been added in positions where they look like they belong. If you use stock photos, try not to use ones with a watermark (e.g. the briefcase). I like the "shine" from the lamps but it might look better blurred/modified a bit. The "Heaven Express" text needs to be a little smaller to make it fit into the space you've put it in. Currently it overlaps. Also it might need to be on a very slight angle to match the train. The train seems to be only two-sided. We can see the front and the platform side but the other two sides (and the roof) are missing. They should be able to be seen through the windows. The "Last Will" sign looks a bit too "clean" when compared to the rest of the scene. Could it look a bit more "messy" perhaps? And that's probably more than enough comments from me for now. Like I said at the start of this, I'm not an expert and I might be being a bit too picky since it's your first try at this but I think it's best to be told things like this in the "safety" of a well-mannered and friendly forum than not know about them and get harsher criticisms in the wider world. I'm not criticising simply to point out mistakes, I'm just commenting on some areas that I would look to improve if it was my own work (and if I spotted them, as it's way too easy to get a blinkered view of your own work).

Nice. I only recently purchased AD myself and, apart from it missing some features that would make a real difference, it's so much easier to use than some other software I've had to wrangle with. I don't really have many comments but I would say that each one might look better with some kind of "gunge" background (unless there's a reason for the blank background). Or maybe, for the "Blackwood" one, a dark and/or blurred sepia photo background could do something? Might be worth a try as it's easy enough to do quickly in AD. Also, the "social club" illustration might look better with a mix of fonts. Consider the rodeo examples here http://bobcoronato.com/prints-for-sale/where the artist has "gone nuts" but it works very well. I'm looking forward to seeing more stuff like this as it might give me some inspiration for my experiments.

Thanks Alfred. Seems like a reasonable option.

If we're being picky there are a few places where the shadows aren't as I would have expected but I don't think it really matters. It's a lovely bit of art that looks great. It casts a very large shadow over my own isometric work. (Not sure which emoji to use here. Is there one for "sorry about the bad pun"?)

While not trying to be too pedantic - and not wanting to step on the shoes of users more experienced than me - it's entirely possible to have isometric text that reduces in size over "distance", it just wouldn't reduce in size because of distance. Take the attached screenshot as a crude example. The front projection on the left shows the "normal" view while the isometric projection on the right shows that the text reduces in size both "going away" and "coming toward". In other words, if "thing A" is smaller than "thing B" then "thing A" will still be smaller than "thing B" when projected isometrically. I realise that this probably is me being a bit pedantic but I think it's something worth pointing out. I would suggest that what It123 wants is actually a perspective drawing - as mentioned by Alfred - rather than an isometric projection.

You're welcome. It's worth saying that the quick fix I gave was only applicable because the flower was on a white background. In most cases which concern a flower you would need to have some kind of background to the petals - as petals are not transparent - but the colour would need to be applicable to the subject. I.e. The background colour would need to be one of the colours on the petal. You would probably be best to do all of the painting on the pixel layer - as you have - to achieve a more realistic look as colouring the background layer might result in something that looks less natural (it creates a definite "harsh" edge to the petal which might not look right).