I need big picture describing all parts of user interface

[towelhead]

I purchased Affinity Photo two days ago. Now I am trying to learn the basics, but I am failing because all free documentation is intended for advanced users only. A few minutes ago I was stuck on something called "context toolbar". I looked it up in free PDF manual (made in 2017 by anonymous author). It mentions "context toolbar" many times, but it does not explain what it is and how it looks. It is obvious that this manual is for advanced users only. Has anyone made BIG, HIGH-RESOLUTION picture describing ALL parts of the user interface? Is this picture posted on the Internet? Has anyone made VERY GOOD commercial ($$$) manual for beginners?

[R C-R]

Among the resources provided are quite a few video tutorials, including a "Basics" section & the Affinity Photo - UI overview tutorial. If you are new to the app watching at least some of these tutorials should help you get up to speed quickly. (If you are in a hurry, go to about 3:45 in the UI overview video where the location & function of the context toolbar is discussed.)

[Przemysław]

You can also search affinity.help – it's good for a quick reference without going into help section in apps. I keep a bookmark on my phone.

[Sara72]

5 hours ago, towelhead said:

‘Context Toolbar’

Its a toolbar under the main static Toolbar (along the top) that changes it context depending on what tool you have selected, basically, a new toolbar with different settings for every tool.

[towelhead]

17 hours ago, R C-R said:

Among the resources provided are quite a few video tutorials, including a "Basics" section & the Affinity Photo - UI overview tutorial.

I watched this video yesterday. Nothing is labelled in this video. Below is good example of the picture all newbies need. (It is user interface of professional CAD program called Rhino.)

 

The web page with description is posted here: https://docs.mcneel.com/rhino/6/help/en-us/user_interface/rhino_window.htm

By the way, how do I delete picture from my post?
 

 

 

Edited October 27, 2019 by towelhead

[Pšenda]

https://affinity.help/photo/English.lproj/pages/Workspace/interface.html

Just click a part of the interface.

Otherwise I recommend Affinity Photo Workbook, there it is described as well, see example:

[walt.farrell]

15 minutes ago, towelhead said:

By the way, how do I delete picture from my post?

If you look at the attachments shown at the bottom of your post while you're composing or editing it, you should find a trashcan icon on each one. Just click the icon to delete that attachment.

[towelhead]

11 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

If you look at the attachments shown at the bottom of your post while you're composing or editing it, you should find a trashcan icon on each one. Just click the icon to delete that attachment.

There are no trashcan icons.

[R C-R]

8 hours ago, towelhead said:

Has anyone made BIG, HIGH-RESOLUTION picture describing ALL parts of the user interface?

Not that I am aware of. That is probably because it would have to be a huge file just to include images of all the Studio panels in each persona (28 panels in the Photo Persona alone), all the tool icons available in the View > Customize Toolbar menu item (113 in the Photo Persona, if I counted correctly), each of the context toolbar's content for each tool, each filter & adjustment window, etc., to say nothing of the accompanying descriptions of each of those items. There are aso around 400 pages in the builtin help system, many with one or more medium sized images.

Trying to fit even a fraction of this into a single image would be almost impossible. For that matter, I can't even find enough space on my 27" monitor to display all the studio panels I would like to have open simultaneously in the app.

[Cecil]

Another beginners guide.

 

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, towelhead said:

There are no trashcan icons.

At the bottom of the post, while composing, you should find an area showing your uploaded images. And in that area you should see a small version of each image, as I show below. I've marked the trashcan in red.

[towelhead]

2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

At the bottom of the post, while composing, you should find an area showing your uploaded images. And in that area you should see a small version of each image, as I show below. I've marked the trashcan in red.

I

There are no trashcan icons on my screen. All I see is shown in the following screenshot.

 

[towelhead]

5 hours ago, R C-R said:

it would have to be a huge file just to include images of all the Studio panels in each persona (28 panels in the Photo Persona alone), all the tool icons available in the View > Customize Toolbar menu item (113 in the Photo Persona, if I counted correctly), each of the context toolbar's content for each tool, each filter & adjustment window, etc., to say nothing of the accompanying descriptions of each of those items. 

I do not believe that all icons have to be included in the same picture. When mouse cursor hovers over an icon, text description of the icon is displayed. This text description is sufficient to identify the icon.

I now believe that at least five big pictures are needed - each picture describing different Persona. All parts of the Persona should be labelled either with text describing its name, or with a number (as shown in the above Rhino interface).

Edited October 27, 2019 by towelhead

[Pšenda]

3 hours ago, towelhead said:

There are no trashcan icons on my screen. 

And this is what?

[towelhead]

4 hours ago, Pšenda said:

And this is what?

Thanks! I deleted one of the pictures, but there are still two pictures in my post. When I deleted second picture, no pictures were displayed in my post.

Edited October 27, 2019 by towelhead

[Pšenda]

1 hour ago, towelhead said:

When I deleted second picture, no pictures were displayed in my post.

Yes, you used the same image twice. Just delete the image with its two instances, reload it, and insert it once.

[Pšenda]

9 hours ago, towelhead said:

each picture describing different Persona.

Did you look at my link?

 

[R C-R]

36 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

Did you look at my link?

I think the OP wants something with callouts, similar to the Rhino page or the Affinity Photo Workbook page you showed. In that respect, the Interface Visual Reference help page you linked to is not as helpful as it could be, in part because when displayed at small window sizes it is hard to find the right spot to hover the pointer to get the context toolbar callout to appear & in part because it does not appear at all when the page is set to show any of the Personas other than the Photo one.

It would also be helpful if the Context Toolbar help page included an image outlining that toolbar as a visual reference, & also mentioned that it can be hidden via the View menu.

[towelhead]

7 hours ago, Pšenda said:

Did you look at my link?

I guess you mean Affinity help file: https://affinity.help/photo/English.lproj/pages/Workspace/interface.html

I looked at it two days ago, but I missed the hint "Hover over any highlighted area to display a tooltip and identify it."

I agree wih R C-R that this "hovering picture" is not good enough. It does not identify document view, different parts of the panels, and many other parts of the user interface. Furthermore, the Affinity terms are confusing: "the panel" may mean "tools panel" and "the toolbar" may mean "persona toolbar". In other words, the panel, not to be confused with tools panels, is located on the left side of the screen, and it has nothing in common with tools panels, except its name.

I have finally found the location of the context toolbar - it is below the toolbar and the persona toolbar. The location is shown in the "hovering picture".

Edited October 27, 2019 by towelhead

[Pšenda]

13 minutes ago, towelhead said:

but I missed the hint "Hover over any highlighted area to display a tooltip and identify it."

Since this is the only text on the page, it's interesting.

16 minutes ago, towelhead said:

and it does not explain where the context toolbar is.

[R C-R]

13 hours ago, towelhead said:

I agree wih R C-R that this "hovering picture" is not good enough.

I said it was not as helpful as it could be, but to be fair it does tell you to hover & that does work ... once you figure out where to hover.

13 hours ago, towelhead said:

It does not identify document view, different parts of the panels, and many other parts of the user interface.

As I mentioned earlier, there is no way for a single page to identify most of the major elements, much less everything available in the UI. For example, the context toolbar content is different for different tools, some of which have their own dropdown panels, & some of those also have their own dropdown panels. Plus, the context toolbar items for some tools are so numerous that they all will not fit on narrow workspaces (window or display) that to see them all users need to click on the ⨠ symbol on the right edge of that toolbar to show them in a popup menu.

The content of some of the Studio panels varies depending on if a 'reveal' triangle is open or closed, & some of the panal options also have popup sub-panels similar to those in some of the context toolbar ones. Fully revealed, some panels are very long, requiring scrolling to see everything on all but the largest displays. The various adjustment & filter windows each have their own layout & while some elements are the same in all of them others are unique to one or a few of them.

This is why there are so many pages in the built-in & online help. It is the only way to cover all of the features, & it still falls short in some respects. Additionally, the help has to support all 10 of the the languages the apps support, & must be updated whenever new features are added to the app. On top of all that, most of the UI can be customized in various ways, so at best the help can cover only the defaults, & some of them may change due to an update.

The bottom line is there are far too many parts to the UI to cover them all in some way similar to what you have imagined.

There are several different ways users new to the apps cope with this, but IMO one of the best is to start by devoting a few hours to trying out some of the tools, paying careful attention to what is available in different parts of the UI & what changes in response to their use. Don't get hung up on anything that you can't figure out -- the idea is just to get a basic feel for how it works. Then open the help & browse through the first couple of sections, skipping over what you have already figured out.

[towelhead]

The following picture describes user interface of Affinity Designer. The user interface of Affinity Photo is almost the same. Menu bar is above Toolbar.