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Posted

Using Dark Mode, I find it very difficult to see which is the active tab when I have a few photos open; I close the wrong tab too often. It's much clearer in Light Mode, but I otherwise prefer Dark Mode.

Is there any way to preferably lighten the active tab background, or perhaps change the text colour of the active tab. I have played around with the User Interface Grey & Gamma sliders to no avail.

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Posted

Hi HenryG,

There is no way to do this at the moment so I will move this thread to the feature requests section :)

Thanks
C

Please tag me using @ in your reply so I can be sure to respond ASAP.

Posted

@henryg, there have been numerous complaints about the contrast in various UI elements being too low, starting with the very first release of Designer years ago. What we got in response to that was the Light UI, but it really does not address the basic problem.

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Posted
5 hours ago, henryg said:

s there any way to preferably lighten the active tab background,

I'd prefer it the other way. I use the dark mode, active tools, active buttons & inactive image tabs have black backgrounds, it's inconsistent

UIblackbackgrounds.jpg

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Posted
2 minutes ago, David in Яuislip said:

I'd prefer it the other way.

I don't much care which way it is done. As long as there is enough contrast in the backgrounds of selected/enabled tools, buttons, & tabs vs. the unselected/disabled ones to make it easy to tell what is & is not selected/enabled then I would be happy.

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Posted
3 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I don't much care which way it is done.

Neither do I but it should be consistent. With advancing years I struggle to see if a button is down or up

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Posted

<old man rant on>

Over the last several years the entire Graphic User Interface concept has been rethought and redesigned by people who are trying to be relevant. Consequently it is full of sound and fury.

<there is no off mode>

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.6 
Affinity Designer 2.5.7 | Affinity Photo 2.5.7 | Affinity Publisher 2.5.7 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

Posted
2 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

<there is no off mode>

ha ha, I don't have one either

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Posted
10 minutes ago, David in Яuislip said:

Neither do I but it should be consistent.

I agree that it should be consistent, but even if it is not the difference between active & inactive buttons & other UI elements must be distinctive enough to be clearly discernible at a glance.

10 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Over the last several years the entire Graphic User Interface concept has been rethought and redesigned by people who are trying to be relevant.

I think it is more that these people too often fail to understand what is most relevant to the majority of users.

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Posted
6 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

What happened to 'old' tool palettes with a blue bar, showing you that it is a palette and not part of the palette?

I am not sure what you mean by that. Where was the blue bar & how did it show that a palette is not part of (a different?) palette?

EDIT: Also, do you mean the Tools panel specifically or the various UI panels in general?

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Posted
2 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

It is absolutely clear that the blue bars are palettes/floating windows/whatever you want to call them, and are not part of the palettes/floating windows themselves.

Thanks for the clarification. I would not mind something like that but I suppose it would not work well with the monochromatic iconography option in Affinity.

But all I really want is higher contrast in the background but that seems too much to hope for, at least in the 1.x versions.

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Posted
1 hour ago, David in Яuislip said:

inactive image tabs have black backgrounds, it's inconsistent

But it's consistent with panels tabs, at least in part.
The panels tabs are relatively easy to understand with the same background color (dark = inactive panel), which is due to the fact, that the active panel has a highlighted description, which clearly highlights it compared to inactive panels.
The description in Image tabs, on the other hand, is highlighted even in an inactive window, which greatly impairs readability. At the same time, it would be enough to do it consistently with the toolbars.

 

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Posted
12 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

it seems to be a modern thing to make mono GUIs

For graphics programs, color neutrality of the work environment is a required condition for correct and unaffected work with color.
In my opinion, it has nothing to do with modernity - this is how it has been used for decades.

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Posted
13 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

The panels tabs are relatively easy to understand with the same background color (dark = inactive panel), which is due to the fact, that the active panel has a highlighted description, which clearly highlights it compared to inactive panels.

I am not sure if it is the same on Windows but on Macs the active document tab's name is not highlighted as brightly as in other parts of the UI (like for Studio panel names) so this is yet another place where there is not much contrast between the name of the active document  tab & the name(s) of any inactive ones.

9 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

This is basically my 'complaint', that monochrome everything may look nice but it is also less clear.

I think this is not so much about looking nice as the idea that color in the UI of graphics apps can be distracting, interfering with evaluating & selecting color choices in the work.

I am not sure I believe this is a major concern but if it is, it is easy enough to toggle off & on the whole UI when needed.

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Posted
4 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

For graphics programs, color neutrality of the work environment is a required condition for correct and unaffected work with color.
In my opinion, it has nothing to do with modernity - this is how it has been used for decades.

Colour neutral can still have contrast.

Not just a choice between Extremely, Very and Quite Dark/Light.

But those three and bits of Middle and occasionally the opposite from the overall theme.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.6 
Affinity Designer 2.5.7 | Affinity Photo 2.5.7 | Affinity Publisher 2.5.7 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

Posted
4 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I am not sure if it is the same on Windows

Both cases are displayed in the referenced thread.
But because it is more than three years old, I measured the highlighting in the new version of ADesigner.
Text in active Panel title R/G/B=240, text in inactive Panel title R/G/B=180.
Text in active Image title R/G/B=240, text in inactive Image title R/G/B=240!

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Posted
7 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

Sorry, I mean to ask: what do you mean exactly? A screen shot would be useful.

For example: 2066214714_viewmode1.jpg.6ef31db5fb07bbc340d2122f1c513b50.jpg  426225508_Viewmode2.jpg.f44840e1f123ccdcbdebfa8c40e0b08a.jpg can you tell at a glance which view mode is selected?

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Posted
1 minute ago, LondonSquirrel said:

Indeed I have to look to see it. It is not a glance.

It is very easy for me not to notice which (if any) item is selected unless I look carefully directly at that item. That takes time, not much, but it is enough to distract me briefly from what I want to focus on, which is the document, not the UI.

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Posted
10 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

Both cases are displayed in the referenced thread.
But because it is more than three years old, I measured the highlighting in the new version of ADesigner.
Text in active Panel title R/G/B=240, text in inactive Panel title R/G/B=180.
Text in active Image title R/G/B=240, text in inactive Image title R/G/B=240!

I am sorry but I don't know if by "Image title" you mean the name of a document tab or something else. In the Mac versions, the name of the active document tab is not as bright (or as large) as text elsewhere in the UI, nor is it much brighter than the inactive tabs. This contributes to the difficulty in telling if I am selecting another one or just clicking on the already active one again.

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Posted
59 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

Not true. Illustrator and Photoshop and Corel and so on for years had GUIs like the one I showed examples of. Not decades. Maybe a decade. But not decades, that's simply not correct.

I first encountered a dark and colorless/unobtrusive/non-contrasting workspace in Photoshop Elements 6.
image.png.9c1380437c859ac1082df5a1cfeee0d8.png

But I think it was already used in PSE5, which was released in 2006, 15 years ago.

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Posted
25 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I am sorry but I don't know if by "Image title" you mean the name of a document tab or something else.

The Image title can be seen in the image at the beginning of the forum (David), see the Active Image arrow.

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Posted
1 hour ago, Pšenda said:

The Image title can be seen in the image at the beginning of the forum (David), see the Active Image arrow.

That is what I would call the document title (either the name it was saved with or "<Untitled>" if it has not been saved). In the Mac version (at least in mine) those names are dimmer (less white) & smaller than the other UI menu/panel/etc. names; titles, or whatever you want to call them. The selected (active) tab is brighter (closer to white) than the inactive ones, but not by much.

1 hour ago, Pšenda said:

I first encountered a dark and colorless/unobtrusive/non-contrasting workspace in Photoshop Elements 6.

FWIW, there are multiple colored UI elements in your screenshot (like the icons & 3 buttons in the top row & 2 of the tool icons on the left).

I used to use the Mac version of PSE 6 & IIRC it looked very similar, although there might have been a monochrome option I don't remember using.

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Posted
1 hour ago, R C-R said:

FWIW, there are multiple colored UI elements in your screenshot (like the icons & 3 buttons in the top row & 2 of the tool icons on the left).

I used to use the Mac version of PSE 6 & IIRC it looked very similar, although there might have been a monochrome option I don't remember using.

As in Affinity, including Greyscale icons.

The purpose of the demonstration is not to show an optimal/perfect working environment, but that "mono GUIs" is nothing new or some a new fashion trend.

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Posted
14 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

The purpose of the demonstration is not to show an optimal/perfect working environment, but that "mono GUIs" is nothing new or some a new fashion trend.

I guess I am still missing something about what you mean because the PSE GUI you showed is not monochromatic -- it has several colored buttons & icons.

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Posted

Maybe he would like to read the discussion and try to understand the context.
The beginning is roughly here:

23 hours ago, LondonSquirrel said:

This isn't limited to Affinity - it seems to be a modern thing to make mono GUIs.

I guess LondonSquirrel has used the term "mono GUI's" as a category for colorless and non-bright environments in general, because none is full mono (like Affinity, because color controls wouldn't really be very practical in a colorless environment).

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