Interface colors

[cowdi]

I use several programs and come from (old) photoshop (want to skip it if possible) and photoscape x pro (still great) and just bought Affinity.

Born with limited eyesight I have some trouble with the (dark is favorite) interface. On picture I have a hard time to see what is active or not. Need to move quite close to the screen to see. Checked interface options but can not find anything to make it stand out or highlight a little more to see the difference. Do I overlook something?

Could use a little help.

[Granddaddy]

Welcome to the forums @cowdi

As a new Affinity user you should know that lack of readability is a feature of the Affinity user interface that has been complained about for years. Version 2 made the interface worse. The issue of highlighting is especially annoying. Sometimes a highlight means something is active, at other times what appears to be a highlight means it is inactive.

In learning about Affinity usability problems, you might start with the thread 

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/173835-what-ergonomic-design-principles-call-for-minimal-contrast-and-reduced-readability-in-user-interfaces/

Many new threads on lack of usability keep springing up, for instance those I mentioned at

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/173835-what-ergonomic-design-principles-call-for-minimal-contrast-and-reduced-readability-in-user-interfaces/&do=findComment&comment=1005324

Based on nearly six years of experience with Affinity, I don't expect the user interface to improve. Why this is so is a topic for endless speculation. In the wisdom of our times: it is what it is.

Obviously I have found sufficient reason to put up with the poorly designed interface despite my aging eyes. Perhaps you will also, at which time you can begin to enjoy the power and flexibility of Affinity. 

[cowdi]

On 2/27/2023 at 8:47 PM, Granddaddy said:

Welcome to the forums @cowdi

As a new Affinity user you should know that lack of readability is a feature of the Affinity user interface that has been complained about for years. Version 2 made the interface worse. The issue of highlighting is especially annoying. Sometimes a highlight means something is active, at other times what appears to be a highlight means it is inactive.

Obviously I have found sufficient reason to put up with the poorly designed interface despite my aging eyes. Perhaps you will also, at which time you can begin to enjoy the power and flexibility of Affinity. 

Thank you for reply, I have read the threads. Have adjusted a bit but still feels a bit lacking. Afraid I have to go with it and hope for the better. I am struggling a bit at the start.. fiddling with basic setup. Watching videos on various things are helping out..

[smadell]

Although you may prefer the look of the Dark interface (as I did), the Light interface is far, far easier to work with. Setting the interface to its “high contrast” settings in the Preferences helps quite a bit, too. Like @Granddaddy, I sometimes struggle to make out what’s what in Affinity’s UI. But the functionality of the software prevails, and I (like so many others) soldier on…

[cowdi]

1 hour ago, smadell said:

Although you may prefer the look of the Dark interface (as I did), the Light interface is far, far easier to work with. Setting the interface to its “high contrast” settings in the Preferences helps quite a bit, too. Like @Granddaddy, I sometimes struggle to make out what’s what in Affinity’s UI. But the functionality of the software prevails, and I (like so many others) soldier on…

All my graphics software have dark interface but the light versions I can not get used to although I tried. Back to my struggle oin setting up things. 😄

Edited March 2, 2023 by cowdi
mistake

[Pšenda]

3 hours ago, smadell said:

the Light interface is far, far easier to work with.

Interesting, I've read many posts here that rate the light UI as unusable (has/were bugs) and recommend switching to dark mode.

 

On 2/27/2023 at 3:10 PM, cowdi said:

On picture I have a hard time to see what is active or not.

I have no problem with understanding the pressing of the buttons in the embedded image - the pressed button is always darker because it seems to be in the shadow. Of course, it's the other way around for active tabs, because the top/active tab is always lit, so it's brighter than the inactive one.

[smadell]

18 hours ago, Pšenda said:

Interesting, I've read many posts here that rate the light UI as unusable

In general, the contrast in both the Light and Dark UI's is horrible. Text is hard to read, icons are hard to discern (especially the smaller, monotone ones like the new Layer Type icons), and it's hard to tell what's "on" and what's "off." Perhaps the worst of all (my opinion) is the Link Aspect Ratio lock/unlock icon in the panels which affect a resize, etc. Nevertheless, I  have found that the Light UI (with icons and text that are dark-ish on top of a light-ish background) is easier to make out than the Dark UI (which seems to be medium-to-dark text and icons on top of a slightly darker background). I love the "cool" aesthetic of the dark interface, but I find the contrast levels to be ever so slightly better when I switch to the Light UI.

As they say, your mileage may vary…

[Granddaddy]

1 hour ago, smadell said:

As they say, your mileage may vary…

One day in the 1980s I walked past one of my programmers and noticed her screen seemed almost blank. Was she working or just fooling me by appearing busy? 

She showed me she was working with dark purple and dark blue on the black background. Even when I got close to the screen I could barely discern the characters. And that's when my eyes were about 40 years younger than now. She assured me she could see them very well and preferred those colors to the more commonly used green. 

I took note of the fact there are many ways of seeing. User interfaces ought to be adaptable to suit the needs of the user because no one has yet found a standard user for which a standard user interface will suffice.

Elsewhere in these forums I've written about the ineffective and inconsistent use of contrast in Affinity. I tried the dark interface for a few years in Version 1. I've returned to the light interface because of the downgraded UI in Affinity 2.

[Pšenda]

1 hour ago, smadell said:

In general, the contrast in both the Light and Dark UI's is horrible.

I agree. This was true for the V1 version (see also dozens of posts on this topic), and in V2 version it just got worse.
An incomprehensible step for me.

[lphilpot]

Actually a midtone grey UI will have the least adverse affect on your color perception so technically it's best. For example, the darktable raw photo editor recommends using a mid-grey UI and in fact has a special color assessment mode that's designed to help see color accurately per ISO 12646 recommendations. While that description is about dark UIs, the same thing is conversely true for light UIs.

But it's hard on my eyes since there's minimal contrast with a midtone UI (this screen shot is about as good as it gets):

In Affinity Photo I personally try to split the difference and use a lightened-up dark UI, color icons, etc. I figure the icons and other UI elements are so small relative to the image and UI in general that the easy-reading benefit of their color is greater than any effect they have on my vision otherwise.

[Pšenda]

On 3/3/2023 at 3:27 PM, smadell said:

As they say, your mileage may vary…

It is not only about personal/visual preferences, but about errors (as I mentioned in my post) that complicate the use of the bright UI - see similar posts: