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Grey User Interface


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There's no light grey interface option, however you can tweak the interface a little going to Affinity Designer -> Preferences, User Interface tab and change the UI Gamma slider.

 

Thank you very much for this info! I'm a newbie to this app, one who has a lot of trouble seeing & using low contrast UI elements, & setting this slider all the way to the right helps a lot with that.

 

From what I can tell, it does not affect the workspace gamma, just the UI elements, so it won't alter the colors of my documents. Is that correct?

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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"Today we have moved Affinity Photo from beta to Release Candidate 1."

 

As my only stated concern hasn't been addressed, this is another version of Affinity I can't use. At all. I'm a migraine sufferer and I can't look at the UI for more than a few moments. Affinity has already triggered one migraine … I won't be risking that again.

 

Last version, I did wear sunglasses to look around … it buys me a little time. I liked what I saw, but couldn't use the software in any meaningful way. Still can't.

 

I wish you guys the best. I wish I could participate.

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  • 2 months later...

I do own Affinity Photo but have to agree with GoCatGo, craigo and charisma that the black interface is really headache inducing. You seem to understand the issue as the colours of your forum here are about exactly right for a long term work environment. Black on white and grey with good contrast.

 

Please create a light interface option (even if it's not adjustable: we don't need sliders and colour wheels and time wasting tweaking, just a simple light interface).

 

Thanks!

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With all respect to those asking for this option, for many (most?) of us, reading black text off the surface of a glaring light bulb all day is about the worst scenario.  This inverse color scheme (black text on a white background) is a vestige of the "desktop publishing" craze of the late '80s/early '90s, which made a failed analogy between a piece of paper and the computer screen.  That analogy is a failure because a piece of paper doesn't emit light (which is why a Kindle is a much better reading device than an iPad).  So users have sat in front of their CRTs with three electron guns going full blast in their faces all day, essentially reading off a light bulb.  And now with LCDs.  I'm very surprised to hear that this wouldn't trigger a headache for you guys, but rather the opposite setup does.

 

The default color scheme for computers before this detour was white text on a dark-blue background, because it was found to be the most legible and comfortable.  In fact, this scheme still exists as a checkbox option in Word ("Blue background, white text").

 

Affinity's color scheme resembles that of other professional art- and image-centric applications, where the color of elements around the image is important because it affects the user's perception of color in the image.  But for you guys, this isn't the greatest.  So your request would best be directed at Apple, which has forced a hard-coded color scheme on its users for 30 years.  Windows (and other GUIs) has let users define their own color schemes for 20 years, where you could configure a light-grey background and dark text that should be honored by all applications.  Application developers on those platforms don't need to do extra work to respect your color choices, except to avoid hard-coding colors in their applications.  They let the OS draw the screen elements using the system-wide colors dictated by the user's color scheme.

 

Apple has forced Affinity and everyone else to hard-code their UI colors, making it impossible to cater to everyone without building a proprietary color-scheme-configuration tool into each application.  That's a shame, especially considering that 95% of the world's computer users enjoy this capability, but not those of the vaunted Apple UI.  By ignoring this situation, Apple ignores the needs of people like yourselves and others with visual conditions that simply can't be served by hard-coded colors.  The GUI is the fundamental component these systems, so when it's hobbled for millions of users by the glaring lack of this function (available for a generation on competing platforms), any marketing about "accessibility" or addressing the needs of disabled users rings hollow.

 

Ask Apple for user-definable system-wide color schemes here, and note that you have a condition that requires this flexibility in order to make productive use of your computer.  Mention that Windows and other systems have it.  Unless users make this an issue for Apple, we have no chance of getting Apple to address it.

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We understand that Apple's policy makes it more difficult for developers to accommodate users with "needy" eyes but Apple is not much for listening to user complaints lately. I guess they listen well enough; it just doesn't change anything.  We'll prolly still be complaining about migraines and achy eyes using Affinity Photo 6 if we have to wait on Apple to change.

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With all respect to those asking for this option, for many (most?) of us, reading black text off the surface of a glaring light bulb all day is about the worst scenario ....

Stokestack,

 

I appreciate what you are saying but please consider the following:

 

1. The Affinity UI tools, border, etc. are just a small part of the workspace. Typically, the screen is dominated by the document we are working on, which may include black-on-white & white-on-black elements, & ones with just about any other color scheme imaginable. That is what we focus on, so the scenario of spending all day reading black text on a glaring background really has little to do with it.

 

2. Apple allows almost complete freedom in the design of an application's UI elements. In fact, in full screen mode Apple's system UI elements are almost completely absent. Almost everything we see is under control of the app developer & easily modifiable, so there is no point in writing Apple about that.

 

3. I cannot speak for anyone besides myself but for me the problem is not the background color of the UI, it is the relatively low contrast among the various grey UI elements, particularly those indicating the status of tools & buttons. Even after adjusting the UI gamma preference, I have to turn up the screen brightness to uncomfortable levels to make it easy to tell which items in the toolbar are selected or active, & of course that increases the overall glare from every light colored element on the screen.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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I don't quite get what every one is moaning about. When I put Illustrator's interface next to Affinity's, they are nearly identical in colour & contrast. Infact, I would say that Affinity is is clearer (or softer on the eye) than Illustrator in nearly every aspect as shown in my compareson screenshots.

 

The main areas of difference I note:

 

AI's rulers aren't anti-aliased

AI's sliders are small and pokey

AI's palette icons are smaller

AI's icons are monotone (personal choice here)

AI's pathfinder icons are smaller and less obvious

AI's Transform corner selector is smaller

 

All these areas have Affinity come up on top, so I don't understand why AI (the industry standard) is considered fine but Affinity is a migraine disaster. (If you want a difficult interface, try Pixelmator – it's pure black to my eyes).

 

I'm not a doctor and don't want to sound insensitive, but if you're suffering from migraines, is it really the interface that's causing this? Aren't ambient light, monitor settings, refresh/flicker rates, flourescent/tungston room lighting, reflections, pixel pitch, distance of monitor from you, contrast between monitor and room background etc not more influential? Have you tried moving your computer around a bit to create a better work space?

 

 

 

 

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Since I don't use Illustrator, or Pixelmator, how Affinity's interface stacks up against theirs is of no import to me.  What does matter is how easy it is for older, less-than-perfect eyes to differentiate between black and really dark gray.  For those not having problems, I'm happy for you.  For those of us who are, we mostly don't need advice to change things that we already know are not the source of our problems with a low-contrast interface.  For what it's worth (which isn't a lot) I actually have Pixelmator and I don't use it, and prolly never will, because of the interface.

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  • 1 year later...

Light text on a dark background can cause eye strain and headaches for many people, regardless of personal opinions about what's a "worst scenario." Many articles have been published about this. It's an accessibility issue, unrelated to age. Please consider providing the option to change the interface. The "UI Gamma" setting doesn't do anywhere near enough to make the interface colors accessible.

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