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[UI ]Tools icons could look more professional and clean (they are quite clip art-ish, legacy of the Serif old products)


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Consider the source of the comments. The negative comments are from PS users that would not use APhoto no matter what the icons look like.

 

If in-app or application icons prevent someone from using APhoto then they are pretty shallow people.

 

I won't use it for other reasons. But I will continue to use AD no matter the icons.

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The comments are addressing the look of the icons not because this would be a decisive factor  that prevents them for using  the  program but as a reaction to the video author own "shallow" manner of reviewing and comparing  the products starting  with this very subject.

 

And one would expect more positive comments from AP users as well considering  this guy channel audience ( I think the most popular out there when comes to AP). Though I dont know how this would be more relevant than those  supposedly coming  mostly from the  firm PS users. One conclusion would be that AP users  dont care or/and some agree that icons could look more professional. 

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Many of the comments have nothing to do with icons. Some are absurd rants about Affinity ripping off PS, some just talk about Adobe's dominance, some even suggest pirating PS to bring its cost to $0.

 

It's typical of YouTube comments -- they are all over the map, often offering personal opinions as if they were facts or representative of some sort of undefined consensus. Much of it amounts to little more than arguments over trivialities most people don't care about. Very little of it is objective or fact based; it is mostly just a few people exercising their egos.

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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A shallow retort doesn't make the criticism universally true. There are users here that have made the switch to AD.

 

Dumb YT videos...which I pretty much categorize all evangelistic videos as...won't advance your argument though.

 

Your argument has merit in and of itself. But in the end, it too is just personal opinion. Just like mine, which is basically that I don't care as long as the functions they describe are clear enough to me.

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Many of the comments have nothing to do with icons. Some are absurd rants about Affinity ripping off PS, some just talk about Adobe's dominance, some even suggest pirating PS to bring its cost to $0.

 

It's typical of YouTube comments -- they are all over the map, often offering personal opinions as if they were facts or representative of some sort of undefined consensus. Much of it amounts to little more than arguments over trivialities most people don't care about. Very little of it is objective or fact based; it is mostly just a few people exercising their egos.

 

obvious ! the video its not about icons  solely. What kind of remark its that !

 

personal opinions or not, presented  as facts or not, its the tendency towards favoring totally other icon style to the current one I wanted to hint here and its not a just a personal fad. Dont know what you expected to find, scientific studies?  Whats the problem with Youtube? where do you expect to observe these tendencies? On proffesional  online mediums like Behance  or Dribble? Well you dont even have to bother. You can take my word that those are " heavens " of the so called " modern design ". Fad or not , its not even a novelty anymore and even if after many years we  will hardly recall what we even liked at it, its here to stay. This is one of the consensus  you  mentioned about, just like PS  doesnt need to be an "official" standard cause its way more than that.

 

 I also  done this while reminding  about a user here asking me to reflect on the number of opinions different than mine (maybe suggesting a little brain check).  My argument didnt  came out just outa nowhere.

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So, you mean something like what Serif did for the icons on the iPad:

 

 

affinity-photo-ipad-mobile-editing-ios-a

 

It would be nice, but in my case, the current colorful icons don't distract nor bother me.

 

Best regards!

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So we are down to suggesting "brain check", ha? Looks like YT comments level has been reached :)

 

I watched the video but I have blocked whole comments section on YT long time ago to keep myself sane. However one doesn't have to dig into that pit full of madness to know why there are many comments about icons. Dude in video mentioned icons as something he likes so they just jumped on this part as they cant really say anything negative about other, obviously positive aspects he mentioned. Low hanging fruit. They couldn't say "hey its better, that in Photoshop you cant see what you are doing!" so they just criticized...icons :D "Maybe my Photoshop needs 10 more click to achieve the same, but you have ugly icoooons! I won! Plus "industry standard, babe! Beat this! Hey mom, I won argument on internet!".

 

Meanwhile I just finished whole bunch of banners on Affinity Photo without even looking at those icons. Have a good one everybody.

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  • 1 month later...

Glad I found this thread!  I've been trying to use Affinity Photo as much as possible since I bought it.  My biggest issue has been the icons all over.  I also have CS6 from work, and despite rendering tits own icons at a much smaller size (lack of scaling to HiDPI), they are MUCH easier to discern and see at a glance than Affinity's much larger, and more colorful icons.  

 

I really struggle with the Affinity ones.  They are difficult to decipher and are also difficult to to just click on quickly.  There is often reasons that massive companies like Adobe, in this case, go with the grey scale/monotone icons, because they are often much easier to read.  Another example of this is Microsoft adding monotone icons to the Settings page in Windows 10.  They are all clearly discernible from one another in both these instances, where in Affinity I have no idea what's what.

 

This is something I hope to see improved.  I am looking forward to the Light UI in the upcoming 1.6 release, since I do prefer that - but I think they are two separate issues.  Not sure why there's so much hostility going on here.

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I know it's a long, heated discussion, but I have to agree with the OP. The icons are more like mini illustrations. I stare at them interpreting what they represent. Icons should be symbolic and immediately identifiable which I believe they are currently not.

 

The monochrome option doesn't solve the problem. In fact, I find it even worse – they actually need their color to be better recognized. When I design a company logo, I start on paper in black and white using a thick, clumsy marker knowing that I can always add color & detail later, but I can't always remove them. These tool icons feel like "show-n-tell" illustrations rather than universally recognized, iconic, symbols.

 

RonnyB created a sample set of flat, B&W icons and posted them here:  

They are phenomenal and exactly what I expect from a professional-grade application like Affinity's suite.

 

And to all those who say the features are more important that the interface, I have to say they need to go hand in hand. This is a basic principle of professional graphic design and the heart of marketing. When I launched both Affinity applications for the first time, I immediately created an initial impression on whether this was going to be a pro tool or a prosumer substitute. The illustrative tools told me prosumer, my efforts to drop Adobe made me stick around and dig deeper into the actual workings of the software.

 

Most of us using these apps are employed in some form of design or marketing. To say that the appearance of the software's interface is irrelevant, is a rejection of the core values of our industries and ourselves.

 

 

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1 hour ago, Stephen_H said:

RonnyB created a sample set of flat, B&W icons and posted them here:

RonnieB's icons look very nice; however his tool icons have a design size of 36 by 36 pixels, whereas the AD Tools Panel allocates only 18 by 18 pixels for each non-retina tool icon. The Mac OS (& I assume it is the same for Windows) does not support vector-based tool & button icons, so for Ronny's to work in Affinity they will need to be converted to 18x18 pixel raster images, & presumably anti-aliased where needed to avoid excessive blurriness. At that resolution, many of the tool icons look very similar & it is no longer easy to see what they all are supposed to represent. An alternative is to double the size of the Tools panel to accommodate the larger icons, but that means less screen space for other things.

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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On 23.6.2017 at 4:59 PM, jcburns said:

I disagree with 'Orphydian.' I'm happy with the simplicity, the subtle use of color of the Affinity Photo icons. They don't at all feel like clip art to me. 

 

IMHO they icons are too detailed, too much similar colors and shapes. They are difficult to see what they really do by themselves by looking at them.

Some are good, some are just confusing and nothing saying. 

And they could be better ones. 

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On 8/9/2017 at 11:25 PM, Stephen_H said:

I

RonnyB created a sample set of flat, B&W icons and posted them here:  

 

 

Can you provide that file into SVG, AI etc format and/or to a bitmap preview  pls ! I might want to check them out and dont have designer installed anymore. Might also want to post them in OP.

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To properly give my feedback to this topic, I will say that the things highest in the market may not always be the right choice. When Windows 8 first came out, they introduced tiles, but it didn't sell. However, they are still pushing them since it is the newer thing. I think a real business is not to compete with the modern world since a lot of modernism is wrong, but to introduce a brand new approach and still stay true to modern times. Competition in many ways lead to problems when it gets too commercialized. Walt Disney himself, however, took quite a risk by introducing a style totally new from his times, and people follow his style to this day. And personally, I am working on promoting a new style myself. I want to bring back 2D animation.

 

So to keep it simple, I say all art varies. It's fine to compete with the modern style, but it shouldn't be an obligation. If any business wants to introduce something new, I say go for it.

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