AP: How to know what brush is selected

[casterle]

Is there a way to tell which brush (or other tool) is selected? For tool icons that represent a single tool I can (barely) tell by examining the icons carefully to find the one with the black background (more contrast here would help). But for multi-tool icons I don't see any indication on the screen. Is this something I need to enable?

[walt.farrell]

42 minutes ago, casterle said:

But for multi-tool icons I don't see any indication on the screen.

The highlighting will tell you which tool is selected. For the multi-tool ones, the icon that is showing is the one that is in use.

Adjusting the UI Gamma in Preferences may help you see the highlighting.

[casterle]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

The highlighting will tell you which tool is selected. For the multi-tool ones, the icon that is showing is the one that is in use.

Adjusting the UI Gamma in Preferences may help you see the highlighting.

Thanks. I've got gamma set to min to get better contrast between text and background. Setting it higher makes the selected icon more easily identifiable, but makes text hard to read. It would be helpful if the name of the selected tool were displayed in the status bar.

[Pšenda]

8 hours ago, casterle said:

It would be helpful if the name of the selected tool were displayed in the status bar.

There it will confuse with other information.
A slight highlight of the icon frame would be enough.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Pšenda said:

A slight highlight of the icon frame would be enough.

Since I first began using Affinity Designer in 2014 or thereabouts, I have ranted posted about this low contrast problem, & suggested that either increasing the contrast between tool icon background & the surrounding area on the tool panel or, like you have suggested, a highlight around the selected tool would fix it.

Instead, we eventually got the dark or light UI option, but that has not fixed this issue.

[casterle]

6 hours ago, Pšenda said:

There it will confuse with other information.
A slight highlight of the icon frame would be enough.

It could be displayed on the right side of the status bar, away from the other info which is to the left side. The problem with highlighting the icon is that it doesn't tell you which tool is selected in a multi-tool icon - you have to remember the sometimes subtle differences between the icons. I'd rather have it spelled out.

5 hours ago, R C-R said:

Since I first began using Affinity Designer in 2014 or thereabouts, I have ranted posted about this low contrast problem, & suggested that either increasing the contrast between tool icon background & the surrounding area on the tool panel or, like you have suggested, a highlight around the selected tool would fix it.

Instead, we eventually got the dark or light UI option, but that has not fixed this issue.

It's not just AP. I'm also learning Photo Raw which has the same problem, as do many others. It would be so easy to allow us to choose the background colors on the menu bar, toolbars and so forth. Same with font colors.

[walt.farrell]

5 minutes ago, casterle said:

you have to remember the sometimes subtle differences between the icons. I'd rather have it spelled out.

You need to learn those subtle differences, anyway, or you'll always have to expand the tool icon to pick the tool you want, or hover over it to see which one is currently on top

[casterle]

4 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

You need to learn those subtle differences, anyway, or you'll always have to expand the tool icon to pick the tool you want, or hover over it to see which one is currently on top

How do I avoid expanding the tool icon to pick a hidden tool? Re: learning the different icons I agree that knowing them would be better. Perhaps my upcoming cataract surgery will help. 

[MEB]

Hi casterle,
Go to menu View ▸ Customise Tools.... You can "split" these groups in individual tools dragging the independent versions from the customise tools panel and removing the groups from the toolbar. You can also create different shortcuts for each tool.

[casterle]

1 hour ago, MEB said:

Hi casterle,
Go to menu View ▸ Customise Tools.... You can "split" these groups in individual tools dragging the independent versions from the customise tools panel and removing the groups from the toolbar. You can also create different shortcuts for each tool.

Yes, I have found your excellent customization feature and used it to separate the Pen and Node tools while I was practicing with them. 

And I just discovered that one key is assigned to more than one tool and cycles through them (which answers my question to walt.farrell above). I'd stopped using the shortcuts because they didn't seem to always select the correct tool. That is, the tutorial would tell you to hit the B key to select the Brush tool, but I would get something else. Now I know why!

[MEB]

There's a new setting in the Preferences, Tools section  - Use ⇧ modifier to cycle tools - in the latest Betas to disable that behaviour (cycling through tools and switching between current and last used tool). Tick it to prevent tools from cycling automatically.

[casterle]

On 3/1/2019 at 11:25 AM, MEB said:

There's a new setting in the Preferences, Tools section  - Use ⇧ modifier to cycle tools - in the latest Betas to disable that behaviour (cycling through tools and switching between current and last used tool). Tick it to prevent tools from cycling automatically.

That's useful, thanks.

[casterle]

On 3/1/2019 at 11:25 AM, MEB said:

There's a new setting in the Preferences, Tools section  - Use ⇧ modifier to cycle tools - in the latest Betas to disable that behaviour (cycling through tools and switching between current and last used tool). Tick it to prevent tools from cycling automatically.

On Windows it's called "Use Shift key to cycle tool groups", and it's on the Tools tab in Preferences.

[R C-R]

23 minutes ago, casterle said:

On Windows it's called "Use Shift key to cycle tool groups", and it's on the Tools tab in Preferences.

FYI, in Mac documentation, symbols are customarily used instead of words to indicate modifier keys. See for example this blog post for a list of them (& a link to how the CMD key got its symbol).

You may notice those symbols popping up in some video tutorials since most are done on Macs.

[MEB]

15 hours ago, casterle said:

On Windows it's called "Use Shift key to cycle tool groups", and it's on the Tools tab in Preferences.

Yes, on Windows the label differs a little but it does exactly the same.