PhotoLine UI Icons Customization Project

[Martin Huber]

But later seems i found the source of problem. I need click to Color, select Document tab, and select black color to defive "Foreground" color.

There are 2 recommended ways for adapting icons to black UI:
- using the document colors "Foreground" and "Background"
- adding " !" to its name(e.g. "17031 !"). This way, only the alpha channel of the icon is used for drawing. The color is chosen automatically based on the background. This is useful for icons, that are used on different backgrounds (e.g. the eye icon in the Layer List, which has to work with bright UI, dark UI and bright/dark selection colors).

MArtin

[shijan]

Beta 8:
- Improvements in PicturesSimpleUser.pld file structure. Fixed strange size and scale shifts of many (but not all yet) layers and groups.
- Some basic Apple Symbols icons where replaced with pixel perfect custom drawn vector icons.
- Removed badges from Adjustment filters icons. (badges for Adjustment layers now based on virtual copies. Easy to enable or disable badges in PicturesSimpleUser.pld file in one click)
- Removed badges from Lists and Panels icons.

[shijan]

beta 9:
Fixed some icon sizes in Presets and Levels.
Seems these icons are special. They use "10002 Einstellungen" and two it's virtual copies "38298 IDS_PRESET" and "18788" and scale all 19x19 vector icon area to 16 px size. Seems it was chosen to align it with UI buttons elements. I keep "10002 Einstellungen" at 19 px size for best visual appearance.
Things looks better now but still a lot of inconsistency in Levels Adjustment compact window. This is all because random places use different align logic. Hope it could be fixed in future with UI code and all elements, icons and buttons will fit and align to native 13/15/17/19 px.

As a more real life solution for this problem i can suggest developers don't mix gear (and other) icon sources:

1. Use "10002 Einstellungen" source ONLY for 13/15/19 px icons (for menu and global icons toolbar).

2. Use separate Einstellungen icon source or virtual copy for 16 px (for Adjustment Layer Windows, Presets, Curves, Levels, (similar as "38298 IDS_PRESET" and "18788")

3. Use separate Einstellungen icon source source or virtual copy for Tiny Adjustment Layers toolbar (similar as 200074, 200073, 200071 IDP_COLORPICK_TITLE)

[Juan]

Amazing job you have been putting together and finding those inconsistencies among all the icons, I hope the developers takes your input into consideration.

I have a question though, all the icons that you have been making are from scratch or are they copied from some other source?

[shijan]

Icons are from mixed sources. Tools icons and cursors are extracted from Photoshop (for temporary personal test purposes only). They are raster based images. They should be redrawn in future in vector with slightly changed shape to avoid direct copy copyright issues.

Other icons are vector based SF Apple Symbols. I guess it is ok to use them in app without any copyright issues.
https://www.avanderlee.com/swift/sf-symbols-guide/
"SF Symbols were introduced during WWDC 2019 and are a big present for us developers. Apple basically gave us free symbols to use in our app and it’s even really easy to use them as well! With SF Symbols 2.0 being introduced in WWDC 2020 we’ve got even more possibilities to show beautiful icons in our apps."
"SF Symbols is a set of over 1,500 symbols that you can use in your app. They’re aligned and configurable in a wide range of weights and scales to adapt to your designs. As they are integrated into the San Francisco system font they automatically ensure optical vertical alignment with text for all weights and sizes."

SF Apple Symbols cover really large amount of symbols but many specific icons are not perfectly align to pixel grid and looks too blurry on non-retina displays. So i redraw some icons manually with PhotoLine vector tools to provide crisper look:

[Juan]

Thank you for the info. It looks really nice.

Have you updated the link with your latest icon beta? I would like to test it on my computer.

[shijan]

always updated

[Juan]

Awesome, will try them.

[shijan]

Just uploaded beta 10 icons pack specially for PhotoLine 22.40b10
In 22.40b10 "Offset" slider and little arrow near "Text Register" no more share the same icon source (200005 IDP_OFFSET), so Exposure controls now look pretty:

[Juan]

I really like how your icons looks on my dark theme.

Capture.JPG

But I'm not a fan of the Crop tool cursor, is oriented for vectors and not for cropping. Could be possible to get an alternative for it?

[shijan]

Did you mean crosshatch Crop cursor? It is original PhotoLine cursor, pretty basic and precise. Why change it? I changed mostly only bizarre and not too precise vector drawing cursors like hummer and pliers. (to be honest i respect the concept of hummer and pliers, it was a real fun to use it at first time, but in reality it is just not too precise and not too practical concept)
Cursors are not too simple thing to change because each cursor use specific center of the pointer hardcoded to app, so if you want to change crosshatch to pointer, you need to move new cursor inside frame. Different cursors are visually interconnected one with other to provide smooth transitions from one cursor to other, so you need to change positions of all other cursors as well. If different cursors are not well aligned you will see shifts/twitches during cursor change and will lost precision during work.

[Juan]

I meant this one:

Capture.JPG

And this is the cursor I get when I enable the Crop Tool (I had to take a picture with my phone).

Cursor.jpg

[shijan]

That is strange bug. I didn't put that cursor for Crop tool. Maybe some difference in cursors specific to Windows?

[Juan]

I have absolutely no idea. I reverted back the original PL cursors and everything is fine, so there should be something in your cursors file on Windows specifically.

[Martin Huber]

That is strange bug. I didn't put that cursor for Crop tool. Maybe some difference in cursors specific to Windows?

Yes, that is a problem on Windows. We will check that.

Martin