Latest Aperture update - all icons on toolbar now grey

Colour reinforces the symbolism for the majority of normal sighted people and just makes life more beautiful.

We are discussing clashing goals in this thread, it seems.

1. Icons that we can easily recognize and quickly, easily find
2. and icons that do not offend the artistic eye.

I don't think this can be solved, without the user being given a choice, depending on the task at hand.

• ad 2: The border of icons around the main editing/working area acts and looks like a picture frame, and I understand that an artist wants to appear each image in a frame that suits the image, i.e. when adjusting colours nothing should distract from the colours in the image; this is most important in the full screen view when adjusting an image or when testing a slide show or proof reading a book.
• ad 1: Aperture has two sets of icons with different navigational needs:
  • The icons in the toolbars and panes appear always at exactly the same place. You can access them by memorizing their position on the screen and their design is less important.
  • The icons in the library inspector are less static. We continually add new items and keep rearranging them. And here I really, really need color to quickly find the folders, albums, projects I want. On my 17" MBP display these icons are so tiny, that it is very hard to tell the type of a library item from the grey icons, they are all small rectangles; to be able to recognize them quickly, I have to reduce the resolution of the display considerably and loose image quality this way - somewhat counterproductive - why should I be lugging around a large laptop computer with a large screen, if I keep reducing the screen resolution.

So I prefer to have the icons in the library inspector to have a light colored tint, and all the other icons that mainly apear in the editing toolbars and panels to be very unobtrusive - here I do not mind a grey design at all.

Regards

Léonie

"Why" is because Aperture is a professional image management application. I agree that the ability to switch between color/monochrome would be very desirable.

Color anywhere on the display(s) affects the color perception of images on the display(s). I for one think that for a professional image management application available monochrome for the app is much preferable, even mandatory.

Personally I strongly congratulate the Aperture team for the move to monochrome. I suggest that folks who like to have color on the app itself request an option to apply color to the app. Best would be a color on/off toggle so we could have a professional monochrome workspace for editing but switch to color for organizing.

Just my 02.

-Allen