ACDSee Pro 3

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Changing Display Scheme

(22 posts)

Started by Rand
Started on September 29, 2009 - 12:34 AM (1 month ago)
Latest reply from Laurent (2 weeks ago)

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Rand
Member

Is there any way to change the display scheme?
The default black is rather harsh on the eyes and I find it uncomfortable for prolonged use. I don't see the options that 2.5 had in this regard.

Posted On September 29, 2009 - 12:34 AM (1 month ago) (Permalink to this post)
QuBe
Focus Group

Rand said:

Is there any way to change the display scheme?
The default black is rather harsh on the eyes and I find it uncomfortable for prolonged use. I don't see the options that 2.5 had in this regard.

You can change the Pro 3 colorscheme to anything you like, as long as it's black.

In other words, ACDSee 3 doesn't offer the same range of UI colorschemes options as in 2.5.
Not the way I'd like it either, but the topic has been voiced by many here on the board...

QuBe

Posted On September 29, 2009 - 02:31 AM (1 month ago) (Permalink to this post)
Eric
Member

No, I do not think you can change the display scheme of the main window. It is not an option anymore in this version...The only color option remaining seems to be the background color of the picture edit page...this one is customizable.

Posted On September 29, 2009 - 02:34 AM (1 month ago) (Permalink to this post)
cr1t1c
Member

Take a quick look http://community.acdsee.com/forums/topic/well-done-1 if you don't mind...

Posted On September 29, 2009 - 07:15 AM (1 month ago) (Permalink to this post)
grahcom
Member

The default black background in Pro 3 sure is hard on the eyes. Much prefere the old original Pro (8.1) colors.

Posted On September 29, 2009 - 08:52 AM (1 month ago) (Permalink to this post)
Toaster
Member

If black backgrounds are so good why don't any web sites use them? Answer - because it painfull to to look at and depressing!!! Give us the option to have a light colour scheme- Please.

Posted On September 30, 2009 - 11:30 PM (1 month ago) (Permalink to this post)
tv-tirl
Member

I hope this version is very much more stable, as we're being asked to put up with an inferior colour scheme [as has been mentioned before - depressing and difficult to read] as well as a slideshow presentation that has an ugly, unscaleable control and web templates that haven't been updated since the beginning of time!

Posted On October 1, 2009 - 07:22 PM (1 month ago) (Permalink to this post)
Orionizer
Member

I can't believe they would take something so simple out of the finished product - this is not a hard thing to implement and, since it had ALREADY been implemented in 2.x, why take it out?

Hopefully, there will be a patch to address this shortcoming.

Posted On October 2, 2009 - 03:04 PM (1 month ago) (Permalink to this post)
emem
Member

I have to add my voice to the call to bring back colour choice in the GUI of Ver 3.0 - I'm using the trial version now, after using the beta version and I don't like it one bit. I'm actually at something of a loss to figure out why they would remove such a simple and almost universally available user control. Seems like a glaring omission to me. C'mon ACDSee - give us back the colour scheme adjustment.

Posted On October 11, 2009 - 10:18 AM (1 month ago) (Permalink to this post)
Philip Weir
Member

Whilst using 2.5 I always had the colour scheme set the same as 3.0 is now. Seeing all the complaints I thought I'd switch back to 2.5 and try the other colour schemes. I wish I hadn't bothered. The other schemes (Windows, Light, Medium) are just simply horrific. Now, if there were a way to design one's own scheme that would be good.

Posted On October 11, 2009 - 11:05 AM (1 month ago) (Permalink to this post)
LV_Bill
Member

Phillip Weir said: if there were a way to design one's own scheme that would be good

Design your own - that would be terrific, and actually not that far-fetched. Have you seen the configurability options of the Develop and Edit controls? Very nice.

Many people prefer the black color scheme. However, it is a "high contrast" color scheme which was originally intended for visually impaired users. Moreover, prolonged use by people with normal vision can cause eye strain. That's why I prefer Medium. It's the easiest on the eyes (at least, MY eyes).

I think we can all be fairly certain that ACDSee will restore the Browser Display Options. That way, everybody gets what they want. But, design your own? Neat idea.

Posted On October 11, 2009 - 10:58 PM (1 month ago) (Permalink to this post)
Toaster
Member

If white text on a black background was pleasant and easy to read without causing eye strain, all the text based web sites (including this one) and word processors the world over would use it .....they don't because it isn't!!....please give us back the option to have a pale background.....why be a slave to Adobe fashion.

Posted On October 12, 2009 - 12:37 PM (1 month ago) (Permalink to this post)
John Radcliffe
Member

Orionizer said:

I can't believe they would take something so simple out of the finished product - this is not a hard thing to implement and, since it had ALREADY been implemented in 2.x, why take it out?

Yes, this is what I can't understand. Having different colour schemes isn't a feature that some users asked for but which the developers decided against including, this is a feature that already existed in previous versions that they decided to take out.

Now while many users like the black colour scheme (I'm not one), I've not seen any user comment supporting the removal of such choice to fellow-users.

I neither understood nor liked the decision when I first saw it in Beta 1 all those months ago, and that's still the same now. I'm still using v3 despite hating the interface, but I'm not liking it. So at the moment, whenever I don't need the non-destructive editing, I go back to v2.5 and give my eyes a rest. But's that not the ideal workflow!

Posted On October 12, 2009 - 01:20 PM (1 month ago) (Permalink to this post)
Paulgul
Member

As I don't think anyone from the company reads these forums your words are probably wasted. The best way for everyone to make their voice heard is to contact support direct and express your feelings that way. **Perhaps** they may something about it - but there again perhaps they won't.

Posted On October 12, 2009 - 02:12 PM (1 month ago) (Permalink to this post)
paradajz1
Member

Paulgul said:

As I don't think anyone from the company reads these forums your words are probably wasted. The best way for everyone to make their voice heard is to contact support direct and express your feelings that way. **Perhaps** they may something about it - but there again perhaps they won't.

i agree with you

Posted On October 12, 2009 - 02:41 PM (1 month ago) (Permalink to this post)
Philip Weir
Member

John Radcliffe said:

Yes, this is what I can't understand. Having different colour schemes isn't a feature that some users asked for but which the developers decided against including, this is a feature that already existed in previous versions that they decided to take out.

Within the registry there is still a variable to allow different colour schemes. This indicates to me that they did not deliberatly take it out. Rather they may have had trouble implementing it in the new GUI and will re-intorduce it soon. We hope.

Paulgul said:

As I don't think anyone from the company reads these forums your words are probably wasted.

Actually, I do think they read these forums but, maybe, give priority to tech/cust support tickets.

Posted On October 12, 2009 - 10:52 PM (1 month ago) (Permalink to this post)
Marc Sabatella
Moderator

A few random observations:

- ACDSee personnel *do* read the forums, but there is no guarantee that every single post will be seen by the "right" people. If you ever have comments you wish to specifically direct at ACD, you should contact customer support, not (just) post here.

- While it's true that white text on black blackground isn't great for large amounts of text, black backgrounds are considered by many to be very good for presentation of photos, and that is of course what ACDSee is mostly doing. i personally wouldn't want any other background color, but if a choice of text colors were offered, I'd probably give a shot. i don't personally see a problem with the color scheme as is, but recognize that others do, so I totally support the idea that whatever engineering effort it takes to add back the customization is probably worth it. Maybe let people simply choose their own colors for each of the various elements if the folks at ACD have trouble coming up with schemes they think will work well.

- FWIW, in the days before the web, or graphical UI's in general, light colored text on a black background was indeed very common. Your choices for text color were generally amber or green, and you made that choice when you bought your monitor :-)

- I would assume the fairly radical change to the overall UI has something to do with the removal of the color schemes. That is, they didn't remove them because they had nothing better to do, but presumably, because re-implementing the color schemes in the new UI would have been too much work.

- My sense is that this decision was not made lightly. i suspect people the developers anticipated there would be some negative reaction, but probably underestimated it.

Posted On October 12, 2009 - 11:10 PM (1 month ago) (Permalink to this post)
John Radcliffe
Member

Marc Sabatella said:

- While it's true that white text on black blackground isn't great for large amounts of text, black backgrounds are considered by many to be very good for presentation of photos, and that is of course what ACDSee is mostly doing.

I take your point, and in View mode I'm happy with a black background when my images don't fill the screen. I can also live with the colour scheme in Process mode, but it's in Manage mode that I have problems, because there is a lot going on and there is just SO MUCH black. Part of the problem for me is that I am frequently working with a number of programs in the same session, and most of the others have a light background (to represent paper) and I find the contrast on switching very hard on my eyes. If I only ever used ACDSee, or just used it in any given session, then I might find the dark colour scheme easier to live with.

- FWIW, in the days before the web, or graphical UI's in general, light colored text on a black background was indeed very common. Your choices for text color were generally amber or green, and you made that choice when you bought your monitor :-)

Yes, I'm old enough to remember those days. Recently I visited a blog which had green text on a black background. Although I found the content interesting, the format made reading it very hard going, so in the end I copied it all into a Word doc. Unfortunately, I can't do that with Manage mode.

Posted On October 13, 2009 - 12:56 PM (1 month ago) (Permalink to this post)
LV_Bill
Member

John Radcliffe said: in View mode, I'm happy with a black background......I can also live with the colour scheme in Process mode, but it's in Manage mode that I have problems.

Extremely important point. Let me add to this that I have always intentionally set my viewing background color to black. So, the issue here is the white text on black background in Manage, and the hard to read grey text on the drop-down menus. I hope they understand that.

Posted On October 14, 2009 - 03:35 PM (1 month ago) (Permalink to this post)
Laurent
Member

One more voice for the "petition" against the mandatory black background in version 3. I hate it, I already did not like it in the past, but I had the option to change it. Now I'm sure not to change my trial version by a registered one, I'll rather keep the 2.5.

In another post (http://community.acdsee.com/forums/topic/black-background), spstudios says that after upgrading from a previous version, he has kept his previous grey background. May it be that the background color is now an hidden option that can still be changed through a key in the registry ?

Posted On November 4, 2009 - 10:00 AM (2 weeks ago) (Permalink to this post)