Subject: [Gimp-gui] GIMP Theme UI now and future.

From: "draekko.software" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2015 06:30:40 -0500

There was a recent call sent out for new and updated assets for the next 
version of GIMP (icons, themes mainly) and some of those have started 
rolling in, i've submitted several themes myself and so far one has made 
it in. I was asked to get the ball rolling on the subject, so here it 
goes :) Maybe for starters offer input on the current Dark Theme and if 
there might be interest in a new light & grey theme as well or any other 
suggestions for that matter. You can find the themes here:

Dark Theme
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=759649

Grey Theme
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=759663

Light Theme
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=759648

Alternate Light Theme (Lighter, more color contrast on some items/widgets)
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=759830

The links have screenshots, and 7z files with the theme asset (and the 
dark theme has patches for the gimp crew).

So far i've tested the Dark Theme on KDE(Ubuntu/Plasma), Unity (Ubuntu), 
Windows 8.1 (and wine on Linux), OSX (Maverick) to make sure it had a 
consistent feel across platforms. The only caveats so far were under KDE 
where i had to toggle off the option " Apply colors to non-Qt 
applications" because without that KDE overrides some GTK widget theme 
colors and icons. As a side note i am currently awaiting feedback on the 
Dark Theme under KDE before applying the KDE tweaks i made there to the 
other themes.

So guess have at it, let me and the GIMP crew know what you think.

---

From: Jehan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2015 19:07:22 +0100

Hi all,

On 2015-12-29 12:30, draekko.software wrote:
> There was a recent call sent out for new and updated assets for the
> next version of GIMP (icons, themes mainly) and some of those have
> started rolling in, i've submitted several themes myself and so far
> one has made it in. I was asked to get the ball rolling on the
> subject, so here it goes :) Maybe for starters offer input on the
> current Dark Theme and if there might be interest in a new light &
> grey theme as well or any other suggestions for that matter. You can
> find the themes here:
> 
>  Dark Theme
>  https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=759649 [1]
> 
>  Grey Theme
>  https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=759663 [2]
> 
>  Light Theme
>  https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=759648 [3]
> 
>  https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=759830 [4]
> 
>  The links have screenshots, and 7z files with the theme asset (and
> the dark theme has patches for the gimp crew).
> 
>  So far i've tested the Dark Theme on KDE(Ubuntu/Plasma), Unity
> (Ubuntu), Windows 8.1 (and wine on Linux), OSX (Maverick) to make sure
> it had a consistent feel across platforms. The only caveats so far
> were under KDE where i had to toggle off the option " Apply colors to
> non-Qt applications" because without that KDE overrides some GTK
> widget theme colors and icons. As a side note i am currently awaiting
> feedback on the Dark Theme under KDE before applying the KDE tweaks i
> made there to the other themes.
> 

To add a little more depth to this all, these are the in-progress 
versions of the new default themes for GIMP.
Well at least, there would be a light and a dark version. Now one 
question is: do we want to release also intermediate greys, which seems 
to be a common request?

Also the released theme need to be working on any platform, which is why 
we ask if people could test. We already noticed that even on Linux, 
depending on your desktop, some things were broken and had to be fixed. 
So tell us and provide screenshots if something is weird when testing on 
whatever you run GIMP on.

And finally we are looking for inputs on the design: what do you think, 
how could we improve these themes, and so on. The goal is not to 
perfectly please everyone (we encourage theme makers to provide many 
alternatives for everyone, since all tastes are in nature, right?), 
which is impossible, but to provide a good and solid default, and 
pleasant looking for a wide range of the users.

So: please test, break things, and tell us what you think of these. :-)

Jehan

P.S.: I think you can test the themes with the released 2.9.2, but you 
won't have support for the symbolic icons, I believe. If you want to try 
these, you'll need to have the master version.

---

From: Kevin Payne <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2015 18:34:07 +0000

________________________________________
>From: gimp-gui-list <[email-masked]> on behalf of Jehan <[email-masked]>
>Sent: 29 December 2015 18:07
>To: gimp-gui-list
>Cc: draekko.software
>Subject: Re: [Gimp-gui] GIMP Theme UI now and future.

>these, you'll need to have the master version.

Doesn't this requirement exclude any of us mere mortals testing this on Windows due to the lack of nightly builds?

Kevin

---

From: Jehan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2015 19:58:15 +0100

Hi,

On 2015-12-29 19:34, Kevin Payne wrote:
> Doesn't this requirement exclude any of us mere mortals testing this
> on Windows due to the lack of nightly builds?

With the released 2.9.2, you should still be able to check out the theme 
(install it in %APPDATA%/GIMP/2.9/themes/ on Windows, 
NSApplicationSupportDirectory/GIMP/2.9/themes/ under OSX and 
~/.config/GIMP/2.9/themes under Unix-like systems).

You won't be able to see the Symbolic icon set though, but anyway this 
is a separate thing now (the theme does not embed the icons anymore, so 
that in the end, you will be able to use the dark theme with the color, 
the symbolic set, or any other user-contributed icon set).

Anyway this thread is to discuss the theme part only (colors, contrasts, 
borders, scrollbar, and other theme stuff) so it does not matter. I only 
made this note for testers not to be surprised if you don't see the 
symbolic icons which many screenshots show.
Sorry, that was confusing. My fault.

Jehan

---

From: Elle Stone <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2015 15:14:40 -0500

> question is: do we want to release also intermediate greys, which seems

Is this the kind of feedback you are looking for?

Please do include the Gray theme. Personally I don't like dark themes, 
to the point where if that's my only choice I'll either find a way to 
modify the theme colors or else I shy away from using the application at 
all.

The Gray and Light themes are both very nice, and both seem to run just 
fine on Gentoo Linux, as does the (far too dark for my preferences) 
"dark side of GIMP" theme.

For the Gray theme I chose the lighter symbolic icons, and for the Light 
theme, I chose the darker symbolic icons. Otherwise there was too little 
contrast between the icons and the background.

The Light theme color is light enough to be "light" without crossing the 
(somewhat indefinite) line into "too bright for comfortable continuous 
viewing", though the theme is definitely on the brighter side of light. 
For comparison, the Krita "bright" theme is actually darker than the 
GIMP Light theme, being very close in tonality to the current default 
GIMP theme.

If I had to use GIMP in single window mode (something I never do), with 
the Light theme I'd use the "dark check" (middle gray) background 
option, which is very close to what Krita uses as the background for the 
Krita "bright" theme.

Whoever drew the new monotone icons, they are *very* nice. Though in 
some ways I find the old icons with color a bit easier to look 
at/recognize, possibly only because I've looked at them for so long.

FWIW, I'll probably switch over from the Default to the SeaofGray theme, 
but still use the Default theme icons.

Using Preferences to change from one theme to the next several times in 
a row makes the Toolbox get one icon narrower each time a different 
theme is selected.

Some icons are missing, but I think you already have a list?

Elle

---

From: Jehan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2015 21:53:15 +0100

Hi,

> Is this the kind of feedback you are looking for?

Not only. The kind of feedback you give below is also what I want. But I 
also wondered how many themes we should include in GIMP. I don't think 
we should have too many (we don't want to end up with a dozen themes), 
but I guess we should cover at least the bases.

> modify the theme colors or else I shy away from using the application
> at all.

Ok.

> The Gray and Light themes are both very nice, and both seem to run
> just fine on Gentoo Linux, as does the (far too dark for my
> preferences) "dark side of GIMP" theme.

Which Desktop/Windows manager, please? We had some issues when testing 
on KDE for instance so that's important information. :-)

As for the dark theme, I also find it too dar, even for a dark theme. I 
was wondering if just I was not used to this. But I wonder what other 
users of dark themes think of it.

> For the Gray theme I chose the lighter symbolic icons, and for the
> Light theme, I chose the darker symbolic icons. Otherwise there was
> too little contrast between the icons and the background.
> 
> The Light theme color is light enough to be "light" without crossing
> the (somewhat indefinite) line into "too bright for comfortable
> continuous viewing", though the theme is definitely on the brighter

Which light theme are you refering to? The light (bug 759648) or 
alternate lighter one (bug 759830)?
I personally prefer the lighter one and thought that the first one was a 
little too much on the grey side. I don't think we will ship both, so 
we'd have to decide.
My idea is that if we provide a light, a grey and a dark one, it makes 
sense that the "light" one is really light.

> side of light. For comparison, the Krita "bright" theme is actually
> darker than the GIMP Light theme, being very close in tonality to the
> current default GIMP theme.

For info, it is possible that the Default theme may disappear in release 
since the light theme would take its place. We will always keep it in 
the dev version though, since the default theme is basically a bare 
non-themed GTK+ UI and it is good for development (a theme may make it 
harder to differentiate UI bugs from theme bugs).

> If I had to use GIMP in single window mode (something I never do),
> with the Light theme I'd use the "dark check" (middle gray) background
> option, which is very close to what Krita uses as the background for
> the Krita "bright" theme.

Are you suggesting we could use this same middle gray colour for one of 
the theme?

> at/recognize, possibly only because I've looked at them for so long.

Icons were originally by Jakub Steiner and Barbara Muraus, from an icon 
set called "Art Libre".
And a contributor (Klaus Staedtler) completed the missing icons (as of a 
few minutes ago, all the color icon set have a symbolic equivalent, 
though some places still use the desktop theme, which may change soon).

I agree though that I have a hard time with the symbolic icons, but it 
may also be because I was just so used to the color ones as you point 
out.

> FWIW, I'll probably switch over from the Default to the SeaofGray
> theme, but still use the Default theme icons.
> 
> Using Preferences to change from one theme to the next several times
> in a row makes the Toolbox get one icon narrower each time a different
> theme is selected.

I think you are refering to the fact that the new themes use smaller 
icons, so the tool rows change. Or are you really saying that each time 
you switch themes, you get X, then X-1, then X-2, then X-3, and so on 
tools in the toolbox?
Because I can't reproduce this.

If that's only about the size of the icons, then there may be soon an 
option to choose icon size whatever the theme instead of having it 
hardcoded in themes: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=745835

> Some icons are missing, but I think you already have a list?

Yes, now all icons should be there, as said above.

Jehan

> Elle
> _______________________________________________
> gimp-gui-list mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gimp-gui-list

---

From: Elle Stone <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2015 18:41:04 -0500

> on KDE for instance so that's important information. :-)

I use IceWm.

> alternate lighter one (bug 759830)?

Ah, I overlooked "the light side of GIMP" - that's nice! - not as light 
as the Lighter theme, very close to the current default GIMP theme in 
tonality.

> sense that the "light" one is really light.

For quick comparison, this screenshot shows darktable (very dark), 
RawTherapee (middle dark), Krita's darkest theme (about as dark as 
RawTherapee), and the GIMP "Dark side" (as dark as darktable), plus 
GIMP's "Sea of Gray" themes: 
http://ninedegreesbelow.com/bug-reports/gimp29/dark-themes.jpg

This screenshot shows GIMP's "Sea of Gray", "Light" and "Light side of 
GIMP" themes, along with Krita's Neutral theme and one of Krita's two 
lightest themes: 
http://ninedegreesbelow.com/bug-reports/gimp29/middle-grey-light-themes.jpg

Krita's five themes range from as dark as RawTherapee's theme to as 
light as the "light side of GIMP" themes, which is to say not quite as 
light as the GIMP Light(er) theme.

> Are you suggesting we could use this same middle gray colour for one of

"The Sea of Gray" theme is already very close to middle gray. But middle 
gray might make a good default image background color for when GIMP is 
in SWM.

On the one hand, editing GIMP theme gtkrc files to change theme colors 
isn't all that difficult. On the other hand, many people will never edit 
a config file. Would it be too much to offer five default themes, more 
or less spaced as follows?

1. Very dark ("Dark side of GIMP" / compare to darktable's default theme)
2. Medium dark (compare to RawTherapee's default theme and Krita's 
darkest theme, for people who like "dark but not that dark")
3. Middle gray ("Sea of Gray" / compare to Krita's Neutral theme)
4. Medium light ("Light side of GIMP"/ compare to Krita's two lighter 
themes)
5. Very light (the Lighter theme from bug 759830, or depending on 
feedback from people who prefer very light themes, maybe a touch lighter?).

> may also be because I was just so used to the color ones as you point out.

> are you really saying that each time

As I switch themes, each time the toolbox gets one icon narrower, but 
this doesn't start happening until I've switched themes several times, 
not sure what triggers it.

> hardcoded in themes: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=745835

That would be very nice!

Elle

---

From: john smith <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2015 19:11:59 -0500

On 29 December 2015 at 06:30, draekko.software
<[email-masked]> wrote:
> rolling in, i've submitted several themes myself and so far one has made it
> in. I was asked to get the ball rolling on the subject, so here it goes :)
> Maybe for starters offer input on the current Dark Theme and if there might
> be interest in a new light & grey theme as well or any other suggestions for
> that matter. You can find the themes here:
>
> Dark Theme
> The links have screenshots, and 7z files with the theme asset (and the dark
> theme has patches for the gimp crew).
>
> where i had to toggle off the option " Apply colors to non-Qt applications"
> because without that KDE overrides some GTK widget theme colors and icons.
> As a side note i am currently awaiting feedback on the Dark Theme under KDE
> before applying the KDE tweaks i made there to the other themes.
>

I liked the Dark theme, although I currently use a combination of
Cillop-Midnite (https://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Cillop-Midnite?content=47100)
theme and the Icons from Gimp Icon Theme FFlat32 (Flamini style)
(http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Gimp+Icon+Theme+FFlat32+%28Flamini+style%29?content=169060)

However, what I would like to see as an alternative to the current
shipped themes is an implementation of this:
http://mindscapestudios.blogspot.ca/2014/08/gimp-interface-redesign-as-graphic.html

John

---

From: Ben <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2015 19:08:56 -0500

>> on KDE for instance so that's important information. :-)

Glad to know it works there as well.

> Ah, I overlooked "the light side of GIMP" - that's nice! - not as 
> light as the Lighter theme, very close to the current default GIMP 
> theme in tonality.
>

That was my original light theme (opposite color scheme from the dark 
theme), Jehan preferred something lighter hence the alternate version.

> light as the GIMP Light(er) theme.

Thanks for the comparison shots. You might prefer to use the Symbolic 
inverted icons with SeaOfGray, their visibility is better than the 
original symbolic set for that theme.
> "The Sea of Gray" theme is already very close to middle gray. But 
> middle gray might make a good default image background color for when 
> GIMP is in SWM.
>
> isn't all that difficult. On the other hand, many people will never 
> edit a config file. Would it be too much to offer five default themes, 
> more or less spaced as follows?
>

Elle you can see the original dark theme i had created for myself here 
https://github.com/draekko/gimp-cc-themes you'll find it a tad lighter 
than what i've submitted for GIMP (i modeled it originally to be closer 
to PS, the icon set is mostly mine there, i had been working on 
replacing them before i knew about the symbolic set now in the git 
repository in case you were wondering).

Maybe we could have that color scheme in between dark and middle gray? 
That would give a bigger range theme tonality for most tastes with whats 
already there. Tweaking the dark theme to that one could be done quickly 
to have an alternative dark theme.

> not sure what triggers it.

Does it also happen with the Default & Small themes? I switch themes 
(and reload them) a lot during testing and i haven't encountered that? 
Could be something specific with icewm & gimp?

Ben

---

From: Elle Stone <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2015 20:23:07 -0500

On 12/29/2015 07:08 PM, Ben wrote:
>> Would it be too much to offer five default themes,
> than what i've submitted for GIMP

> to have an alternative dark theme.

It seems to me that your original dark theme color scheme would make an 
excellent "between dark and middle gray" theme.

> Could be something specific with icewm & gimp?

Upon further checking, I think this only happens when switching between 
any of the new themes and the old Default & Small themes, but not when 
switching between the new themes.

Not sure if it matters, but some of the themes cause errors to be 
printed to the terminal, for example:

config/themes/TheLightSideOfGimp/ui/null.png, borders don't fit within 
the image
config/themes/TheLightSideOfGimp/gtkrc:1688: Background image options 
specified without filename
config/themes/TheLightSideOfGimp/gtkrc:1709: Overlay image options 
specified without filename

Elle

---

From: Akkana Peck <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2015 18:57:14 -0700

> that matter. You can find the themes here:
[ ... ]
> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=759830

Both the light themes seem quite dark and not very contrasty
(with black text and icons) compared to the GIMP I currently see,
which has a background color of #dcdad5 rather than the #bdbdbd
used in both of the light themes for most icons and menus;
except the menus in the alternate light theme, which are pretty
close to what I see now in GIMP.

I'd like to see a theme option (whether or not it's the default)
that has similar contrast to the current theme; the new themes will
be harder to read for at least some users.

Or am I only seeing #dcdad5 because I changed my theme at some
point?  I'm pretty sure I don't have a custom GIMP theme (themerc
says: include "/usr/local/gimp-git/share/gimp/2.0/themes/Default/gtkrc");
my .gtkrc-2.0 says gtk-theme-name="Raleigh", and I don't think I
set that explicitly, I think it was the default at some point.

Will these new GIMP themes override the user's GTK theme?

I'm using Linux with Openbox, no desktop.

        ...Akkana

---

From: Ben <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2015 07:04:03 -0500

On 12/29/2015 08:23 PM, Elle Stone wrote:
> It seems to me that your original dark theme color scheme would make 
> an excellent "between dark and middle gray" theme.

Done a new one, you can get it 
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=759996 (alternate dark theme 
proposal) which is a lighter dark tone than the original.

I've updated all the themes with the KDE fixes done for the "The Dark 
Side of Gimp" theme (also new screenshots with the new updates to the 
icon themes).

> Upon further checking, I think this only happens when switching 
> between any of the new themes and the old Default & Small themes, but 
> not when switching between the new themes.
>

Depends on the file you chose to download, i doubled checked the updates 
i did from this morning to all the themes and am not getting that on my end.

---

From: Ben <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2015 07:14:13 -0500

> I'm using Linux with Openbox, no desktop.

Which version of Gimp are you using? The themes are for 2.9.x/2.10.x.

You shouldn't be seeing those colors, I only get something like that if 
i override it with a local .gtkrc-2.0 file for the user i log in with. 
But since you mentioned that, your locally defined theme probably 
overrides some or all of the Gimp's chosen theme color values. So short 
answer seems to be no from what i tested here. Take a look at the 
screenshots from the bug reports to see what you should be getting (i 
updated them this morning).

---

From: Jehan <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2015 16:45:19 +0100

Hi,

> not when switching between the new themes.

I just can't reproduce. Could you make a bug report?
And if you find reproducible steps, please include them.

> specified without filename

Could you put down a comment on the corresponding bug reports that 
Draekko gave in his first email? This way, he won't forget to fix these.
Thanks again! :-)

Jehan

---

From: Elle Stone <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2015 12:05:36 -0500

> be harder to read for at least some users.

On my system the "light side of GIMP" theme and the current default GIMP 
theme are very close in tonality, with the "light side of GIMP theme 
being a tad lighter. Here's a screenshot showing the two themes side by 
side: 
http://ninedegreesbelow.com/bug-reports/gimp29/light-side-vs-default-small.jpg

If I had to choose any of the new themes, it would be the "Light side of 
GIMP" theme. By comparison, the current default theme looks a bit 
outdated and the new theme is very pretty and modern-looking. But I like 
the current theme better for three reasons:

1. The "light side of GIMP" theme has a lot of darker tones in things 
like sliders, boxes for choosing parameters, the menu bar, and really 
just about everywhere. This makes for too little contrast between the 
sliders, boxes, etc and any contained text. It seems to me that a 
lighter shade of gray would make the text stand out better.

2. Also the new theme UIs for things like Gaussian blur, Curves, etc, 
are always larger than the corresponding current default GIMP theme. As 
screen real estate matters a great deal, I prefer the smaller UIs.

3. Also the new themes lack a good indication of where the grab areas 
are for resizing windows and subwindows. Maybe users already know that 
the subframes can be resized? And they know where to find the 
(completely unindicated) grab handle for reproportioning the space 
between the upper and lower subframes?

---

From: Jehan <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2015 18:07:49 +0100

Hi,

On 2015-12-30 18:05, Elle Stone wrote:
> On my system the "light side of GIMP" theme and the current default
> GIMP theme are very close in tonality, with the "light side of GIMP
> theme being a tad lighter. Here's a screenshot showing the two themes
> side by side:
> If I had to choose any of the new themes, it would be the "Light side
> of GIMP" theme. By comparison, the current default theme looks a bit
> outdated and the new theme is very pretty and modern-looking. But I
> like the current theme better for three reasons:
> 

I agree. Also do we want the theme to get rid of colors? If I were to 
decide, I'd say no. For sliders for instance, I quite prefer this 
blue|white colors to the white|grey proposed.

> are always larger than the corresponding current default GIMP theme.
> As screen real estate matters a great deal, I prefer the smaller UIs.

I agree. Draekko, is it because of the UI images which adds pixels here 
and there? If so, could these be made to the strict minimum, as a 
compromise between "beautiful" and "don't waste real estate space".

> between the upper and lower subframes?

I agree. Draekko, could this be fixed?

Jehan

---

From: Ben <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2015 13:41:59 -0500

> blue|white colors to the white|grey proposed.

Unfortunately that changes a number of widget colors. It also breaks the 
feel of it.

> I agree. Draekko, is it because of the UI images which adds pixels 
> here and there? If so, could these be made to the strict minimum, as a 

These themes have the same look and feel across ALL platforms. So its 
consistent. Sadly changing that requires reworking a number of png's as 
well as reworking most of the spacing values (padding,margins,etc...).

> I agree. Draekko, could this be fixed?

I made that a conscious decision not to have them for two reasons, 1) 
those pane separators are fugly and add mostly useless spacing, 2) they 
add a space break between top of the notebook and can add a line in 
between canvas and tools toolbar on the left side which is really 
distracting. To actually really fix this requires reworking the actual 
UI code and that's waaay more work than i want to spend on this. But 
adding only the separator is easier to do than the above but will have 
annoying breaks in the UI.

---

From: Akkana Peck <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2015 16:07:32 -0700

[ ... ]
> >lighter shade of gray would make the text stand out better.

I should clarify that my comment about both light themes being too
dark and lacking contrast referred to the darker #bdbdbd color that
Elle mentions here, not the base #eeeeee color. The darker color
predominates in the screenshots, including in areas where there's a
lot of text to read. Black against #bdbdbd is a lot less contrasty
and harder to read than what I currently see in GIMP 2.9 and earlier.

Jehan writes:
> decide, I'd say no. For sliders for instance, I quite prefer this blue|white
> colors to the white|grey proposed.

I don't have strong feelings about the current blue/white sliders
vs. the grey/white ones in the "lighter side" theme, though I find
the 3D highlights in the "alternate light" sliders prettier and more
professional looking than the flat ones (just a personal prejudice,
I'll be fine using whatever GIMP ends up with).

However, I'd be sorry to see the colors in the Toolbox icons go. I
have a very hard time telling many of the icons apart already, even
with color cues, and without color it'll be a lot harder. I know
there are people who don't want color icons distracting them, but
I don't think I'll be able to use these monochrome Toolbox icons,
and that will probably drive me to a custom theme, and might drive
some users away from GIMP if it's not easy to find alternate themes.

        ...Akkana

---

From: Jehan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2015 01:14:03 +0100

Hi,

> some users away from GIMP if it's not easy to find alternate themes.

Color icons won't go as long as I have a word to say. For me, the 
symbolic icons have always been considered as an "alternative", but I 
consider them as equal importance as the color ones.

Jehan

---

From: Alexandre Prokoudine <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2015 15:13:51 +0300

On Thu, Dec 31, 2015 at 2:07 AM, Akkana Peck wrote:

> However, I'd be sorry to see the colors in the Toolbox icons go.

They won't go and were never meant to go. They will always be
available, but probably won't be used by default, especially if we
fail to provide new hicolor icons for new features.

Alex

---

From: Ben <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2016 12:14:16 -0500

Elle, Jehan, i've updated the themes to add the separators, fixed some 
more KDE issues, reduced the focus padding on buttons as an expedient to 
making the them smaller without having to redo anything (and changed 
some of the pngs to harmonize all the themes), commented out the font 
settings so people can choose as they wish to have or not, added version 
numbers to the files so i can keep track of what people are using, 
started a repo so i can track changes locally available here 
https://github.com/Draekko-RAND/gimp-themes (which is where i'll keep 
the screenshots from now on).

Ben

---

From: scl <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2016 19:27:34 +0100

Hi,

nice to see that the long-time topic 'UI theme' is now making such a 
progress!

I'm also impressed by Ben's screenshots!
To address users' different needs and preferences we could consider 
offering variants of the same theme: dark (black or 
anthrazite-coloured), silver grey, light (white or light gray).

I once starte a wiki page for this topic and don't know for sure
about the current state. Is there yet anything to be done with respect 
to this page?

Greetings and have a happy new year!

Sven

[wiki page]: http://wiki.gimp.org/wiki/Specs:UI_Theme

---

From: Elle Stone <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2016 13:53:31 -0500

> the screenshots from now on).

Ben, thank you! I tried modifying just the colors for some of the items 
in the "Lighter side of GIMP" theme. It's not as easy as I thought it 
would be!

I've been using the (original) "Lighter side" theme and find that in use 
I actually like the wider icon spacing for the monotone icons. For color 
icons, the closer spacing is compensated for by the color 
differentiation, but not so much for the monotone icons. And at least to 
me the wider spacing for the monotone icons seems more attractive to 
look at.

The new separators are very helpful. Even though I know where the 
toolbox dividers are, without the separators often it was difficult to 
find the place to resize the panels (something I do fairly often, 
depending on what I'm working on).

Your themes make GIMP look very nice, very professional. It seems to me 
that the monotone icons are a pretty important part of that look. For 
this same reason personally I'd prefer that sliders in the monotone 
themese also be monontone - it just plain looks nice, and aesthetics do 
count.

I'm not sure how many themes and how many sets of icons are "too many". 
But given the following:

* many differently-sized devices are used for editing images
* the wide disparity in user personal preferences
* issues with eyesight and/or hand-eye coordination that might lead a 
user to prefer the wider icon spacing and/or color icons

it might be nice to include two sizes for icons - the original size and 
the smaller size, and also keep the original color icons in both sizes.

Elle

---

From: Ben <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2016 14:10:46 -0500

On 01/01/2016 01:53 PM, Elle Stone wrote:
> Ben, thank you! I tried modifying just the colors for some of the
> items in the "Lighter side of GIMP" theme. It's not as easy as I
> thought it would be!
>
Welcome, i know took me weeks to figure out even the basics :) 
especially considering a lot of information is outdated and lots of 
links to tutorials are dead. If it wasn't for a few good themes to peek 
at and see how it was done, i'd probably still be trying to figure it out.

> I've been using the (original) "Lighter side" theme and find that in
> use I actually like the wider icon spacing for the monotone icons. For
> color icons, the closer spacing is compensated for by the color
> differentiation, but not so much for the monotone icons. And at least
> to me the wider spacing for the monotone icons seems more attractive
> to look at.
Yeah sadly if i increase that it affects everything because gimp uses 
buttons for a lot of things (combobox, list headers, etc...) so you need 
to decide if you want to sacrifice screen real-estate to that or not. 
You can't have it both ways, not with the way the UI is hardcoded right 
now & with how theming works for gtk2 its no fun at all.

> depending on what I'm working on).
I never did, but glad you find them useful, i personally hate them and 
how they look in gtk but thats my thing ;)

> Your themes make GIMP look very nice, very professional. It seems to
> me that the monotone icons are a pretty important part of that look.
> For this same reason personally I'd prefer that sliders in the
> monotone themese also be monontone - it just plain looks nice, and
> aesthetics do count.

Thanks, and yes those icons make a difference.

>
> I'm not sure how many themes and how many sets of icons are "too
> many". But given the following:
>
5 is my limit since i have to maintain them and test them on all variant 
OSes :) Its hard to make it work across everything and time consuming to 
keep it up. So far i've tested them on OSX (Maverick only so far), 
Windows (8.1 so far), Linux (KDE, Unity, Wine under Unity) to make sure 
they felt the same across the board. There's only so much that can be 
tweaked to keep that true.

> it might be nice to include two sizes for icons - the original size
> and the smaller size, and also keep the original color icons in both
> sizes.
>
I think there are plans to switch eventually to svg icons which would 
render the point moot.

Ben

---

From: Ben <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2016 14:11:25 -0500

> I'm also impressed by Ben's screenshots!
Thank you.

> anthrazite-coloured), silver grey, light (white or light gray).
I've got most of that covered eh :)
> about the current state. Is there yet anything to be done with respect
Not sure first time i see it, i'm sure others in the know will comment 
eventually :)

> Greetings and have a happy new year!
Back at you :)

---

From: Kevin Payne <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2016 22:18:58 +0000

>I think there are plans to switch eventually to svg icons which would

And how do your themes look on high resolution displays? Given that there is increasing demand for larger icons I think you have to consider that you may have many more variants to support.

Kevin

---

From: Ben <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2016 17:48:15 -0500

On 01/01/2016 05:18 PM, Kevin Payne wrote:
> And how do your themes look on high resolution displays? Given that 
> there is increasing demand for larger icons I think you have to 
> consider that you may have many more variants to support. Kevin
1) No idea, when someone donates me such a monitor with a proper 
graphics card to drive it i'll let you know :)

2) There seems to be miscomprehension about the icons, which are now 
separate from the UI theme. The theme only has pngs used to render the 
widgets underneath those, the rest is furnished by the new icon themes. 
So i don't really have to support them since they are two separate entities.

Ben

---

From: Jehan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2016 22:44:48 +0100

Hey everyone!

The new themes are now sharing most of their code, but the color 
schemes, which makes them very maintainable and it makes me confident to 
have many variants of the colors if neded. I would not even mind having 
all 5 of them, especially since it looks like every variant may have 
someone's preference? All tastes are in nature, that's the saying, 
right?

For reminder, here are side by side screenshots of all 5 variants 
currently being WIP by Ben (alias Draekko):
https://github.com/Draekko-RAND/gimp-themes

I'm thinking, maybe the lightest theme should be even lighter?

Personally I feel like I would likely use "Sea of Grey" or the "Dark" 
theme.
Should we push all 5 of them? Should we discard some?

Also there are still a lot of bugs here and there. It would be awesome 
if people could test them and report bugs.

Jehan

On 2015-12-29 12:30, draekko.software wrote:
> Links:
> ------
> [1] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=759649
> [2] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=759663
> [3] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=759648
> [4] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=759830
>

---

From: Kevin Payne <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2016 22:29:10 +0000

Why do these themes use the small icons for the toolbox? Is that the new Default size?

Kevin

________________________________________
From: gimp-gui-list <[email-masked]> on behalf of Jehan <[email-masked]>
Sent: 21 January 2016 21:44
To: draekko.software
Cc: gimp-gui-list
Subject: Re: [Gimp-gui] GIMP Theme UI now and future.

Hey everyone!

Jehan

---

From: Elle Stone <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2016 06:33:11 -0500

> Personally I feel like I would likely use "Sea of Grey" or the "Dark"

I've been using the Sea of Grey theme and I'm trying out the "Light side 
of GIMP" theme. For my own preferences in themes, I could definitely 
also see using the "Dark" theme (but not the darker "Dark side of GIMP" 
theme or the extra light "Light" theme).

> Should we push all 5 of them? Should we discard some?

All five sounds good! Preferences and sensitivities to contrast vary a lot.

Elle

---

From: Sven Claussner <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2016 13:25:26 +0100

Hi,

On  21.1.2016 at 10:44 PM Jehan wrote:
> someone's preference? All tastes are in nature, that's the saying, right?
>

Draekko and Klaus did a great work.
In IRC we had a discussion a few days ago. IIRC the results were
- the theme should have a neutral color to not distort the image's
color perception.
- Pippin recommended 'the darker the better', because it supports the
image's proper color perception best.
- A pure white theme would reflect the proper appearance of the image
printed on white paper.

> Personally I feel like I would likely use "Sea of Grey" or the "Dark"
I personally find the Dark-Side-of-GIMP theme a bit too dark and would
prefer just 'Dark', but that might be a single person's matter of taste.
I think we should involve the users to decide over it and run a user
test/evaluation like Peter Sikking did some years ago for the tools
(it's in the GUI wiki). Then we knew for sure and could meet the goals
I've outlined in the spec (http://wiki.gimp.org/wiki/Specs:UI_Theme).

> Should we push all 5 of them? Should we discard some?
BTW: Krita has 8 themes with more or less small differences, PS CS 6 has 
4 themes.

We should make a compromise between trying to serve everybody's needs
(which will fail by nature) and maintainability. At the end somebody
will need to care for the themes in the codebase and this could easily
be us.
My proposal is:
- 1 dark theme for proper color perception and eye-saving work for hours,
- 1 white theme for proper color perception on prints,
- 1 system theme for proper system integration,
- optionally 1 theme for roundtrip work with other FOSS graphics tools
(Blender, Darktable, Krita)
- optionally the current 2.8 theme. Some people might like it
because they are used to it. We don't need yet another save-export-like
discussion.

We could provide a link collection to other good themes together with
a tutorial on how to install them or later extend the plug-in registry
to hold themes and art resources (brushes, patterns etc.).

For OS X 10.10+ system integration I plan to update my theme and
perhaps use the symbolic set already for 2.8. if it matches better
the OS X look and feel.

Another point is the size of the theme. Nowadays we have HiDPI monitors
and even the default size theme is hard to read. We should drop any
small themes and replace them by big themes for HiDPI monitors. The
icons could be vector icons or be rendered during the build process.

> if people could test them and report bugs.
Indeed, see my notes on user testing above.

I hope to find time to move my spec to the GUI wiki in the next days.

Greetings

Sven

---

From: Jehan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2016 15:30:59 +0100

Hi,

> - the theme should have a neutral color to not distort the image's

What is a "neutral" color? I do not know such a concept.

> - A pure white theme would reflect the proper appearance of the image

So should the whitest theme be even whitest? ("pure white" #FFFFFF 
even?)

> prefer just 'Dark', but that might be a single person's matter of 

I am the same (though I kind of got used to it after trying it out for a 
bit). But it seems some people like the themes very dark. Draekko was 
saying the Dark Side of GIMP was based on what he uses himself. And you 
said above "the darker the better", so maybe even Pippin would use the 
Dark Side too?

> I've outlined in the spec (http://wiki.gimp.org/wiki/Specs:UI_Theme).

If you are in LGM, we would welcome any kind of usability session where 
we would gather users to test GIMP on various topics.

> BTW: Krita has 8 themes with more or less small differences, PS CS 6
> has 4 themes.

As a side note, this is not a competition. We should support what we 
think is best, whatever other software are doing. So this is not that 
relevant information to me.

> will need to care for the themes in the codebase and this could easily

Of course. As I said, now themes share most of their code. Only 
difference are the color schemes. That's still a lot of work, but a lot 
less than completely separated code. So I am fairly confident we can now 
have a few themes while keeping minimum maintainability.

I do hope that current contributors will stay for the long run! :-)

> - 1 dark theme for proper color perception and eye-saving work for 

But which one? As you said first, it seems that the official stand is 
"the darker the better", but as you said second, and which I agree too 
is that the dark side is actually too dark for your taste. So which 
should we choose?

> - 1 white theme for proper color perception on prints,

Again which one?

> - 1 system theme for proper system integration,

What is a system theme? Do you mean the default theme?

> (Blender, Darktable, Krita)

I don't understand what is a "theme for roundtrip work"? How could a 
*theme* be helpful to work with other software?

> because they are used to it. We don't need yet another save-export-like

We will keep the current theme at the very least for development 
version, if not for the release, because it is basically a nearly "raw" 
theme. So developers will always need it to differentiate GTK+ bugs from 
theme bugs.

> to hold themes and art resources (brushes, patterns etc.).

Having a good extension platform is one of my project for the close 
future, but that's a very different topic. :-)
It would be obviously very ideal to have a broad user-create theme 
choice, and easy way to get them.

> icons could be vector icons or be rendered during the build process.

No. Duplicating themes for every purpose would be far from an ideal 
situation. We should be able to adapt any themes to any screen 
resolution (size of icons, text, etc.).
As said in a previous email, this is a work in progress, for instance 
for icons:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=745835

Unless you find me any feature needed by HiDPI that can be done only by 
themes and not through code.

> I hope to find time to move my spec to the GUI wiki in the next days.

Cool.

---

From: Tobias Ellinghaus <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2016 12:47:33 +0100

Am Freitag, 22. Januar 2016, 15:30:59 schrieb Jehan:

[...]

> What is a "neutral" color? I do not know such a concept.

One where R == G == B.

[...]

Tobias

---

From: Elle Stone <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2016 11:29:08 -0500

>> - A pure white theme would reflect the proper appearance of the image

Monitor "pure white" has the absolute colorimetric LAB L value L=100 
(#FFFFFF). "Print paper white" has an absolute colorimetric white that's 
less than L=100. So it might help to have some reference points for 
print paper white.

For ten moderate to high quality "printer/paper combination" profiles 
downloaded from the internet, ArgyllCMS's xicclu showed "print paper 
white" values ranging from L=90 to L=98. Most of the values were around 
91 to 93. I'm a bit suspicious of the higher values (fluorescent 
whiteners?), but I'm not an expert on print paper.

If one goal for a Light theme is to emulate "print paper white", then 
expressed as sRGB and HTML colors, the basic color of a Light theme 
might be somewhere in the range of:

LAB L=90, sRGB R=G=B=226, HTML #e2e2e2
LAB L=91, sRGB R=G=B=229, HTML #e5e5e5
LAB L=93, sRGB R=G=B=235, HTML #ebebeb
LAB L=95, sRGB R=G=B=241, HTML #f1f1f1
LAB L=97, sRGB R=G=B=246, HTML #f6f6f6
LAB L=98, sRGB R=G=B=249, HTML #f9f9f9

In an actual paper print mounted on a wall, the print might not have any 
"paper white" highlights. If the mat around the image is white, I will 
guess that "mat white" is less bright than high quality printer paper 
white. So if the goal for a Light theme is to emulate what a paper print 
might look when displayed with a white mat, a Light theme might aim for 
L=90.

>
> So should the whitest theme be even whitest? ("pure white" #FFFFFF even?)

Even the lightest theme probably should be less than "monitor white", to 
allow the image highlights to be at least a little brighter than the 
theme colors and to avoid eyestrain from staring at monitor white for 
hours at a time. Maybe aim for around L=93-95 for the lightest theme?

Elle

---

From: Elle Stone <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2016 11:31:16 -0500

>> image's proper color perception best.

As Pippin notes, the background colors surrounding an image on a monitor 
makes a big difference in how the image actually looks. Dark surrounds 
make the image look brighter and more saturated (and even more so if the 
room lighting is relatively dark). The same image might look a bit 
disappointing when displayed with a light surround (and even more so if 
the room lighting is bright).

Matching the theme to the intended "display surround" allows the user to 
somewhat control during editing what the image will look like as 
eventually diplayed:

  * If the user intends to display the final image on the web against a 
dark background, it might be better to use a dark theme with a dark 
canvas padding color.

  * If the user intends to display the final image as a paper print with 
a white mat or on the web against a light background, it might be better 
to use a light theme with a light canvas padding color.

What the image looks like also depends on the relative size of the image 
against the intended background. For example:

   * In multiple window mode with a medium-gray "desktop", an image 
displayed with a relatively small amount of light canvas padding 
somewhat emulates a white mat around an image displayed on a gray wall.

   * In single window mode, an image surrounded by a relatively large 
amount of light canvas padding might be lost in the general brightness, 
and in this case a medium or dark theme/canvas might be better, even if 
the image is intended for eventual display against a light surround.

Elle

---

From: Sven Claussner <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 18:29:46 +0100

Hi Jehan,

> What is a "neutral" color? I do not know such a concept.

see Tobias' answer, simply said a variant of gray.

> So should the whitest theme be even whitest? ("pure white" #FFFFFF even?)

Elle's e-mail from 23.01.2016, 5:29 PM describes it best.
As Elle points out, the padding color is the most important piece for
adjustments here. We could try out Elle's example colors or perhaps
check with one/some of the industry standard ICC profiles from
http://www.colormanagement.org/index_en.html if they held useful
information for us.

> we would gather users to test GIMP on various topics.

I'll not be at LGM this year. But the idea of involving the users
to test GIMP on various topics is a good one!
Let's find other ways of doing it. For instance Google Hangouts like
the Metapolator people practice it for meetings could be a choice.
The hangout sessions could be recorded and archived for later use
(and BTW it's a nice way to meet each other one more time w/o long
distance constraints). Of course, Google is not everything, and I'm
open to alternatives.

> think is best, whatever other software are doing.

I agree with you. It was meant as a side note and food for thought how
others deal with this topic.

> [...] I am fairly confident we can now

I guess you mean minimum work resp. maximum maintainability, don't you?

> I do hope that current contributors will stay for the long run! :-)

+1

> What is a system theme? Do you mean the default theme?

No, a theme that closely resembles the operating systems appearance.
See the notice on constraints in my spec draft.

> *theme* be helpful to work with other software?

For visual consistency, which is also a reason why designers of
operating systems, GNOME etc. write Human Interface Guidelines.
If one often switches between e.g. Blender and GIMP, then s/he should
not feel distracted by the programs' different looks and feels.
I was inspired by Krita's Blender theme.
To be honest we can only achieve an approximation here as every
program has its own styles as I found out in the meantime.

> theme. So developers will always need it to differentiate GTK+ bugs from

+1

> future, but that's a very different topic. :-)

Fine! Pat also mentioned something on the gimp-web list. Let's collect
our thoughts and then see what could be done. But perhaps getting the
registry running again and polishing some other w.i.p. stuff is more
urgent now.

>> I hope to find time to move my spec to the GUI wiki in the next days.

Done. See http://gui.gimp.org/index.php/UI_Theme_workgroup

Greetings

Sven

---

From: Jehan <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 18:44:29 +0100

Hi,

> I guess you mean minimum work resp. maximum maintainability, don't you?

Well depends on point of view. :-) Maximum maintainability is when we 
have a maintainer on the topic who knows it inside-out and can fix 
everything when needed. This is ideal of course. Minimum maintainability 
is to ensure that anyone can at least work out the code without spending 
days, even if the current maintainer were to disappear so that it does 
not become rotten code.

Since we cannot ensure that every current contributor will stay with 
GIMP forever (even this being the hope), every piece of code requires 
minimum maintainability as a feature.
But this is nitpicking. :-)

> See the notice on constraints in my spec draft.

So it's indeed basically the "Default" theme then, no? At least that's 
also what I understand from your wiki page.

> program has its own styles as I found out in the meantime.

Ok, well that would be possible only for software which have a pretty 
set "look'n feel", like Blender indeed. As for Krita for instance, since 
you say it has many themes itself, I doubt it could be done unless we 
create a "roundtrip" corresponding theme for every theme of Krita. But 
then it becomes complicated (and I don't certainly want GIMP theming to 
become complicated!).

Anyway if really there was a need for a GIMP's "Blender theme", or any 
other software, and if someone wants to create one and maintain it. Why 
not, I guess.

Jehan

---

From: Elle Stone <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 14:57:14 -0500

> http://www.colormanagement.org/index_en.html if they held useful

The "printer-paper" profiles that I checked are for making photographic 
prints. As far as I know there is no industry standard for this type of 
profile, rather printing establishments and individuals either make 
their own custom profiles or else they use profiles supplied by the 
company that makes the printer or the paper.

The colord and basICColor print profiles overlap the profiles from 
colormanagement.org. These profiles (and most? all? of the output device 
profiles from colormanagement.org) are CMYK profiles, which are relevant 
for graphic design and mass printing in newspapers and magazines, but so 
much not for photographic prints or digital prints for display on the web.

The LAB values for the white points for the colord and basICColor CMYK 
profiles range from 80 to 96. The lower values are for newsprint 
profiles, which have a low white point and also very high black points 
(and an exceedingly small color gamut).

LAB L=80 corresponds to sRGB R=G=B=145, HTML #919191
LAB L=85 corresponds to sRGB R=G=B=168, HTML #a8a8a8

I will hazard a guess that people using GIMP for editing images for 
eventual CMYK output would prefer medium or light themes.

Elle

---

From: Gez <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2016 13:45:10 -0300

Hi,
I've been following this discussion, and I'll propose a little
different approach.
We're discussing here about switching themes for different kind of
manipulations (dark for better colour perception, light for better on-
paper look, etc.).
I think that, as Sven pointed out (from elle's comments), that the
padding color is the most important adjustment piece, not necessarily
the theme.
If your theme is neutral, middle-ish gray and you can tweak the padding
color, then you don't have to switch themes for different kind of
manipulations.
In that case, having a tool for fast-switching the padding color would
be, in my opinion, far more interesting and useful than a theme
switcher.
I've been working with graphics programs for years, and it never
crossed my mind to switch themes "per project" and believe me, I do
know how a theme can affect your perception.
For instance, I always end up tweaking the curves of images that are
inteded for print, as the dark UI of darktable makes them look
brighter.
But I wouldn't fix that by making darktable's UI lighter, as I would be
producing washed out images for other targets.
So, in my experience I found that middle gray in the padding area is a
reasonable default, while being able to choose quickly between darker
or lighter padding would be a really useful per-project setting.
Once you have the appropriate padding color the UI theme doesn't matter
much (as long as it's achromatic).

And regarding special themes for print, I think it's a flawed approach.
In a pre-press environment you tweak your screen white point to match
the white point and white level of white paper under controlled
lighting.
So you can't predict if your screen white is brighter or darker than
paper white, so picking the white level for the UI elements is just
guessing.
And a white UI is visually exhausting too, so it's not really a good
idea for a theme.

Gez

---

From: Alexandre Prokoudine <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2016 20:40:39 +0300

> padding color is the most important adjustment piece, not necessarily

Only if you always have padding as opposed to working on a
larger-than-viewport image at 100% zoom.

Alex

---

From: Gez <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2016 14:55:01 -0300

> larger-than-viewport image at 100% zoom.

Sure, but:
- You usually inspect your whole image zoomed out, which is likely to
show some padding.
- When you apply primary color grading, you also inspect the image as a
whole.
- A neutral, middle gray in the UI won't affect your color perception
adversely for localized manipulation and secondary grading.

G.

---

From: Elle Stone <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2016 15:17:48 -0500

> adversely for localized manipulation and secondary grading.

As Gez, Sven, and myself have pointed out, the color of the immediate 
image surround matters a great deal because it influences the appearance 
of the image. What actually constitutes the image surround depends on 
the user's particular "at the moment" setup: It might be the desktop 
itself in MWM with a shrink-wrapped image, or the canvas padding, or the 
theme itself if the image takes up enough of the screen.

The "paper white" values that I gave for various printer profiles only 
had the purposes of establishing that "paper white" is not the same as 
100% monitor white and for suggesting the maximum Lightness for even the 
Lightest theme shouldn't be 100% monitor white, even if the goal is 
emulating "paper white". The main effect of a theme with large amounts 
of 100% monitor white would be eyestrain.

It seems to me that the currently proposed five themes 
(https://github.com/Draekko-RAND/gimp-themes) have a nice range of 
tonality, from the very dark "Dark Side of GIMP" to the much lighter 
"Light" theme, and it would be nice if GIMP provided all five themes by 
default.

Changing themes in Preferences is easy to do. Changing icons is also 
easy to do.

Changing the canvas padding color -arguably more important than the 
theme color - isn't so easy to do. Well, changing the color isn't 
difficult, though it requires several mouse clicks to accomplish. But 
finding a previously used color isn't easy - the previously used colors 
keep disappearing and the little squares of remembered colors are pretty 
useless because they aren't color-managed.

It would be nice if there were a way to set up, keep, and quickly choose 
from a set of user-established canvas padding colors, independent of 
choosing a theme or a set of icons (and hopefully someone will tell me 
this is already possible by doing XYZ . . . ).

Elle

---

From: Alexandre Prokoudine <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2016 00:21:50 +0300

On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 11:17 PM, Elle Stone wrote:

> choosing a theme or a set of icons (and hopefully someone will tell me this
> is already possible by doing XYZ . . . ).

You mean, like View -> Padding Color -> Light/Dark Check Color?

Alex

---

From: Gez <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2016 21:20:10 -0300

> theme itself if the image takes up enough of the screen.

Well, in the case of shrink-wrapped floating windows on a desktop
background this discussion becomes moot as you can't predict what kind
of background the user chose.
Somebody knowing what she's doing would have a neutral background with
a suitable luminosity for her needs, but others could have a colorful
picture with flowers and kitten :-)

Maximized floating windows are likely to show some padding color when
they're zoomed out to fit.

> of 100% monitor white would be eyestrain.

Ah, ok. Agreed then.
Even while any user serious about printing is likely to use a white
level as close as possible to her common paper stock white, it's still
a moving target.
But in my opinion the strongest argument against a too bright theme is
eyestrain.

> this is already possible by doing XYZ . . . ).

Agreed. Personally I'd love to have a little switcher below in the
status bar, by the quickmask and zoom/units selectors.
A simple square would suffice. You click on it and it cycles between
black/middle gray/white (and maybe the background checkers colors too?
idk).

---

From: Elle Stone <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2016 13:02:23 -0500

> You mean, like View -> Padding Color -> Light/Dark Check Color?

I didn't know about that particular menu entry, so thanks! But the 
problem is that when I set a custom canvas padding color, and then 
change to another canvas padding color, the first color is not 
remembered any where in the UI, as far as I can tell.

It would be easy enough to dial in colors that are R=G=B. But the 
desktop isn't color-managed. Also my monitor is profiled but not 
calibrated to have the gray axis be R=G=B.

So to set a truly neutral canvas color, first I make the color I want in 
GIMP in a regular RGB working space, and then convert that color to my 
monitor profile, and then eyedropper the RGB values, and then dial these 
values in as the custom canvas color. This is a lot of steps to go 
through to change the canvas padding color.

It would be nice if there were a way to have the little squares of color 
in the "Custom padding color" remember the last twelve colors that were 
dialed in as Custom padding colors. But currently those last twelve 
colors are the last twelve colors picked using the color picker.

A dialogue such as Gez suggested would also work, that is somewhere on 
the Status bar a place to select from the last few custom canvas padding 
colors.

Elle