Making music artwork. Alternatives to Adobe?

[BONES]

So the claim “low contrast is good because these tools use it” is already a category error.

Except that's not the f**king claim, is it? The claim is that the SMPTE standard works. All those applications are simply offered as proof. But of course, I'm sure you know far more about it than the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, the companies who are guided by it's standard and able to charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for their products, as well as the professionals who have been using their products for 30+ years in every big budget film ever made.

For more modern examples of where this actually goes wrong: Notion in Dark Mode, Apple Notes in Dark Mode, parts of Windows 11 Settings, and a lot of SaaS dashboard templates.

Consumer level utilities, not even proper applications. If that's the best you have, you've not got a leg to stand on.

Low contrast in the literal UX sense reduces readability and visual hierarchy and increases search effort.

See, this is where you lose the track. Those things should not be more important in a professional application that other considerations, for several reasons. Most obvious is that when you know a piece of software, you don't need to look for things. Muscle memory and hotkey combinations see to that. To use the Toxik screenshot as an example, do you understand why the node tree is displayed over the viewport? It's so that you don't have to look away from the thing you are working on, where most other application of it's type would have the node tree displayed on a second monitor (which is, of course, also possible with Toxik). And you invoke it with possibly the least intuitive hotkey I've ever encountered - the tilda key. When I got the first beta installed, I spend a whole weekend trying to work out how to bring it up without success. But it wasn't meant to be user-friendly or intuitive, the learning curve was never as important.

And I'd hardly consider any part of this low contrast -

Screenshot 2026-05-29 091924.png

Quite the opposite, there is too much contrast for low light conditions.

But back to the actual topic, there is still no beating Xara Designer Pro for graphics work. It's Photoshop and Illustrator and Dreamweaver all rolled into a single application with a single workflow. i.e. You don't have a separate area to do your bitmap manipulation, it's all 100% integrated. You create a document and you can publish as a TIFF file, a PDF or as a website with button roll-overs and all the rest of it.

Screenshot 2026-05-29 092329.png

[pekbro]

I know Lucas used to pint the studio windows black so the artists couldn’t look outside, nothing to do with lighting. He also had/has a gift shop in his home, for guests.

When I used to do studio work, most stuff was light grey. Most of the time, we only used PS anyway, because it was faster to paint stuff, than to use CGI for a lot of stuff anyway. Also way cheaper.

[BONES]

I'm sure the workers think the windows were painted out so they couldn't look out of them but I'll guarantee that wasn't the actual reason they did it. I've never been to ILM but every other post facility I have been to is pretty much the same and every, single Flame suite I've ever been in is effectively windowless. Of course, most music studios are the same, albeit for different reasons.

[pekbro]

Normally I would agree, but I have it on very good authority that’s he’s a nut case, Disney was too. Of course I never worked for either directly. Disney died before I was born, but I never worked directly for the studio either.

[BONES]

Further to my Xara recommendation, I just found a discount offer in my Junk Email folder. If you are interested, you can use the code ALLINONE50 before the end of May (just a few days away) to get half off at xara.com

[BONES]

Normally I would agree, but I have it on very good authority that’s he’s a nut case, Disney was too. Of course I never worked for either directly. Disney died before I was born, but I never worked directly for the studio either.

It was pretty much a rite of passage for graphics arts graduates in Sydney to work for Disney. I never did, being that this is my 3rd career and I was 38 when I got my first design job, but almost everyone around my age got their first job as tweeners for Disney. It was very much a sweatshop and the pay was terrible but everyone really appreciated how much it helped shape their careers.

[Tiles]

Sigh. That for the "I've won, so I'll stop answering" attitude. Didn't last too long.

And again, you are arguing against a position you've constructed yourself.

Let’s be clear: 'Dark neutral' is not the same as 'low contrast'. And for the record: SMPTE does not equal low contrast.

Ironically, every screenshot you posted to prove your point actually demonstrates high functional contrast. Relying on SMPTE or expert habituation doesn't invalidate UX principles, it simply masks poor discoverability. Your Toxik example proves exactly this: spending an entire weekend trying to find a core function is not a sign of "professional" software, it is a failure of the designer.

The fact that companies charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for their products or that professionals have used them for 30 years doesn't make the UI "good", it just means those users had no choice but to adapt. Muscle memory and hotkeys are coping mechanisms for inefficient interfaces, not evidence of superior UX.

Look at 3ds Max: it is notorious for its bad usability because it grew over decades without a proper UI overhaul. Autodesk can't fix it now precisely because they are trapped by the "user habits" you are praising, habits born from poor design. Or to use Blender as an example: do you remember right-click select? Do you still delete the default cube with every new scene? Do you still strain your eyes on text-only menus and monochrome icons? Is this what you call superior usability?

This is exactly why I started Bforartists. Blender couldn't change its UI for the very same reason: the user base and their ingrained habits. I could, and I did. And we still do. Left click select was one of the very first features i changed.

While you’ve made this a personal war, for me, this is about applying professional industry UI UX design standards to the software i develop, and to actually sanitize Blender's usability and fix its UI failures. The reason we are going in circles is that you continue to conflate workflow specialization with good UX and confuse basic terminology.

You are repeatedly falling victim to the Dunning-Kruger effect, confusing grey with low contrast and inefficiency with expertise. Until you can distinguish between luminance and contrast, something this basic for a graphics artist, this discussion is pointless. Read the literature I provided, get some actual industry experience, and then we can talk. Until then, you're just arguing against your own straw men.

This, my friend, also follows the SMPTE standards. But with high contrast and colored icons. Which, compared to Blender, increases the usability dramatically. I can work here for hours without getting headache.

[pekbro]

I like the icons, snazzy.

Huge though, I generally don't like icons, but if I have to have them, I want them as small as possible. I prefer menus I guess. ymmv

[Tiles]

Thanks
You can actually turn the sidebar icons into text menus too, like in Blender. Simply drag it wider

I understand your point. However, text occupies much more space than icons and is slower to grasp. With over 2000 operators, you cannot represent everything in text menus. That is why the toolbar in most graphics software uses icons.

The other extreme was trueSpace, with its icon only interface. The art is finding the right balance between working speed, recognizability, and self explanation, since icon only designs can also lead to cognitive overload.

[pekbro]

I just prefer to read what something is as opposed having to discern it from an icon. Personally, I find menu trees easier to find what I want. I liked the circular menu from the cursor in Maya for instance.

In the end I don’t really use blender for anything other than a renderer. For organic modeling I use 3DCoat, for anything else I prefer a 2D drafting interface, like autocad or formZ. Otherwise I’ll use Houdini. Blender for me at least is not good with high poly counts and such.

[Tiles]

Yeah, Blender quits where sculpting starts, in high poly range. I enjoyed to work with 3D Coat in the past. It was a good complement to Z-Brush.

[TechHaus]

It's awesome that the new version of Resolve has a RAW photo editor now.

I love Fusion, learned it and Nuke after Apple killed Shake.

I also learned Motion instead of After Effects. Never got into Adobe except for Photoshop, and ditched PS when they went subscription style, like many.

I wish Apple didn't kill Flash because the internet was pretty artistic back then, imo.

[pekbro]

I miss shake a lot. Also pinnacle’s compositor, forget what it was called. Was a good alternative to Ae. Commotion or something.

[eLawnMust]

I have Shake but haven't used much, too many irons in the fire... Have Nichimen Mirai on a couple machines which is still a superb modeler but everything else out there has surpassed it in every other dept... Made a BiBeast Bust in Nendo a few years ago, painted in Nendo as well but ultimately finished in C4D XL7-










About 5 years ago started a Jessica Rabbit in XL7, never finished-



The polygon hair is just a placeholder, was gonna finish with Shave & a Haircut...

The strange aspect of these older 3D soft is the screwed-up way some of them did symmetry, C4D wasn't bad... Lightwave was the best for it, you simply choose the correct plane of symmetry & that's it, move something on either side & the other side responds... Lightwave was the first for actual radiosity in LW6 in 1999 also with optional HDRI lighting... There were others claiming but it was some 'solution' you ran with disappointing results like in trueSpace or HASH or that Form-Z RenderZone Radiosity...

On the subject of icons yup tS was there, problem was that you had to learn each icon first, in LightWave all the buttons are texted so no need to learn icons at all...

[Shabdahbriah]

Yeah, Blender quits where sculpting starts, in high poly range. I enjoyed to work with 3D Coat in the past. It was a good complement to Z-Brush.

+1 It's come a long way.

I miss shake a lot. Also pinnacle’s compositor, forget what it was called. Was a good alternative to Ae. Commotion or something.

Yes, commotion.