Yes, I think even showing the snapshot feature in action would be helpful to showcase the capabilities of the software, after having learnt how it works itâs easily one of the features I use the most while comparing previous edits or different styles 
It is a faux pas but tempting to over-animate videos. While the issues raised could be toned down or refactored, the one that I cannot accept is the rocking: it is nauseating and also challenging for people with visual-related disabilities. Speaking of accessibility, please consider reading up on accessibility guidelines in general, and also for documents, videos and the web. They will be slightly different depending where you hail from. Overall, they not only provide recommendations on how to make your design clean and professional, but they can also help you reach more people without alienating them.
My last thought is that there should be some video enthusiasts and professionals lurking in the forum. There is no rule that you have to work on this alone. Collaboration is the foundation of our community after all.
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Like most of the graphic design and fonts. No video expert but hopefully constructive to agree with most of the comments above. I think there are also too many words. Once the viewer sees that itâs impossible to read the bank of text (and make sense of the symbols), s/he will tend to ignore the other captions as well and switch off trying to interpret them. The music is too prominent, percussive, high pitched and complex, IMV. Quite hard for the brain to make sense of all that audio action while also deciphering the visuals.
Different kind of video and not perfect (the YouTube text blocks key details of the video on my phone) but I thought this had some nice elements:
One other thing. âDownload for freeâ might suggest a hidden cost and is a double edged sword when people expect to be paying with their personal data for free software/social.
Edit: My eye tends to follow that first pic off screen as I havenât really digested it by the time it starts moving, then itâs still half visible so keeps drawing the eye as the text appears, which as a result only gets half my attention. Leaves me a bit confused where Iâm supposed to be looking right at the start. Making this stuff is quite hard, it seems!
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Good progress. The icons look very pleasing, theyâre very consistent design-wise. However, some of the icons can be misleading, or do not correspond to the respective module very well. It seems that more focus have been given to the name of the module, rather than what it does.
Here are a few that caught my mind:
- Denoise has nothing to do with sound / speaker
- Filmic rgb has almost nothing to do with film. Its concept is (in a very, very rough way) based on film, but itâs a tool that maps the open domain to a closed domain using a tunable sigmoid function (and a couple of other things). It might mislead people into thinking that itâs somehow related to film emulation.
- Sigmoid should be the one having the sigmoid function icon. Itâs its whole thing, and itâs âmore importantâ than the other modules (base curve and rgb curve) that got the sigmoid icon.
- I donât follow the RGB Primaries icon. Maybe an icon of a gamut / CIE plot would fit it better?
- Bloom. I understand that the word is usually used with regard to flowers, but the depiction of a flower, in photography, is usually reserved for âmacroâ.
Other than that, great job. Lovely, cohesive work!
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Really appreciate the feedback so far, I feel sharpened by hearing the sticking points. Back to the drawing board!
Motion Design / Animation
I think my approach went against my initial âintended feelingâ and felt off balance. Will rework down the line!
â Technical, complex-made-simple, understated & minimal, professional, âmagneticâ. modern, carefully crafted.
Icon vocabulary: modules
Rethought a big chunk of these. Wonât explain all the choices, but many are better grouped or distinguished. Often you pull on a conceptual thread and much unravels 
.
Alphabetic sorting:
Focus on reworked icons:
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I really like your approach to icons, the ones that stick out badly for me are âblurs.png/surface blur.pngâ which appear to have inconsistent spacing.
Was it on purpose, or did the program you use misrepresent what you designed on export? It reminds me of a visual bug I encountered in Affinity Designer just days ago.
Apart from the fact that I donât find it to be representing âblurâ tools (but thatâs personal taste/subjective), often times itâs represented by a âtearâ shape.
I donât know if itâs standardized shape language in UX/UI or just a convenient way towards user-friendliness when switching from software to software; I imagine thereâs more savvy people than me on this aspect and after all, it isnât my choice and darktable can create a new path even regarding that aspect.
Btw I tried âfixingâ the aforementioned issue even tho Iâm sure youâll notice straight away, and tried a different approach, so I came up with a few drafts. 
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I went and had a look at your new stuff on Penpot. Itâs a very attractive look.
I have to admit Iâm not sold on the icons. Maybe itâs just me, but I donât find very many of them suggest to me what the related tool actually does. Thatâs not saying you did a bad job, but rather itâs because an awful lot of the tools in darktable are not easy to convey as a little graphical symbol, and in particular, representing a tool that works with color using a black and white icon is a huge challenge. When an icon doesnât clearly represent the action itâs associated with, itâs just visual noise.
There are already icons in the app for actions you can take within a tool or within the app as a whole. Most of them represent a single action. Iâm not sure that attempting to represent an entire tool with an icon adds anything to either the UI or the web site.
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I disagree, while ârepresenting the actionâ would be great, its difficult. But once you associate the icon with the action, you should be able to distinguish tools apart from one another faster.
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I must say, the icons look great! The only one now that makes me go âhmâŠ?â a tiny bit is the grain module - a microscope initially feels a bit âoff tangentâ 
but the more I think about it the more I like it actually.
I donât know how you come up with all theseâŠ
Edit: and I like the concept of âironingâ out the noise 
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At first, I felt the same with the âdenoiseâ and the iron icon, I thought: âhey, whatâs up with ironing and denoise tools?â, then I actually thought about the fact that we use the tool to achieve smoother gradients, and it all made sense, very playful ideas indeed.
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@rudantu : What about working on the splash screen?
See add splash screen by ralfbrown · Pull Request #17202 · darktable-org/darktable · GitHub
Letâs discuss the details in this PR if youâre ok. TIA.
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I donât think there are too many words, as they convey important information that will not come across with lesser words, but too little time to perceive them. So the speed of the changes is imo rather what should be focused on.
Take here into account that many of your audience will be non-native English users. After decades of English used as a second language, our perception of text is still somewhat slower than for native users.
As for the module icons, could the current identical ironing icons for raw denoise and denoise profiled modules possibly be separated by having different number of dots within?
Iâm no expert so that could definitely be the case.
Personally I think it should be a head shot of young person or construction worker with those big noise cancelling headphones. 
@rudantu just popped in on the penpot and I think this is looking really nice. Also saw you made a design for the docs, and that is awesome.
How do you think progress is going on this? Do you consider is finished or in a place where youâd want code to be written based on this design?
Would this be resolved by adding a minimal RGB gradient inside the teardrop portions of the color icons? A tiny touch of color would separate them enough imo, while not completely changing the design
After reading through all of the ideas, I had some thoughts as well.
About the icons - finding a suitable icon for each and every module might be kind of difficult and could end up cluttering the UI making it harder to understand.
What if there was an icon for groups of modules instead? For example everything related to color could get one, tones another one, effects another one and so on. That would clean up the interface significantly.
Also - one idea that I had from the first time opening the program: within a module, could the masking area get a dedicated background color that is different from the general module bg color? I feel that sometimes it is hard to quickly see where the moduleâs settings end and the masks options begin. Maybe it could just be a colored bar for the different mask types to separate the mask area from the module area. That would make it more intuitive and easier to understand when glancing at a module.
About the logo: I do think a flat design without gradients would look more modern and generally fit better than a 3d look.
About the website: it does need a more modern look. And I liked the design @rudantu posted. Obviously there would need to be a discussion on how to organize the content and what goes onto the home page.
Same for the docs. They need a redesign.
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You should just customize your module groups.
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