Icons for Shotwell and GNOME Photos are the same

[phako]

Expected Behavior

Different apps should be easily distinguishable

(What you were trying to do) Starting Shotwell.

Actual Behavior

While browsing the app overview, I noticed that Shotwell and GNOME Photos have the same icon

Specifications

ii yaru-theme-gnome-shell 18.10.6 all Yaru GNOME Shell desktop theme from the Ubuntu Community ii yaru-theme-gtk 18.10.6 all Yaru GTK theme from the Ubuntu Community ii yaru-theme-icon 18.10.6 all Yaru icon theme from the Ubuntu Community ii yaru-theme-sound 18.10.6 all Yaru sound theme from the Ubuntu Community

Software that presents the issue:

• Name: GNOME Shell (for showing the overview), GNOME Photos, Shotwell
• Version: Whatever is in Ubuntu 18.10

[Feichtmeier]

@ubuntujaggers Could you try to make a dedicated shotwell icon? I think snwh is not interested in this upstream so maybe you can try something for yaru? I once made that symlinks for suru because I thought it's better than "nothing" :man_shrugging: If he is interested we can make a PR upstream sometime after.

[debarshiray]

I once made that symlinks for suru because I thought it's better than "nothing"

How about just using the applications' original upstream icon?

[jbicha]

@Feichtmeier by the way, phako is the upstream Shotwell developer.

There is a concern about both apps using the same icon because the apps do different things and there are quite a few people who have both installed.

There is a proposal to switch to Photos by default in a future Ubuntu release, which will mean that upgraders will have both apps installed and it's important for users to be able to distinguish them.

I believe the symlink was added at the same time for Rhythmbox/GNOME Music, but Rhythmbox got its own icon 2 weeks later.

[ubuntujaggers]

@Feichtmeier @phako

Is the upstream icon the image that appears at the top left of http://yorba.org/shotwell/help/?

If so, I could try to do something very faithful that merely has a softer Suru-style drop shadow and sets the design on top of a Suru squircle? Would everyone be happy with that?

[Feichtmeier]

I am not a fan of putting things ontop of the squircle. I think that suru idea works better when the whole icon is the squircle

[ubuntujaggers]

I could do a squircle version of the largest picture, with the city skyline at night, and try it with/without the white border?

[phako]

No, it's that on https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Shotwell/, i.e.

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/shotwell/raw/master/data/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/org.gnome.Shotwell.png

[ubuntujaggers]

Thanks @phako :)

I am not a fan of putting things ontop of the squircle. I think that suru idea works better when the whole icon is the squircle

In that case, how about doing a Suru version of the largest polaroid (the dark tree on a blue sky) where the polaroid is the whole squircle? I would be working on this basic shape:

...and make a blue tree scene fill the grey area.

[Feichtmeier]

Sounds like a very good idea to me! :)

[ubuntujaggers]

The most faithful thing to do would be to simply reconfigure the existing polaroid and "mask" it into the Suru polaroid template. Most people who know the app would quickly recognise it as a Suru icon for Shotwell:

But we'd need the blessing of the artist to do this (the metadata for the svg says "proprietary", so unless that was an oversight, it's not creative commons).

Alternatively, for greater consistency with Suru, we could have something more stylised/simple. EDIT: Which I'm also trying to draw.

[phako]

You can safely assume CC-BY-SA. Proprietary is wrong. sorry. See https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=717326 which suggests BY-SA or LGPLv3

[Feichtmeier]

@phako any chance we could either improve your upstream icon or change the pictogram we would use inside the Suru shape? Imho it could use some improvements.

[phako]

@Feichtmeier Ok, github apparently still suffers from its outage as your comment isn't visible here - can you elaborate on the improvements that you would do on the upstream icon? Otherwise, you are free to do whatever you want with yaru, I just would like to prefer the two apps distinguishable

[Feichtmeier]

@phako Thanks for the authorization and the issue report! I think the best for your app and this project would be if we would only take the pictogram and put it into the "squricle" like @ubuntujaggers suggested.

I am not an icon designer, so maybe @ubuntujaggers has an idea to make the pictogram itself a little bit less "glossy" and less "busy" and a bit flatter without losing it's current characteristic motive?

[ubuntujaggers]

Yep, I can certainly try that! I literally just put it in as-is, I will have another pass at it.

[ubuntujaggers]

I posted a comment and I think it vanished. Yes, I can have a go at that.

Should have also added: I think the scene with the tree is a great SVG, but @feichtmeier is right that it's drawn in a different style, so I see it as a case of trying to make it a bit more consistent with the Suru icons without making it unrecognisable. Hope I can manage it lol.

[ubuntujaggers]

Okay @Feichtmeier and @phako - here's attempt no. 1.

I've made the following adjustments to try to slightly "Suru-fy" the Shotwell design, while keeping it recognisable for people who know the app and not reinventing the wheel:

• I've got a flatter, more simple version of the graphic including a straight horizon;
• I've taken colours from the Suru palette;
• In place of the original element at the top right of the background, which was part of a transparent circle split in two, I have a Suru "fold" which lightens the same area in a less dramatic way;
• In an attempt to follow other Suru icons, the graphic is redrawn at smaller sizes to align with pixel boundaries and remove detail that's no longer visible. The largest tree is traced closely from the original, and the smaller trees approximate the same shape with less detail.

I wouldn't call any of these changes "improvements" by any stretch :) (in fact, judged as a standalone svg it's the opposite) - but I hope it looks crisp on the Ubuntu launcher and blends in reasonably well with the rest of the Suru icons.

[Feichtmeier]

Really nice improvement points!

One last idea: could we try a bit more "friendly" tree which would also look more like "paper"/origami? ( here is an example )

[ubuntujaggers]

I can certainly try some different trees :) I did have a few early attempts at doing a more "Suru" tree made of flat polygons. Paper tree designs tend to represent trees with leaves using triangles or ovals, which would be a more radical departure from the source design.

One possibility might be to make a bare tree out of polygons which approximate the shape, like Japanese origami. An example would be the arms and legs of this monkey, where the joints of the limbs are made from folding the paper over: https://pngtree.com/freepng/cartoon-handwritten-origami-monkey_2921403.html. It might be possible to make a paper-looking tree branch using two or three similar flat shapes. I'll have a play in Inkscape :)

[ubuntujaggers]

@Feichtmeier

First attempt at an origami tree - the three smallest sizes definitely need more work:

[clobrano]

Nice work :+1: what do you think about using the same bright line used to separate two branches for underlining where the origami folds?

[ubuntujaggers]

I tried the same brightness but it made the tree look like a diagram or line drawing rather than an object... what do you think of this, which adds extra edging to the other folds, but not as bright for all of them:

...?

[clobrano]

It looks good. In the end, I might be too picky, at a normal size, these details would be hard to see anyway

[Feichtmeier]

It looks great !

[ubuntujaggers]

Super - I've done a bit of work on the smaller sizes - this is what it looks like now:

If this one is ready, can I commit it to the fork I used for the other icons (which I still have on my laptop)?

[Feichtmeier]

Yes, I merge it to the icon update branch then (it is on hold until some more weeks but then gets merged into master)

[phako]

That looks nice!

[ubuntujaggers]

Brilliant - for apps like this I think it's great when we can get a thumbs up from the upstream app developer :)

[jbicha]

@phako Because of Ubuntu UI Freeze, I think we don't intend to change these icons for Ubuntu 18.10 so this will just be for 19.04 and later releases. Is that going to be a problem for you?

[ubuntujaggers]

@Feichtmeier

I pushed it, it's now there in my fork: https://github.com/ubuntujaggers/yaru/blob/master/icons/src/fullcolor/apps/shotwell.svg

[polyjitter]

@ubuntujaggers You're getting really good at more suru-y icons. This looks beautiful!

[Feichtmeier]

Fixed with https://github.com/ubuntu/yaru/pull/901