Hey thanks! Glad you like it.
Yeah it’s definitely a trade off, between the first and second mock-up. The first one puts color/opacity editing in one combined key, which simplifies the key ui. However, it makes some kinds of gradients harder to author, where you want a simple gradient for opacity but a lot of keys for color. It can be nice to separate opacity and color in those cases.
Gradients in Art Studio Pro already are set up with separate color and opacity keys, which means the second mockup probably has a higher chance that lucky clan could do it with less trouble (higher chance it might actually happen! Haha). Also they don’t have to do any changes to the color picker ui which simplifies things further.
I included an example of a gradient that would be hard to author with combined color/opacity keys (it’s art studio’s existing gradient editing ui).
Another thought I had is that you would have to be able to add and delete keys- probably just tapping on the bar anywhere would add a key, maybe dragging a key off the bar would delete it. Additionally, another cool thing about either of these designs is they could support the “show midpoints” option in the tool options.
Regarding that affinity photo gradient tool vid- there’s some neat stuff in there! It gives you an interface to edit a gradient after you draw it, and select color keys on the canvas. Personally, I find that the issue with this sort of design is that it can really slow you down if you are just trying to do a lot of gradients overlapping each other, since you are forced to accept each one before you can do another. You also lose the ability to edit it if you switch tools or do any additional actions. There’s lots of ways to design around those issues or make the post-edit ui optional, but I think it’s a level of complexity and control that’s more fitting for a gradient adjustment layer, which persists and can be edited later. And indeed, in the video, he shows that ui is best used with a gradient adjustment layer for this reason. I like the gradient tool remaining focused on one-and-done quick gradients, since it really is not focused on persisting gradients individually. So if it were up to me, I would consider adding something like that to a gradient adjustment layer, but not the gradient tool.