Author Topic: Most serious problem Artstudio Pro is facing is holistic.  (Read 3903 times)

Dorothyfan1

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I haven’t been on the forums in a while because i’ve had issues with my health and other concerns. But now I’ve come back to digital art creation because of a new concern…inflation eating away my ability to purchase watercolor tubes of paint and other price increases causing me to back away from physical art work. This is now becoming a serious problem and it’s forcing me to become more attuned to the problems in digital art design and one issue I’m seeing right now involves Artstudio Pro and that is the program is still too darn confusing to look for different tools to get things done. I’m forced to go back to Procreate because I can easily find the Liquify tool instantly when I need to do quick work on an object while drawing. Using this as a baseline example…I can’t for the life of me find the liquify tool instantly on Artstudio Pro to do the same job. I have to hunt it down on the numerous menu selections to figure out where this is. You guys need to overhaul the program to simplify where we can find the most basic tools and hide the confusing menus but still allow us to find those items by making it intuitive to find when we need it. Borodante mentions this issue constantly in his Youtube reviews of Artstudio Pro and these concerns are still valid and still need fixing.

icezimy

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Re: Most serious problem Artstudio Pro is facing is holistic.
Reply #1 on: August 08, 2022, 12:57:15 PM
You cannot realistically compare Procreate with Artstudio Pro in this way, because the former is lacking a serious number of features that Artstudio Pro long has. And I’d argue if Procreate had all these features, I personally would find their (Procreates) approach of hiding many options into the UI or just behind gestures, much more confusing.

ASP has a clear way of managing its options from the burger menu (the three lines on the top left). This shows the menu bar from which you can reach all of the options, filters etc. in a clearly structured way, which additional shares a similar structure to desktop apps like Photoshop or Clip studio etc., so for people coming from such apps, this approach already feels very familiar.

Additionally, you can assign every single thing from this menu bar, to either your top toolbar (that is freely customizable and accessible through the three dots "..."), the quick menu, or keyboard shortcuts. This way all of the things you frequently need/use, can be accessed super quickly.

And whenever you’re using any of the many tools, you can simply press the “2 sliders button” on the bottom left, to bring up a bunch of different options for this specific tool. It’s simple to understand.

Artstudio Pro is made for people who need much more options than Procreate or most other apps for iPad currently offer. And they managed to do so, while still keeping a clean looking UI, made specifically with iPad in mind. So even if you wouldn’t need all of those additional features, you can always just customize the UI to be/look as simple or as complicated as it fits to your personal needs.

So obviously it does have a slightly bigger learning curve than Procreate, especially if you never used any desktop level drawing apps before. But it’s still far from being overly complicated, and far below Photoshops and co. learning curves, but while still offering most of the same functionality and I'd argue even better user experience to the way many tools work inside ASP compared to Photoshop.
For example Elastify, works so much smoother and simpler in ASP than in PS. A simple native perspective tool or the option to clear selections over multiple layers, the fact that empty layers are marked as such, and that you can clearly see which filters are active on the layers etc., are just a few minor examples of how ASP exceeds in terms of UI/UX compared to desktop apps like PS.

So once you understand the overall way the app is organized, it becomes very easy and intuitive to work with. I truly believe that the lucky clan team did a very good job on keeping the UI simple, yet providing so much professional options and tools. But it is my all time favorite drawing app in terms of UI and functionality ever, so I’m definitely a bit biased.

However, the app definitely could improve in certain parts of it, and in fact it does continuously improve, and the amazing part is, that the developers always take their user feedback very seriously into consideration and bring new improved updates constantly, despite only being a small team. ASP is definitely far from needing a complete overhaul of the UI, anywhere in the near future. Quite the opposite, the UI keeps getting better with each new update they release.

And I’ve also seen Borodantes videos of Artstudio Pro, but they are already outdated by now (his last review is over a year old), and most (if not all) of the “problem” things he addressed in his videos, have since long been fixed.

And to answer your question, you can find the Liquify/Elastify tool under the Burger Menu > Filters > Elastify. In order to access it with a single press, just put it into your quick menu, top toolbar, or assign a keyboard shortcut to it.

Also, lucky clan just recently published a user manual (https://www.luckyclan.com/artstudiopro/artstudio_pro_manual.pdf), so if you’re struggling a lot, this will be a good place to start. And people on this forum are also always willing to answer your questions.

TLDR; And if ASP is still not for you, after all of that, that’s fine too. But to then go on the forum, and telling the developers they should overhaul their whole UI because you don’t like it, without even giving any real constructive solutions or suggestions, is not very helpful at all.

alfanders

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Re: Most serious problem Artstudio Pro is facing is holistic.
Reply #2 on: August 08, 2022, 04:19:06 PM
Hi Dorothyfan1, I assumed you've never really used Clip Studio Paint or Photoshop.

I think Artstudio Pro's target market and usage is more akin to aforementioned Clip Studio Paint and Photoshop, which is a feature-rich powerhouse editing/painting app. Unlike Procreate which is made from the ground up UX-wise to be easier to doodle with, despite its more barebone features.

Where Artstudio Pro excels is in its customizability. You can basically tune it based on your unique workflow. You can have a toolbar filled with features you'd frequently use.

I believe, picking up a new program, especially a feature rich one like this would expect you to also spend time getting used to their terminologies and features.

Here are the full list of the features currently supported in Artstudio Pro
https://www.luckyclan.com/artstudiopro/artstudio_pro_manual.pdf

Thanks!

alfanders

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Re: Most serious problem Artstudio Pro is facing is holistic.
Reply #3 on: August 08, 2022, 04:29:59 PM
And also a suggested solution for Lucky Clan to mitigate a little bit the concern above

this is also inline with the suggestion below :
Suggestion : Search Bar for Quick Menu and Keyboard Shortcuts

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I use Photoshop fulltime, and I cannot overstate how many times I've used this search feature in photoshop.
Its default shortcut is cmd+F or ctrl+F. It would show a floating window similar to spotlight on Mac, and you can search any feature by typing the name.


It makes finding a feature so so much faster and easier. It saves so much time compared to trying to find the feature in each of the menu, especially if the feature is deep within the menu tree.

basically similar to this mockup I made back then, linked below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQSDxtEc7kY

I believe this feature, together with the features mentioned on the thread above would be a game changer for the User Experience. It would make it way faster and easier to use a feature. Especially given how feature-rich Artstudio Pro has been 🥰
Last Edit: August 08, 2022, 04:33:24 PM by alfanders

Dorothyfan1

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Re: Most serious problem Artstudio Pro is facing is holistic.
Reply #4 on: August 08, 2022, 08:32:19 PM
A search bar would be a fantastic solution to this issue of finding features that are hard to locate. The only fly in the ointment here is the issue of typing the terms themselves. The designers would need to “tag’ the different features in a way making it possible to quickly locate whatever it is you need to find otherwise you might end up looking for something you think isn’t there…but it’s there but is named differently. So there is a naming convention that needs addressing if this solution is chosen.

alfanders

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Re: Most serious problem Artstudio Pro is facing is holistic.
Reply #5 on: August 09, 2022, 05:00:33 AM
Again regarding the name convention, I assume you base this on Procreate's naming convention. Which is a different program and not even the widely used standard.

I think getting used to Artstudio Pro's naming convention is to be expected since this is a different program and environment. I believe you can google artstudio's counterpart using the term you're familiar with.

A search bar would be a fantastic solution to this issue of finding features that are hard to locate. The only fly in the ointment here is the issue of typing the terms themselves. The designers would need to “tag’ the different features in a way making it possible to quickly locate whatever it is you need to find otherwise you might end up looking for something you think isn’t there…but it’s there but is named differently. So there is a naming convention that needs addressing if this solution is chosen.

LCArt

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Re: Most serious problem Artstudio Pro is facing is holistic.
Reply #6 on: August 11, 2022, 06:18:25 PM
I haven’t been on the forums in a while because i’ve had issues with my health and other concerns. But now I’ve come back to digital art creation because of a new concern…inflation eating away my ability to purchase watercolor tubes of paint and other price increases causing me to back away from physical art work. This is now becoming a serious problem and it’s forcing me to become more attuned to the problems in digital art design and one issue I’m seeing right now involves Artstudio Pro and that is the program is still too darn confusing to look for different tools to get things done. I’m forced to go back to Procreate because I can easily find the Liquify tool instantly when I need to do quick work on an object while drawing. Using this as a baseline example…I can’t for the life of me find the liquify tool instantly on Artstudio Pro to do the same job. I have to hunt it down on the numerous menu selections to figure out where this is. You guys need to overhaul the program to simplify where we can find the most basic tools and hide the confusing menus but still allow us to find those items by making it intuitive to find when we need it. Borodante mentions this issue constantly in his Youtube reviews of Artstudio Pro and these concerns are still valid and still need fixing.

- Funny thing, i find procreate way more confusing that ASP since procreate forces you to learn some gestures or you are unable to do certain things. (Plus it still lacks many options ASP has...)

- You have to hunt things down on the numerous menu selections? they are super basic and minimalist, the only one that could get some work is the gradients menu, other than that, everything else is intuitive and easy to find (If you experimented with the app a few days)

- "Oh hey, i cant spend 2 days exploring your app, care to change everything to my taste instead?"  ::) ASP is not procreate, stop trying to turn this desktop/pro grade app into a toy like procreate is.

- Care to point out the videos Borodante mentions this "issue" and the timestamps? if he mentions this "issue" constantly shouldn't be that hard to tell us.

- Are you really telling us that going to "Filters > Elastify..." is that hard for you? And again, since you didn't give yourself the time to explore the app you probably don't know you have 2 options to add ANY tool you like as a shortcut.

- Lastly, here, have ArtStudio Pro's manual https://www.luckyclan.com/artstudiopro/artstudio_pro_manual.pdf, i know you probably won't check it, but it's all i can offer to help you other than experimenting with the app before your need to going back to procreate kicks in.

And sorry if i sound annoyed, but you ALWAYS come here to rant how much you hate the app and how you are always "forced" to move to procreate... stay with procreate then???? You are usually not even giving solutions other than demanding things to be "like in procreate" without considering if its really needed, worth the time, people who that change would help... dunno, you sound greedy :(

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On other note, yeah, the search bar is REALLY needed >.<

Cantisani

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Re: Most serious problem Artstudio Pro is facing is holistic.
Reply #7 on: August 14, 2022, 12:42:31 AM
Like Procreate?  HELL NO.

I’m madly in love with ASP and its interface, and then Lucky Clan always find a way to improve it which for me is amazing.

artstudio

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Re: Most serious problem Artstudio Pro is facing is holistic.
Reply #8 on: August 15, 2022, 10:45:55 PM
You can keep the shortcut for laso tool and Liquify tool (it is called elastify in Art Studio pro) on top of your toolbar just like procreate. Procreate does not offer any such customization while ASP does. I think devs should keep these two tools on top as default when the app is installed for the first time so that the people coming from Procerate feel at home. Photoshop and CSP users can always customize.

Ben

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Re: Most serious problem Artstudio Pro is facing is holistic.
Reply #9 on: October 19, 2022, 06:04:38 AM
Man, I am so happy that ASP is NOT like procreate and should never try to copy procreates annoying philosophy and lack of customisation. What you describe as a problem should be easily solvable by putting whatever you need the most into the quick menu or top menu bar, which you can already do right now so I don't see the problem here