A New Icon for OddCal

My most popular application for the Mac Desktop is OddCal.  It was the second app that I posted for sale in the Mac App Store (3 February 2011) and is my own personal favorite as well.

The icon, as you can see via the link, is quite lame.  It was the best I could conjure back then, but my oldest son has given me a fresh idea to work with, now that the app is maturing, and I have a new release ready to upload.  The concept is simply a group of three curved arrows of different colors and lengths, perhaps even widths.  I am relying heavily upon this blog post to get started.

As per usual for a Mac app icon, I launch InkScape and start with a 1024 x 1024 palette.  As per instructed in the blog post above, I click on the grid (View --> Grid) and zoom into about 70%.  I then created a quick rectangle (holding down the shift key to lock onto the grid) and dragged it to about 2/3 of the workspace.  I then filled it with RGB 8776dfaa:

This should leave me plenty of room to generate the arrowhead.

At this point, the blog author advises one to press P to highlight the Pen tool, which works, but InkScape calls it Draw Freehand Lines:

However, I found that the tool just beneath that icon is probably what was meant:

It is entitled Draw Bezier Curves and Straight Lines.  I also found that ensuring that the settings were adjusted thusly helped immensely:

Now I needed to make a second rectangle, same width as the first, but not quite as long.  It took longer than I had anticipated, since I wanted no fill, and just a black stroke outline.  Somehow, I had switched on the rounded corners (Ry), and needed to set that to 0:

With some experimentation, I was able to successfully create a second rectangle, maneuver it next to the triangle, and by Shift-clicking with the Select tool, and got them both selected simultaneously, and chose Path --> Union to make them a single object:

As per the instructions, this new shape is dragged so that the edges are butted against one another:

Now it gets interesting.  The arrow portion needs to be rotated to create the curve effect.  The blog instructions have you make a copy first, intending the original to be used as a shadow.  I am only making a 2D icon, and so will skip that portion.

To achieve the rotation, the arrowhead needs to be selected in rotate mode, so that the center point is visible.  Two clicks on one of the lines does it.   (The grid has been turned off to more easily see the rotation point.):

The rotation point needs to be dragged to outside of the bottom left of the selected object, then it is simply a matter of using the handle in the upper right corner to achieve serious rotation:

With the rotated portion still selected, Shift-clicking the purple rectangle (thus selecting both) and choosing Path --> Union creates the wacky figure that will be the basis of the icon:

To smooth this creature out, we make a couple extra nodes along the short segment, just down from the arrowhead by using the Edit Paths by Node tool, and + node button:

Since I rotated my arrowhead further than recommended, I got a bunch of extra nodes on the bottom corner:

First, I select a single node, then hold down the shift key to select all the others that need to go:

With all of them selected, I click on the delete node button:

And get the funky curved arrow:

After changing the color, adjusting the nodes some more, and adding a gradient, my first attempt ends up like this:

Not exactly what I was looking for, but at least now I know the major steps to get what I want.  I could not get the 3D effect that the blog author was recommending to function at all.  I got a message instead about a python script not having been installed.

Simple iOS icon

I am finally making some real progress on my first iOS application, and I thought up a nice, simple icon design (just wait, you will see it soon) as well as a color pattern.  I have never actually submitted an iOS application to Apple, so I do not know the guidelines off the top of my head.  Fortunately, that information is easy to find.

Unfortunately, it is not as simple as using the Icon Composer App on the Mac OSX system.  I will need to generate all the icon sizes I want (depending on the app target) myself.  They all need to be square, and the biggest must be 1024 x 1024 pixels.  Since I want the app to be both usable on iPhone and iPad, I will also need 57 x 57, 72 x 72, 114 x 114, and 144 x 144.  Whew.  At least iOS does all the heavy lifting of creating round corners, drop shadows, and the reflective shine.  So kind.

I will only need three colors (two, if you don't count black), and since this app is based upon the tremendous education I received at Washington State University, I decided to use their color scheme of crimson and gray, with the following specific color details:

CRIMSON
RGB 152/30/50
CMYK 0/100/65/34 

GRAY
RGB 94/106/113
CMYK 11/0/0/65 

I would like to set up both of those as part of my Inkscape palette, just in case I feel the need to use them again in the future.

One would think that making a nice square, all one color, would be straightforward.  Well, if it is, I cannot figure it out.  First, I made a new Inkscape document using the Desktop template, since one of the dimensions was 1024 pixels.  I then went into the Document Properties, and made it 1024 by 1024. So far, so good.

Since I could NOT figure out how to color the background, I decided to make a square shape the exact dimensions of the document.  I clicked on the Rectangle button, and drew a shape on the page, adjusting the dimensions to 1024 and 1024:

Of course, it needs to line up perfectly with the document, so I clicked the Select and Transform button, and entered 0 (zero) in each of the X and Y windows:

That lined everything up famously.  Now, in the Object --> Fill and Stroke panel, I entered the RGB data for CRIMSON (see above), and put the alpha to 255:

 Resulting the background that I wanted:

For the actual icon image, all I want is a perfect circle with a small slice cut out of it.  Don't ask me why.  It's just what I want.

I selected the circle object, changed the fill to match the GRAY RGB data (above), entered 20 in the Start angle box, and clicked on the segment tool:

Holding the control key, I drew a quick circle, then I adjusted the dimensions to 900 x 900, filling most of the background.  Subtracting 900 from 1024 resulted in 124, and half of that made 62, which I entered into the X and Y registers, after clicking on Select and Transform.  That centered the circle nicely:

I could not discover any clever method to get one segment to point directly and straight  upwards, so I just kept rotating it until it looked right.

I think the 900 is too big, so I reduced it to 800:

Hmmmm.  No, still too big.  How about 700?

Much better.  I had originally planned to add black lines (like clock hands) to the radii, but I think I will leave it like this.  I do believe that the gray is too dark as well.  I do not know enough about color to change it, so I will do some reading and see what I find.  At this point, the gray works out to be hexadecimal 5e6a71ff.  That is probably a clue to lightening it up a bit.

Replacing the hex with c5c5c5ff, it was just a bit too light.  Using c0c0c0ff, I get this:

A reasonable compromise.  Now, for the exporting into different sizes.  Export Bitmap works fine, but is a bit clunky.

Changing the size works fine, but I did not mess with the dpi. The clunkiness comes when changing the filename every time the size is changed.  Instead of trying to type into the Filename text field, I kept clicking Browse, because it highlighted the filename directly.  I could then change the filename right then.  However, then I had to go back and click Export to make it happen.

I only need to put the icons in the app and see how they look.

Introduction

I have never really possessed a desire to blog.  And yet, I find myself  on the threshold of a pathway that will most likely require more attention to details, so this seems to be the most reasonable method of tracking my progress.  Plus, I expect that it will make it easier to locate things I have already done (but forgotten) when I need them later on.

I am not an artist; I trained as a scientist and veterinarian in the 1980s, and I continue to practice veterinary medicine full time.  My father and I built a black & white darkroom in the basement of our home in the early 1970s, and I have continued my interest and avocation in photography ever since.  I went fully digital just after the turn of the century.

Since that time, I have dumped most of my discretionary dollars into Apple computers, Nikon cameras & lenses, and Adobe Photoshop.  (The lack of a link on that last item is clue...)  At first, I was not bothered by the huge expense of Adobe's image editing product, even though I only need a half dozen times per year, since I did not purchase every single upgrade as each came out.  In fact, I only purchased the original version 7, and the CS3 upgrade a few years later.  I thought that was plenty for the little that I used it.

The current version of Mac OS X (10.8.x - Mountain Lion) is having a few issues with CS3, and the truth is that I am just plain frustrated about the push toward subscription based Photoshop, or as Adobe phrases it, Creative Cloud.  Mind you, I do not disagree with the concept, but $50 per month?  Sure, as a bona-fide CS customer, I would get $30 per month for a year, and full access to all the software (which is nice), but it does not work for someone who uses it as infrequently as I do.

I have considered just purchasing a month of everything, but which month?  It is simply impractical to manage it like that.  I am also not thrilled about coughing up another $200 for the full upgrade to CS6.  I would much rather continue to save for the next generation of imaging equipment, and improved computing power.  I understand that my choices are not always logical, nor are they necessarily what others would select, but oh well.  That's my problem.

So, I will spend the next few months learning the ins and outs of GIMP, an open source, no-cost image editing software package, and I will be keeping my notes here on what I learn, focused, of course, on the photographic projects I am currently working on.

I also plan to simultaneously explore inkscape, another open source, no-cost application, designed for vector drawing.  In fact, this is the "final straw" reason for my decision anyway.  I have been considering GIMP for a few months, but the image-editing functions of Photoshop have been working just fine (and I purchased a truly fabulous noise/sharpening filter plug-in from Kodak a few years ago that does not work as a standalone app) so I never really did anything to learn GIMP.   Truthfully, it is the drawing modes of Photoshop CS3 that are crashing my machine, and it is not like I was asking it to draw anything complicated, just some curved arrows (with effects) and an icon that looks like a stack of paper.

This discloses my alter ego, Mr. CodeBoy, who sells utility applications at the Mac App Store and has an occasional need for button images and application icons.  It is not something that I have any intention of hiring a graphic artist to do, since these apps are not generating an impressive revenue stream, so I need a very low-cost option to continue to make my own.

There you have it; a geek scientist, practicing veterinary medicine, pursuing photography, and coding computers.  Why not attempt electronic illustration as well?