P: New user interface lacks contrast and many usability cues, lots of other problems

> born into the insane multitask world now dumped into our laps, so are all the new and future users. They are developing for these people>

If that's true, they're in for a world of hurt. The bar to competition for the mobile apps and cloud-connected everywhere is very, very low. Again, not being a fly on the wall in their corporate offices, I can't say why there's such a strong move towards mobile at the expense of more professional features, although I will say that PS has done a pretty good job of creating a balance between the trendy and features the rest of us want. The choice isn't the team's to make, either, I don't think.

But I think they're trying to keep people swimming in the Adobe pool. (It's very hot in this drought-stricken region, and all I can think about is cool, cool water.<G>) The mobile/Cloud stuff plugs in to the main apps. It's maybe, just a guess here, maybe better to have people use Adobe's playtime apps and then bring them into the desktop apps to finish, than looking at anyone else—and with iPhone and Android out there with more apps than I would think there are people to buy them, there's plenty to look at. All the major graphics apps I know about have at least one mobile app tied to their desktop app.

As for being a leader. No, I think they're trying to keep up, but not leading in this area.  But you have to admit, CC Libraries, if they keep on developing them, are a pretty good response to getting assets that work in multiple apps. Capture is a good mobile feed for that, as is Adobe Stock, so the tie-in is starting to happen. See a layout you like? Instead of having to be at your desk or with laptop in hand, grab your mobile device (usually handy) with Adobe Comp on it, and "jot" it down with your finger. Just the bare bones, but with CC Libraries, you can even play with color and graphics.

Just because most of what I do I wouldn't do on a small screen doesn't mean I don't appreciate the ability to do those things that can be done on a small screen—and then send them over to my desktop when I'm there. But I completely agree that they're going to have to be carefully focused on the high-end features that keep us at the desktop. If they pull an Apple and forget about their desktop users, they won't have anything to sell that is head and shoulders above the competition and keeps customers buying the subscription to all Creative Cloud. A much tougher world for them then.

Hi everyone,

I wanted to update this thread on the progress that the Photoshop team has made to the UI in the Photoshop 2015.5 release. The numbers below refer to specific issues brought up on this thread and include the additional ones that have been added over the last weeks. 

2) The Adobe Camera Raw plugin now has the same UI as Photoshop and is shipping with version 9.5 or later.

4) We have improved the centering of the text in buttons. There are some cases where it could be off by 1 pixel until we complete some further foundational work in the codebase.

5) We have fixed the font style dropdown in the character palette to no longer be clipped on the right edge. In a future release we will be investigating further improvements to this panel.

6) We have addressed the contrast of the text in the second lightest stop. We still have further improvements to the contrast coming in a later release.

7) The quick mask color has been fixed. The layers panel now correctly indicates that you are editing an alpha channel using the rubylith color.

10) We have filed an internal bug for the issue with the separator lines (e.g. layers panel, channels panel, etc.) we will look at addressing this in a future release.

In addition to the issues previously in this thread we have had a number of conversations directly with customers over the past few months and will be looking at the following issues:

11)  We will be investigating some of the tool icons that have had their internal fills removed. Some customers find them harder to distinguish.

12) We are investigating the selection colors. For example, the selected layer color that was light blue in the previous release.

13) We are investigating the look of the popups and edit fields for a future release.

We are reading this thread so please continue to be specific and we will look at addressing the issues in future releases.

-Jeff

The important point is that just as the developer team is young, born into the insane multitask world now dumped into our laps, so are all the new and future users. They are developing for these people, often discarding tried-and-true usability as they try to hedge their bets on what the next big trend is going to be. Adobe is still a follower, not a leader in this realm.

> the other main programs, Illustrator and Indesign are solid and efficient

Don't get me started. LOL I can complain until pigs fly about Illustrator. I love it for what it does that only AI does, but for basics, I use Astute Graphics plug-ins to enjoy using AI. It's been getting better, slowly, but some features are still languishing while they get the Cloud and iPad and Android stuff up to date. You want a list of what I think they should be working on instead, just ask.  '-}

I've used first PageMaker, then InDesign when they brought it out. It pretty much does everything I need, but I'm not a production artist. I know people who are. They'll complain to you all you can stand to hear.  '-} And some of the features are fabulous—until they get in my way or bog my machine down. Can't live with them, can't live without them.

And as for the interface—it's system-wide. That's why I talk about the aircraft carrier not exactly turning on a dime. And even if you think the interface is awful, there's a very good reason for it being the same awful in all the apps, along with some other features, like CC Libraries and the Start screen. We've complained since the dawn of time that moving between apps was giving us whiplash. We need the apps to be as integrated and alike as possible. — Since we'll never get the default kbsc to be the same in every app, each app, and that includes Bridge and LR, need to let us customize kbsc, and all the apps need to let us assign kbsc to pretty much any command we want to assign it to. Then we won't trip ourselves up so much moving from AI to PS to AE to . . .

We may have quibbles about the exact UI and feature set that they all include—or downright brawls—but there's not a heck of a lot of point to a CC subscription if it remains a bunch of apps that look and act as if they belonged to different companies. The idea is that you may almost never use AE or PP or DW, but when you have a reason to, the inexpert user can get around and do many of the basic things s/he needs because it's a familiar environment.  It's an attempt, not always successful, at being user-friendly, and mainly user-friendly to the many, many who now subscribe to the entire group of apps, and don't want to find it difficult to make the occasional use of any of them. Otherwise, really, what are you paying for?

Adobe is, I think, trying to say, hey, you buy the lot and we can make it easier for you to move about using the features you want to in whatever app is best suited. We'll make the basics of every app feel like home so you can use all the apps you're subscribing to with your CC subscription.  And what home is without a few flaws.<G>

They can prove me wrong. But they'll lose a lot of customers if they do.

Retouching, prepress and serious print production is a huge industry and not done on tablets. Somebody has to take those files the kids give us and fix them. 😉 Larger tablets are not even the answer, since the ergonomics for doing serious work looking down, instead for looking forward, really prevent them from being as efficient.

The thing that kills me, is that as a professional retoucher on a Mac for the past 17 years, my professional requirements (you know, just minor things like quickly being able to discern between Quick Mask mode and a selected layer...almost impossible with the new UI) are taking a back seat to the "modern interface" requirements of millennial Instagrammers on Windows tablets, who probably don't even know what a mask is, and weren't even born when so many of us "old school" Photoshoppers were keeping Adobe in business.

Thanks Adobe.  

I don't recall Adobe saying anything about a re-designed user experience in the CC 2015.1 release note, which is astounding considering that it was the first thing that many people noticed.  But now they proudly list it on their "new features" page:

Modern user experience on desktop and touch devices

The updated UI delivers a clean and consistent look throughout Photoshop, and you can quickly perform common tasks using a new set of gestures on touch-enabled devices like Microsoft Surface Pro.

The important thing that many posts in this discussion seem to be missing is that Adobe does not care about the relatively small number of people working on desktop computers with large monitors.  They're targeting the mobile crowd with their tablets and touch screens.  they always mention that the Surface Pro is fully capable of running Photoshop, and I believe the Surface Pro is probably their platform for UX testing.  Furthermore, it's a lot cheaper to maintain a single UI development toolkit that works across all platforms.  So everyone gets the same flat non-skeuomorphic interface, whether they're working on a tiny tablet or a giant 30-inch monitor.  

The Creative Cloud $10 a month plan is selling like hotcakes.  It accounts for two-thirds of Adobe's revenue (as I recall, but  please check me on this).  The vast majority of that money is coming from the mobile market.  So why wouldn't they cater to it?

It sure feels that way!

Although there are now a couple good alternatives to Photoshop out there, many of us use it in conjunction with the other programs. Aside from the ever-abysmal Dreamweaver, the other main programs, Illustrator and Indesign are solid and efficient. You even still have Save for Web in AI and the old excellent UI in both of these, although I haven't looked at the new updates. I don't believe Adobe ever mentioned that they changed the UI in their list of additions to Photoshop. I don't even bother with the new "art student" tablet-toy programs they are putting out there, although I do use Adobe Draw. 

Sure they do. They know there's competition out there as well as we do. But they're an aircraft carrier compared to a 40' yacht when trying to change course. We need to try to be specific when we don't like something. And we need to hope a lot of others will agree with us.  Worse for us of course— getting us all to agree on what's wrong and what a good fix would look like is herding cats.

I'm sure we've all looked at our exit strategy if the benefits of using the apps stops outweighing the negatives and the bugs we deal with. Their financial plan hasn't completely blinded them to that fact. Slow to maneuver they may be. But I'll bet they're listening, and as many of them as there are, I'll bet getting them to agree on anything is as much herding cats as it is us. I don't know how they decide—maybe top down—it's the CEO's whim or their 5 year old's preference— maybe draw straws, throw darts at a list, or hold mud wrestling contests.

But truthfully, I find the 2nd lightest UI so dim I'd never use it. I find the darkest UI has almost too much contrast. The Goldilocks UI for me is 2nd darkest. It still has some issues. I wouldn't have changed it from the last UI, if I were Emperor and didn't know more than I do now about why they changed it. However, I can live with one out of the 3 options, and I can't live without the features the competition doesn't have. So for me, the best thing to do is just chip away at what's worst — hint — those OK and Cancel buttons in dialogs are difficult to see just which one is active.