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

Jeff, thank you for responding. Tell me, did you test this new UI for accessibility? Did you test for those who have vision issues? I am an "older" designer. Those of us with eye problems have an even worse time discerning the various elements of the UI. And because of this, it makes our jobs harder. It doesn't improve our experience as a new UI should. The bottom line for many of us is readability. And, with all due respect, those of us who have done user testing know that it doesn't catch everything nor answer all questions.

Now, a question: are you interested in having a conversation with us? I'm not sure I want to simply be told this is the way it will be without some understanding of how this improves our experiences with the application. In other words, the context of Adobe's changes need to be made transparent. And, we certainly welcome your participation in this conversation.

Lastly, I don't think anyone here was trying to "aim" our comments at any one person. Adobe's silence created a vacuum. We asked for you to talk with us at the beginning of this thread. But without that, we searched for someone who might be able to address our concerns. Seth wrote about the changes. So, he was the natural person we turned to.

All of us are happy you are here.

Jeff Gates

My name is Jeff Sass and I am the Engineering Manager for the Photoshop Architecture Team.

The updated user interface for Photoshop was and continues to be a collaboration between individual product teams (i.e. Photoshop, Premiere Pro, etc.) and the XD (Experience Design) teams at Adobe. We evolve the user interface at every release and in some cases we also do major updates (i.e. CS6, Photoshop CC 2015.1). We will continue this in future releases and we welcome specific feedback on this forum.

Adobe employees are reading these threads and we appreciate your feedback. Sometimes we are slower to respond but please know that we are reading these threads.

I wanted to address some specific points in this thread:


1) These changes were tested with many customers in our prerelease program. They were also used at Adobe MAX 2015. I was a teaching assistant for about 10 classes that used Photoshop and received many specific comments about how the UI was cleaner, easier to use and made using the product feel more "relaxing". These comments were from long time Photoshop customers as well as new customers. We made improvements even after Adobe MAX and will continue to make additional updates in future releases.

2) In Photoshop 2015.1 we converted our ScriptUI dialogs to match the UI of our plugins as well as Photoshop. I personally apologize that we weren't able to finish the Adobe Camera Raw dialog but we are working on that now for a future release.

3) We will not be adding a "classic UI” checkbox into the UI. Photoshop did not do that when we made the UI changes for CS6 either. We are very interested in making improvements and we appreciate the discussion on this thread for how we can improve it for a future version.

4) Thank you for your specific comments about the centering of the text in the buttons. We will be addressing this in a future version.

5) Thank you for your specific comments about the Character panel. We are looking at addressing this in a future version.

6) Thank you for your specific comment about the contrast on the lightest 3 color stops. We are addressing this in a future version.

7) Thank you for your specific comment about quick mask. We have already addressed this for a future version.

😎 Thank you for letting us know you like the new customizable toolbar.

9) Thank you for letting us know you like the new SVG import feature.

10) Thank you for your specific comments about the lines separating each layer in the layers palette. We are looking at addressing this in a future version.

Lastly, comments aimed at a person instead of at the software do not help to "keep this a positive, supportive community” which is one of the key tenets of this forum. For more details please read the FAQ at:

https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/welcome_to_the_photoshop_family_feedback_site_getting_started_faq

Thank you,
-Jeff

I agree with Kurt.

And Chris, please take a minute and read through this entire thread to understand the pain and frustration we're all experiencing. 

BTW, I'm a creative director and UI designer and I'll be happy to beta test the next versions for you. Just, please, don't spring such dramatic UI changes on us without letting us know in advance.

1a) Document Tabs: Still irritatingly counterintuitive to any expectations of standard tab behavior. Photoshop will only honor the order that the tabs were opened, and not the order they are physically in. For example, open documents 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Then move 6 next to 2 so the order of tabs is now 1, 2, 6, 3, 4, 5. Even side by side you still have to cycle through 3, 4, 5, then 6. There is no going from 2 to 6, side by side or not. "Next" and "Previous" only honor the order documents were opened and not the order they're placed in. This is absurd.

1b) Large Tabs preference: Is it really Adobe's impression that users wanted ALL tabs increased including the palette tabs? I don't think anyone really every complained about palette tabs being a problem since they're generally not shifted around like documents tabs are. I can only assume this was done exclusively for a few touch devices with no regard to the 99.5% of existing users?

2) Pen Tool: Please set a better tolerance or bias for selecting anchors and handles. Pen Tool recently seems to have been programmed with a bias to select the actual path over anchors. And Handles don't get grabbed 40-50% of the time now. Never been an issue before and I'm certainly not doing anything different than I have since '96. If you've universally changed the tolerance, please change it back. We need standards to be standards Chris. These are our tools, they need to be dependable, predictable and reliable, just like any other tool, virtual or mechanical.

Will that thread be connected to the same black hole as this one, or...

That really needs to be posted in a new topic, since it isn't directly related to this topic.

Thanks for the tip. I've never used it before. Maybe it's on by default now. Glad to see I can turn it off.

Robert, there is a drop down with "Layer" or "Group" in the options bar when Move Tool is selected. It's directly to the right of the Auto-Select checkbox.

Chris, I appreciate that at least someone from Adobe is posting here, but truth be said, we need more than you being the "White House press secretary" up here. 😉
What is required is real dialogue between us, the paying professionals, and the staff that is working on PS to help us resolve the many issues we are having. We aren't seeing that. No one is. Can you comment specifically, or maybe ask bosses to set up an area where we can all interact? 
This would go far to help avoid all the emotion we have been seeing.

Not aware of the auto-select group option that you mentioned. Never needed to check anything like that before. Nonetheless, I have been clicking on solid objects.

Regardless,  because I am clicking on the group layer, and not any of the sub layers in the group, I am expressly telling the app that I want the whole group to be the subject of my click.