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

Let's all send Adobe gray on gray, barely visible Christmas cards 🙂

I must admit I had a quiet chuckle to myself when I just received my Christmas message from Adobe:- "May your 2016 be filled with colour and delight"

Yes please!

I am frustrated at the UI changes in the latest update.
In the past, the active layer you were targeted on was highlighted blue. If it was gray, that meant you were in quick mask mode, or in a channel or something was perhaps 'incorrect'. It was one of the visual clues I gave my students.

Now, the active layer is always gray. No more visual clues.

Why did this change? And can we get the colors back?

What's really sad is that these controls still exist alongside the new style controls (e.g. Save Changes dialog). They didn't even do a good job doing a poor job.

This is actually a big problem, especially for those of us who use "return/enter" on the keyboard and don't click the actual button.

Out of the corner of my eye, I absolutely can not tell the difference between these two buttons. This will eventually cause a keyboard user to do the opposite of what they intended. Flatten. Close without saving. Rasterize something important. Etc.

It's not a downgrade if it's an improvement 🙂

Here's an idea: use these controls.

Some more interface contrast wouldn't go amiss. It is hard to tell that the OK is the default. Often you have to look twice. No interface should make you look twice.

Change the user interface
For something like this user interface would fix a lot of my problems, at least for me.


I don't want to disrespect the team that did the changes but it is really, really a mess for me, I can't upgrade Photoshop because of the new interface.

(Sorry for the edits, I'd like to paste the image directly but can't and it's not really friendly to rearrange anything you posted in here...)