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

From my perspective, the biggest disappointment is not how much changed with the new UI, it's how little did. Everything is still exactly the same as it ever was and nothing has been done to optimize any of the behaviors or tools which slow us down.

Want to change the color of a gradient adjustment layer? That'll be 3 windows please!


Need to adjust a hue/sat layer? Well, you'll need to click through 6 different drop downs to see if anything other than Master has been modified.


Would you like to be able to see your paths on a busy background? Not this decade, Mr!

Thinking of saving/exporting your image(s)? Well, we'd like to make it as difficult as we possibly can! Here are six windows to keep you busy... sometimes we like buttons in the top corner, sometimes in bottom!


You'd like to crop or change your canvas after using Liquify? Ridiculous!

The list could go on and on and on.

Boring user interfaces need to be avoided for the same reason that boring grey offices need to be avoided. Human beings feel happier and have better morale overall when colour and texture are both used.

Flat design represents the ultimate in human sheep like behaviour, calling something better when it's a throwback to the days of rubbish graphics cards.

If we applied the same logic to cinema we'd be going back to scratchy 1910 cardboard cut out animation and calling it progress.

Totally agree. We professionals do not have time to point every aspect of this new crippled interface. Do they expect us to forge our own interface by spending all of our free time on this forum? Well ok, make software open source then.

Many of us disappointed with the new UI. This "sudden new interface" is acceptable within a separate public beta-testing branch, but not within a stable release branch, why can't Adobe admit it?

As for me, I use Photoshop much less than Lightroom in my workflow, but this situation shows me what can I expect from Adobe in the future. I can expect countless moves that ruin my workflow. Clients' trust is earned by years and decades, but can be ruined in a moment.

I'm probably quitting Creative Cloud when my yearly plan expires, and have already purchased and using another product from a different company, which has already replaced my Lightroom workflow with minimal efforts. Photoshop replacement is on the way too.

I keep reading "we need specific feedback".

"Please roll back or allow users to opt out of the new interface" seems pretty specific to me.

Tell your UI team to stick their heads into a commercial airline cockpit the next time they fly. Will they see panels of touch screens with low contrast quasi-stateless buttons? Of course not. They will see row upon row of analog dials and physical switches with bold colors indicating various states, because a professional technical environment requires foolproof visual cues.

Photoshop is a professional technical environment. It does not need to appeal to millennial Instagramers or soccer moms...that's what Elements, and myriad other tablet/phone apps are for. The latest Photoshop has stripped out much of its formerly foolproof visual cues. THAT is the specific feedback.

Do you guys really expect US to take dozens of before/after screenshots of YOUR interface to prove our point? That's what beta testers, focus groups and professional UI designers are for.

When an angry mob with bats and torches is outside Frankenstein's monster's window, they're not there to discuss the finer points of the monster's faults. They are there to run the monster out of town.

When the time comes for a User Experience Design team to consider themselves too high & mighty to actually read and respond to floods of real *user* feedback then surely a change of job title is in order?

As a power user spending upwards of 10 hours of day in the shop I am not only extremely disappointed with the latest update, but astonished at the level of incompetence involved in some of these unwarranted visual changes that have had a detrimental effect on overall readability and accessibility.

Respect to you for having the decency to follow this thread and respond personally Chris, but as I expressed in my initial reply - they should be ashamed of themselves. If nothing more I would be very grateful if you could relay that message to them.

Roger - imagine if you said "relativity is all wrong" without any specific evidence? How would that be treated by other scientists? If you had specific evidence, they might listen. With just hand waving and nothing specific, they will not even start to listen.

We really need specifics about the new UI to bring to the XD team.

Indeed you can (and I have); but the type is still at 48,48,48 which is too light to provide sufficient contrast.
The background grey of the second-lightest skin is much too dark at 183,183,183 to be viable against the type which, in that skin, is even worse and appears to be running at 63,63,63 on my machine.
That skin would normally be my choice but I am now having to use the lightest version from necessity.

Chris, you're a scientist, aren't you? From one scientist to another, this line of reasoning doesn't work. We cannot discuss like this, the premises are wrong. Without the right premises, we'll get nowhere.

They want us to suggest changes to make a bad thing a bit less bad. In other words, they want us to start from THEIR product.

We're telling you, no. Start with the previous UI and then explain to us why something so drastically wrong has to be done.

I'm turning the tables a cute 180 degrees.

If they stick to their guns, as I told you, they will have a victory à la Pyrrhus. A victory à la Napoléon over the burned Russian steppes. What a victory! A victory with all the seeds of defeat.

I have dumped Lightroom for cause of non readability. I have dumped 16.1 for reasons not as bad but near it.

I abandon this useless discussion slowly evolving in a battlefield,never to come back. I will never use their ridiculous UI I swear it. I swear it. Never.

After the word below, I'm gone. Good luck with a doomed interface.

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I hope you reproduced the CTL-TAB bug. Here we get it on every machine. Tomorrow James Longster from Indiana comes here for a couple of weeks to cool in head in the snow. He also reproduces the bug at whim.

Adios, I'm stopping following this completely.

Actually, XD had specifics that they wanted to change. Without specific issues about the new UI design for us to bring to XD, they are not likely to change the design.

Chris, the big issue here is that Adobe has suddenly alienated a very large number of long term customers (and now subscribers) by thrusting upon us a UI change that was not required and with no option to retain the 'classic' look. This very web page we are currently writing on is a fine example of legibility and function, the new Abobe UI's are definitely not. There was a time I enjoyed clicking on the 'Update' button to see what Adobe had improved. Now I am afraid of that button...very afraid.