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

Because Apple and Microsoft changed how their OS icons look which is flat and without color.

As far as usability, is it the lack of color or the lack of shadows that make the icons hard to work with?

The program icons are flat but still have color to them.

"One doesn't expect to pay a lot for an ugly car" You got that one right Robert.

"I can only bring specific issues to discuss with the XD team who designed the new UI."

Hello Chris,

This is exactly what I feared. If I understand you correctly, and feel free to correct me, there is no special move inside Adobe, no sense of urgency, about this UI that we have repeatedly qualified, not very elegantly I admit, as a disaster. I am sorry but there should be such a movement right now. Or maybe there is one, and then who would be in the know? Are we all losing time and effort here?

To put it bluntly, if Photoshop was a car, it would have a lot of competition, and it would not sell at all in this state. Period.

Always bluntly: Photoshop is a monopoly, and this means that Adobe must, it's a moral obligation, gives us a product we can use. It's a matter of ethics.

Not I need to write an intro to the arguments that will follow. At the end it will be rather longish. Print it and tell THEM to read it.

INTRO
Over the last two decades, monitors have become bigger and bigger. With 30 in. monitors, specially when you have two, that means that some palettes are way too far in their actual state.

At the same time, pixel resolution has gone from around 72 dpi to around 100-110 for 27-30 in monitors that are not 4K or 5K. This means that not only things are now farther, they are also smaller, WHILE THE USER IS FARTHER AWAY.

To compound all this, a portion or your users are now older as is my case. While I still have a very good eyesight at 70 years old, it's no way as good as when I was 30!

If, on top of those well known trends, the interface becomes way harder to read and use, when grey becomes the norm and text size 9 becomes the norm, disaster strikes.

This intro is in no way specific.

It is simply crucial.

Print it and hammer it on the walls of the UI designers' offices. Find the guy that is in "the need to know" and tell him. We need a link of some sort, a direct link. Or choose some users you could trust in this bunch. I for one would spend a couple of days free of charge to explain the extent of the damage that has been done.

MAJOR CHANGES NEEDED
It doesn't matter much to me that the UI be Mac-like or Windows-like. They are very similar nowadays anyway. Create a UI along those lines, somewhere like Mac and/or Windows, and you will be back on tract.

Do not use grey on grey, not for text, it's such a pain that one wants to cry. Black on white, you know, like books, Or almost all good, major websites like Microsoft, Apple, lapresse.ca, lefigaro.fr, lemonade.fr, the BBC, the Guardian, ad nauseam.

A text field is a text field is a text field and should look like such. Idem for a pull-down menu, a checkbox, and BUTTONS. Gives us back buttons, real buttons.

Tell somebody in the need to know that they must do all that.

SPECIFIC CHANGES
By God, I'm overwhelmed. There are too many. They are all about the UI, not the main Photoshop machinery that gets better and better.

1. In the Preferences, crank up one point the text size in the left column. While you're at it, do the same thing everywhere in the interface where you got text that is too small. It was the same in the preferences in the previous version but at least it was black on white, not black on grey,

2. In the Prefs and elsewhere, get the char size the same as the rest for the title of a pull-down menu. No reason to make our lives harder for that specific type of control.

3. In the Prefs look at "Recen File List Contains:" You just went from small black to almost illegible.

4. You give the choice of four "skins". In fact, the two in the middle are unusable because their grey on grey is too much of a stress.

5. Everywhere in the interface: Go back to buttons we can relate with. A default button must be clearly a default button. Its colour or something should be clear.

6. When the user hits Return for the default button, the button should flash for a short period of time, showing the user that there is no mistake. None of the default buttons react visually to a keyboard shortcut at the moment.

7. Let's have a look at the HDR Toning dialogue, it's an example in point.
• Do it any way you want, but bring bath the text as legible as it was. Bring it back as black as it was!
• Bring back the old sliders. The new ones are greyer than a bad November day in Northern Québec.
• The buttons...

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

That should be enough for the time being, don't you think?

And you know what? I'm now ready to bet a bottle of Château La Tour Carnet 2010 from my cellars that I am losing time and effort here, and it fills me with sadness. There is absolutely no feeling of complicity, of being part of something. Let's not this thing become THEM against US.

As said before, my tool is not 16.0,1 that is quite good.

One doesn't expect to pay a lot for an ugly car.

You don't understand, Kris? It's rather simple: You are right. And wrong.

Yes, you can do all the things you could do. Bravo, I hoped for at least that.

No you're wrong, because, see, that is not what we are talking about. It as nothing but nothing to do with the Photoshop machinery, or engine if you want.

Oh yes it works. It works like an ugly car with dirty windows in the middle of the night. It's killing my eyes.

Chris, I remember you helped with a technical issue in the past by writing a plugin very fast for a mouse delay. I wonder why is the XD team not here on board.

I don't understand what you can't do now that you could do one version ago. As far as I can tell, only the look of the UI has changed; not the way it works.

@ Chris Cox and @ Kris Hunt,
yes I still can change the opacity by scrubbing, which leaves me all the way over to the left or right. If I stop I have to go to the number again
But it should be..."now you can even do this improved thing"... rather than saying at least whats left you still can do scrubbing.
In my opinion it is clearly a step backwards and it should be a step forward.
In general I think that if one wants to make the UI as user friendly as possible, there should even be the option of color coding certain areas, tools, etc,
At least the usability should never be sacrificed against a slicker design.
Maybe its a good idea if the design team tests the noticeability of tools, areas and text of the UI in more detail with more testers.

Don't forget you can change the UI brightness in Photoshop's preferences.
Yes, a lighter interface is more appropriate if you are working on something destined for print. And darker interfaces are generally only useful for people doing video and film production.

I can only bring specific issues to discuss with the XD team who designed the new UI.