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

What do you mean exactly, Greg? Just grab the Adobe Photoshop 2015 folder in Applications folder, inside Time Machine? Doesn't Adobe write files all over the place?

If you're certain that this works, I am proceeding right now. As in RIGHT NOW. Because, all things considered, I cannot live with this atrocity, squinting at my 30 in monitors all day long. Had I known, I would not have installed this.

Next time, I will wait a couple of months at least and see what people say.

I think what we are all trying to say is that Adobe have slowed us down and therefore lowered our productivity (at least that's how my employer would put it).

UPDATE:

If you have any kind of backup or a backup from your time machine prior to your upgrade you can grab the old cc2015 app and overwrite the new one, and you’ll be up and running back to normal before this whole cluster mess.

I’m disappointed that this has been going on for a week now and only 1 Adobe person has said anything on this topic. I think it’s going to take alot more people rallying in on this before it’s going to noticed by adobe. This topic is in the (? section) and probably should have been started in the (problem section) to get there attention.

Now that I have my old version of photoshop back, I will NEVER updated my photoshop again until it stops running!

THANKS for NOTHING Adobe!

You are perfectly right. The classic interface worked just fine and is in common with others apps in the suite. So, why change it?

To be clear, it's not just the dropdown boxes, it's interface as a whole that is bad. There are no redeemable changes I've found. I looked through thinking, "what can be salavaged. If we went back to the last interface what good things can we keep from this new one". I couldn't find anything. There's nothing worth keeping here.

Adobe: Please revert to the old interface (or design one complete new.)

What a difference! Thanks for doing that Morris, it really illustrates how much easier it is to identify the boxes.
Now can you make the icons work too 🙂

Maybe something like this, @1181877

I have never felt the need to complain about Adobe products before but agree that this new UI is absolutely awful. It is 10 steps backwards!
Icons that were identifiable now all blend together and any drop down box or slider is so hard to identify. It needs to either be darker or lighter in the window and not all the same colour across the board with a tiny underline.
Also, why are the swatches suddenly huge? The smallest setting is twice the size of the old swatch.
Can we have an option for a legacy interface or a redesign of this one please?
Heck, if you are willing to employ me, I'll do it.

I am also a CC (full bundle) subscriber.

I am experimenting with Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer. They both seem to have most of what we need from Photoshop and Illustrator. The problem for me is I have 25 years of using Photoshop and those 'crunch time' reflexes take a long time to retrain in a new piece of software. Adobe knows this. They also know that by controlling .pdf.psd and .ai, they can keep us locked into their never-ending game. What I wish they would recognize is that even young, new designers and creatives dont have time to constantly change how they interact with a software system. This is about their business of controlling and owning the document and imaging universe, first. Their products are relied on by governments and major organizations, but like all revolutions, at some point the game will change. As creatives, we just need to stay open and keep learning new things, even if the UI is counter-intuitive and maddenly dumbed-down.