Known Participant

Question

How can I enlarge tool icons in Photoshop?

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
December 9, 2017
11 replies
31628 views

I need to increase the size of the menu names and tool icons so I can see them. The standard download size is much too small for my eyes. Can this be done?

ps. I work on a 17" laptop

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Fowltactikz

Participant

Everyone tells you go to your preference UI system screw that that's not what you're looking for. What you want to do is go into your program files look for Adobe scroll down until you find the Photoshop version folder that you are using. Go into that file and look for the Photoshop exe file / application file. Right click on it and click properties. You'll see a tab say compatibility click that. At the bottom of the menu you will see change High DPI settings click that. You will then check off a box that says hi DPI scaling override. Underneath there would be a drop-down box that you will change to system. Click OK on that box and then apply on the previous one. Close everything out and restart Photoshop and your problem will be fixed. Hope this helps out anyone else having this issue

D Fosse

Community Expert

@Fowltactikz

It only solves the problem insofar as you have succesfully turned your expensive high resolution display into a standard HD display. This just scales everything on screen 2x, including the image itself. It now uses four screen pixels to represent each image pixel.

Scaling the Photoshop UI, but not the image, is done through the scaling factor in Windows settings. Yes, this naturally scales all applications, but it's hard to understand why Photoshop would need different scaling than any other application.

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Ed11F

Participating Frequently

Hi. I'm having the same problem after getting a new monitor and computer. Annoying. I finally changed the settings, system, display, display resolution to 1920 X 1080 and it's better. No black wasted space on left and right sides, size of the taskbar (bottom) of windows is better as well as menus and tool icons in photoshop and illustrator.

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Bethany303631069uxh

Participant

Navigate to where the actual application file(.exe) is,

right-click it and select properties,

choose the compatibility tab and select "Change high dpi settings" under the settings section,

in the next window, select the checkbox that says "High DPI scaling override",

and choose "System" from the drop down.

-Hit ok to save the changes, and then re-open Photoshop

A

Anonymous

Nope... The icons are still 33px by 26px.

lesliet64987402

Participating Frequently

After much searching I just found the video below which shows how to change windows settings, top menu text is still on the small side and it makes all screen text larger but does help with icons; I changed my setting to 200 and may twiddle with it a bit but this does seem to help.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_RiMMPOSXc

See attachment.

Jeff Arola

Community Expert

Try this:

https://danantonielli.com/app-scaling-on-high-dpi-displays-fix-2019/

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Anonymous

I am having a similar issue. The 'Tools' icons are about a quarter of the size of screen icons - way too small to be useful.

I have set the UI Font Size to 'Large', UI Scaling to '200%', and checked 'Scale UI To Font'. Restarted PS and nothing seems to have changed.

I tried the steps in the referenced article - NO CHANGE.

What can I do?!

I am using lastest updated version of Win 10 and renting PS (so it should be the latest version).

A

Anonymous

Photoshop should pick up the system UI scaling, and scale icons and UI elements accordingly. So what is it set to in Windows?

You're not supposed to do anything beyond that (as long as you have a reasonably current system).

...but if I change the 'system > display > scale and layout' to a higher setting (125%) EVERYTHING is bigger and screen 'real estate' is compromised. I just want the tool icons to be a similar size as the desktop screen icons. Right now the tool icons are about one-quarter the size of screen icons (not much bigger than text). It sounds like this is just not an option.

To give you an idea of how small the icons appear, when I put my mouse pointer on an icon, the pointer 'arrow' overlaps halfway onto other icons.

Jeff Arola

Community Expert

Is your computer's operating system windows 10 or......?

Yourantiaman

Participating Frequently

i got the same problem. PH version:

Adobe Photoshop Version: 10.0 (10.0x20070321 [20070321.m.1480 16:39:00 cutoff; m branch])
Operating System: Windows NT
Version: 6.2
System architecture: Intel CPU Family:6, Model:12, Stepping:3 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP, SSE2, HyperThreading
Physical processor count: 4
Logical processor count: 8
Processor speed: 3598 MHz
Built-in memory: 16325 MB
Free memory: 9667 MB
Memory available to Photoshop: 3255 MB
Memory used by Photoshop: 80 %
Graphic card Nvidiav. 432.00 GeForce RTX 2080

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My problem started when I change to a new LG "55" OLED smart TV. Calibrated.

I use a Samsung 27" monitor (sidescreen )for Photoshop and the new big 55 OLED TV for Word, Work and Games.

Now on the 27 " PH tool menu icons are thinny, small and very hard to see.. I want to enlarge the tool menu ? is this possible ??

Jeff Arola

Community Expert

What operating system does your computer have?

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PAMCLARK

Participant

CS 5 and I changed the UI interface to high, but it didn't do much at all. I would think Adobe would help to keep us using and enjoying their product, because the inability to SEE IT makes us consider the other options! After all, we ARE VISUAL PEOPLE!!!

D Fosse

Community Expert

CS5 is ten years old. It had no support for UI scaling, because high resolution screens that required it, did not exist at that time.

UI scaling support was added as those screens started to hit the market. Photoshop has supported it ever since. But you are ten years behind.

Jeff Arola

Community Expert

What operating system are you using?

P

PAMCLARK

Participant

I'm using CS 5 and the tools are sooo teeny tiny I can't read them!

Is there hope for this version?

kevcham

Participant

It's insane that Adobe makes it so hard for people with poor eyesight can't use their interface.

Bettina Di Virgilio

Participating Frequently

Under the Photoshop Preferences/Interface you can set the UI scale to Automatic/ 100%/200%. Try one of those and check. Second option: when you've Photoshop CC use the search function instead of the icons, just press Ctrl/Cmd + F and type down the tool you need, it will be activated.