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Participating Frequently
October 28, 2013
Answered

Photoshop CC / Windows 8.1 HiDPI / Retina scaling support

  • October 28, 2013
  • 28 replies
  • 227721 views

Hi,  I am currently running the latest CC apps on a Windows 7 machine and am currently looking to upgrade my PC hardware, I have my eye on either the new Dell XPS15 with Haswell CPU/HiDPI screen (3200x1800 resolution) or the equivalent new Dell Precision m3800 when available in November with identical specs.  After testing a number Windows 8/8.1 systems over the last few days with Photoshop CC (14.1.2) It appears that Adobe has still yet to implement retina style UI scaling for any of it's CC apps for the Windows platform. They all seem to default to a predefined pixel font size. Potentially making Photoshop and other apps unusable on a 3200x1800 15.6" laptop screen if they do not scale like their Mac counterparts.  Can anyone confirm or elaborate on whether this feature exists for Adobe products on Windows yet, if it ever will or when it will become available in the near future?  Thanks

Correct answer Chris Cox

That's really sad. I got a new laptop specifically for Adobe CC, thinking that if any company would do HiDPI support right, certainly it's gotta be Adobe. The CC suite is 75% of the reason I wanted a HiDPI display to begin with, but you can't even give us any sort of ETA except someday, maybe, if we're lucky?

How come MS Office, Firefox, Chrome, can do it but Adobe with its vast resources can't even give a timeframe? You already have all the high-res assets from the OSX/Retina side, no?


Again, we're continuing to work with Microsoft on the scaling problems in Windows.

We, and they, recognize that the existing attempts to offer scalable UI have serious issues.

And no, we can't commit to a timeframe for a long list of reasons.

28 replies

Participant
June 20, 2014

Maybe it's not perfect.  But I'm grateful.  InDesign is fixed too.  SOOOO glad.

Known Participant
June 20, 2014

Underwhelmed Adobe.

This looks like more of a work-around than a proper high-dpi implementation for Windows. This might work on my Razer Blade (2014) with 200% desktop scaling.  But it won't be an optimal solution on my Surface Pro, with 150% desktop scaling.

As a dedicated CS6 user, I was ready to pony up for a CC subscription just for proper high dpi support. But without a solution that works with Surface, I can't really justify it.

Trevor.Dennis
Community Expert
Community Expert
June 20, 2014

Did you miss the bit about it being experimental?  I have no idea what that means, but I imagine it is not the final, definitive solution.

2014 release of Photoshop CC: Experimental Features

[EDIT]   Check out the feedback here

Photoshop: Introducing scale the UI 200% for high-density displays for Windows

Known Participant
June 25, 2014

Thanks, I did see that it is marked "experimental". I'm just disappointed that it's not a more comprehensive solution supporting at least the standard Windows desktop display scaling increments of 125%, 150%, and 200%.

I was pretty excited to see Adobe demo this on stage with Microsoft at the Surface Pro 3 unveiling. Given that teaser, and knowing that scaling on current Surface devices is nominally 150%, I just assumed this would be supported. Disappointed that Adobe's solution is not optimized for Surface or the many 13" 1080p Ultrabooks that look best at 125%.

And of course, I'm sure this will never come to CS6.

Participant
June 19, 2014

Hi !

Thank you so much for the sofwares new versions that you guys hardly worked on, I'm profoundly satisfied by it

I just have a question concerning After effect, I actually have the same problem I had with photoshop until today, it has extremely small icons making it really hard to use it.

I wanted to know if I missed new features on it or if you didn't pay attention to that one ?

http://img4.hostingpics.net/pics/818830petitaftereffect.jpg

EvilGeniusCreative
Participant
June 13, 2014

The Photoshop CC UI Font Scaling helps (Preferences > Interface) , but I'd like an XL and XXL selection. That might take care of a lot of these issues. Right now there's just S, M, L

Inspiring
May 20, 2014

So there's no workaround? No way to allow Windows 8.1 to scale up the size of the teensy tinsy hilariously microscopic Photoshop UI like you can with Flash Pro?

I figured the people most attracted to these new high dpi screens would be professional artists, and Adobe would have anticipated that, yet of all my applications it's the least usable in high dpi. Is Photoshop no longer the standard for professional artists?

Herbert2001
Inspiring
May 9, 2014

4k desktop screens are becoming more common, so it is no longer a question of whether Photoshop should or should not be used on smaller retina screens (I believe this is up to the user, and how comfortable he/she is with that). The fact of the matter is that this has been going on for about eight months now, and we see more and more users complaining and asking about Photoshop's inability to display at a working GUI scale for them on Windows machines.

It's about time the dev team fixes this. Yes, it is complex. Yes, we are aware of Microsoft's GUI api (seemingly) not capable enough to fix this easily in Photoshop (while most other applications have no issues at this point).

This is not a complaint that started last year - for years on end designers have been asking for a more scalable interface, and if Adobe had implemented the code for this ten years ago, they would not have been in this mess.

Even on my 27" 2560x1440 screen the icons are just TOO SMALL for comfort. I would like to scale those up a bit, but I cannot. In Blender a very handy screen ppi slider/setting controls the overall size of the interface. That is the way to handle it. Ideally you want to allow every individual user to have control over the GUI scale as they see fit.

If open source applications solved the GUI scaling elegantly, one starts to wonder why this remains such a challenge for the Photoshop dev team (all due respect to them, though). I suspect this entails a complete recode of the GUI code. A vector based GUI render base would be helpful.

Hopefully this issue is fixed in the upcoming month or two - 4k screens are here, and it is verging on the ridiculous side of things that the "industry standard" image editor GUI is incapable to cope with higher resolution screens that have been available for some time.

Known Participant
May 6, 2014

Have the same issue on my Hp Spectre 13 with 1440p resolution.

Lightroom 5.4 somehow works 1000% better than Photoshop CC. The fonts/menys/brushes is 0.1 cm.

As other ppl already told. 4K displays = Big joke and that´s the people tat buy than kind of display early (media/graphics ppl) that use adobe program heavy.

Known Participant
May 5, 2014

I just cancelled my CC subscription.  I have a Dell XPS 15 high resolution screen.  I was using LR4 and Photoshop CS5.  For Christmas my wife bought me SLR Lounge LR tutorial disk.  I was so anxious about the software and being able to learn LR, I went out and bought the Dell so I could practice and learn during the slow times at work.  That's when my nightmare began.  LR and Photoshop, as you well know now, aren't scaled correctly on high resolution displays.  After months of waiting for Adobe to correct the problem I spoke with a Chat technician.  He told me the CC versions didn't have any micro UI issues.  So I purchase the subscription only to find out what I was told wasn't true, in other words I was lied to.  So today I cancelled my subscription and I'm walking away.  I'll take another look at Nikon's software.  I really did like Adobe photography software, but I like my sanity even more. 

Participating Frequently
May 5, 2014

The 4K monitors are really starting to sell. My guess is a fix comes sooner rather than later or they will look pretty silly.

Participant
April 5, 2014

At the recent BILD 2014 conference, there was a session where the presenter talks about work Adobe is doing with High DPI and pointer events. Take a look at http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2014/2-535. Reference minute 39:20. Good news, Photoshop is coming "soon" with 200% DPI scaling.

Trevor.Dennis
Community Expert
Community Expert
April 5, 2014

ehanson555 wrote:

At the recent BILD 2014 conference, there was a session where the presenter talks about work Adobe is doing with High DPI and pointer events. Take a look at http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2014/2-535. Reference minute 39:20. Good news, Photoshop is coming "soon" with 200% DPI scaling.

Interesting.  I love the slide that quotes Adobe.

Participant
December 31, 2013

On the Lenovo Yoga Pro 2 forum it is indicated that using a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 makes PSE 12 useable.  While this somewhat defeats the purpose of the ultra high resolution capabilities of the yoga, will this indeed work?  Anyone try it?

Participant
December 31, 2013

Lenovo Yoga Pro 2 temporary fix:

I've set it to 2048x1152 and the type is barely legible, but better than 3200 x 1800.  There is really no difference from 1920 x 1080 and 2048x1152 in dreamweaver, the font sizes and layout is almost exactly the same, just extra space to work in.  The select menu are a little too big for their containers, and I think that's because the custom sizing is set to 150%.

Participant
January 1, 2014

When you say "barely legible" is it workable?  Or is it such a strain that it is not?