New CC update (10/6/14) change the Blue color????

[hqhempen]

I appreciate the hardwork involved in updating the apps, but the light blue on grey isn't cuttin' it for my eyes.  Is there a way to change it?  I can't seem to find a setting in Prefs > Appearances.

[SiliconPixel]

I've had one instance of an 'internal verification error' so far - didn't capture the code though. I was hoping it was a one-off but will raise it as a bug if I see it again.

[Zavyazkin]

I don't appreciate the new blue UI color. New composition icons are difficult to identify. Adobe, please release a small update where you either roll back to the previous look or give us users an option to pick our own color or at least an option to change it to orange. I would not recommend updating to 2014.0.2 since it seems like UI changes is the only noticeable (unfortunate) thing.

[JuanPais]

I need the original color scheme, this sky-blue is distracting, and hasn't contrast enough in selected keyframes; is just not working. Back to orange, or at least user selected please.

[jonabell]

The current version of After Effects CC with the blue colors is absolutely unusable, to me.

Here's the deal: bright blue light actually focuses in front of the retina, making it look out of focus. (You can see this effect most noticeably when you look at blue Christmas tree lights.) The blue UI elements against the gray are absolute murder on the eyes.

http://www.cclvi.org/contributions/light_and_low_vision.htm

"Blue light wavelengths and part of the blue spectrum are focused in front of the retina, while green and yellow are focused on the retina, and some red spectrum is focused behind. Thus blue light contributes little to visual acuity and visual perception loses sharpness as the blue light component adds significantly to the eye's energy expenditure for focusing, and in reduced can greatly reduce eyestrain without loss of acuity..." (Quinn, 1998)

As a person who used to work at Autodesk -- and who knows for a fact that their UI designers don't actually sit in front of the software and use it for 12 hours a day -- I have to say that Adobe's "UI refresh" smacks of marketing more than any actual familiarity with using the software in production.

Either change the colors back to what they were, or give users the option to customize the UI and change it to the previous colors, because this is just atrocious.

Until then, I'm going to have to use an earlier version of AE CC, because the current version is impossible to look at for more than 5 minutes at a time. And whoever approved this decision should frankly be fired -- it demonstrates a complete lack of familiarity with software UI design, and how your customers use your products in production.

[R Neil Haugen]

Great post jonabell.

I've been primarily on the PrPro & Sg forums. Intriguing that some folks simply refuse absolutely to consider all the scientific facts about human visual perceptions for different frequencies (hues/colors) of light and state that categorically any objection or claimed difficulties with the blue schema is simple whining about not liking either the color blue or simply being a hater of change as stated earlier in this thread.

It is rather accepted scientific fact blue is difficult for the eyes, much as I love the color. And for many men especially deeper blues and charcoal are indistinguishable. Not a "preference" issue at all.

If your eyes can't see or distinguish this easily you will get eye strain and headaches. Physical in cause, and something that can not be changed for the better by continued work in the situation. Or wishing.

Neil

[TimmyCrackCorn]

Just like to remind everyone having a problem with this "improvement" ... definitely submit a bug report or feature request here:

Submit a feature request or bug report

Or why not both, as it kind of fits in both categories. 

[ZinaSaunders]

I would like to add my voice to the chorus of people asking for there to be a way to change the color scheme back to the old interface color scheme. I find the monochromatic icons, darker work area and the blue accent color very, very hard on my eyes.

[Sepp aus Bayern]

I also feel very uncomfortable with the new color scheme. It literally gives me headaches. Also AE now feels like a "cold" workspace, i prefer warm colors. To me the new scheme gives AE an unfriendly "personality". This might sound overly emotional but i spend twenty days a month with this software and these seemingly small things really do matter. So PLEASE let us choose!

[SSR Prod B]

Not sure how much more proof is needed. Which is easier to read? Please bring back yellow or give users the option to choose.

[-**-]

Blue is horrible. One more vote for reverting to yellow/orange controls color OR make it changable.

BTW I have found this topic when googling: "how change controls color blue to orange AE CC 2014".

[bogiesan]

I like the blue. I liked the yellow, too, but that's because yellow was such a HUGE improvement over the very early monochromatic interface from the days before some of the readers of this forum were probably born.

I just noticed there's a drop shadow on the layer Anchor Point icon. Yeah, that's a bit weird.

[Todd_Kopriva]

> I just noticed there's a drop shadow on the layer Anchor Point icon. Yeah, that's a bit weird.

That is part of a set of tweaks meant to make the anchor point stand out better and be easier to grab. We used to get a lot of complaints about people not being able to find and grab the anchor point.

[bogiesan]

Todd_Kopriva wrote:

That is part of a set of tweaks meant to make the anchor point stand out better and be easier to grab. We used to get a lot of complaints about people not being able to find and grab the anchor point.

At first it looked like a registration error or like it had a subtle 3D effect like iOS7 on the iPhones. I expected the shadow to move as the anchor point moved.

A few days ago when I saw it for the first time I thought, "Hmm, RGB alignment error on the CRT. Gotta get out the registration chart."

[AllTheGoodNamesAreGone]

Please, PLEASE allow for the UI color to be changed back to yellow in a hopefully-soon update. It is VERY hard to see certain elements as the contrast is almost completely gone - like selected keyframes, as others have mentioned... Difficult to distinguish

[Jonas_Naimark]

I agree the blue is difficult to work with. The yellow had more contrast and let me work faster. I find myself often hunting for keyframes where I didn't have to before. Everyone at work had the exact same reaction. Please add an option to change the colour! Thanks.

[Senhay]

Is it possible to change the color now?

I can´t update until this "improvement" is fixed.

[R Neil Haugen]

Not yet ... we hope soon, and I think some of the staffers hope soon also so they don't keep getting the complaints about this! 

Neil

[Dan_Donley]

I agree about the dark grey, the blue and the monochromatic icons.  Please make something in prefs so we can switch back to the gold...

[R Neil Haugen]

Good to file this as a feature request ... the more the better!

Adobe Bug Report /Feature Request form ...

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

Neil

[clauderozsa]

Hi Neil,

There are times when I wonder if our posts in the Adobe Bug Report /Feature Request form  are even read. This is shouting in the desert or as the French says " Le chien aboit , la caravane passe" which translates into "The dog barks , the caravan goes by"...

The same problem can be said of the size of characters in the workspace in particular in Photoshop. How is it that Blender has an option enabling to change it in the preferences and it is as much a complex software than Adobe's.

Adobe should understand that comfort in the way you can use a program is as much essential and mandatory than its content . From this point of view I'm sorry to say we're light years from this situation.

[R Neil Haugen]

Oh, they are read ... one of the SpeedGrade staffer/engineers at NAB last year could practically quote several of mine on the scopes of Sg ... ahem. Thankfully he took them in all good humor (personally) and seriously (professionally). They weren't all written with so much ... gentleness? ... of spirit.

There is a feeling of dis-connect, though. They don't ever respond to a f/b request directly, it is months and months before another dot or other release will come out, and until they're ready to talk the scheduled date of the next release, they won't normally even say what's in it. But in the last month or so, at least twice on this forum a staffer has guaranteed that something will be a fix in the next update. I don't think I've seen that before. Last year they rolled out quite a preview for NAB, which is now about two weeks out ... but this year, they haven't even announced anything to be demo'd at NAB, so we might not get something. If they do, it'll be on an Adobe blog as well as I'll get to see it down there. With a few thousand other people ... wow, that is a HUGE show.

And you have to take the way These Things Work. You've got the bug/feature requests list ... it seems probably at least partly parsed by how many requests &/or complaints any item gets; the team members themselves, all with their fav and least fav sections of the program they want to work on; supervisors up the line who may want some Major New Feature to tout in marketing; budget considerations, where each team has to figure out how much budget they've got to get things done with; and ... the vagaries of coding. Some things go MUCH faster than expected, others ... don't. There are surprises, some nice, some rather nasty, along the way.

If it seems ponderous, well, maybe it is. I don't know the inner workings other than what those that is talks. And they don't talks a lot! Well, and everybody guesses some, don't we? As before, I'll tell you the team staffers I met with last year are very interested in the workability of the programs, they are ALL good editors or graders or such besides doing coding/design work. So they all felt a personal stake in the success for others of the products they work on, and great frustrations when those products aren't working for someone. I appreciate that, and that they're all quite human. I just want them to be a bit more super-human or whatever ... ah well.

Neil

[Jon-M-Spear]

I have to keep chipping in to these 'blue' threads as a reminder to Adobe staff that I have now unsubscribed from all but Photoshop CC2014 due to the new blue illegibility. 

I've reverted back to CS6.

[TimmyCrackCorn]

"Blue Issue" Vs. "No MP4" ... 

My CC is coming up for renewal, and as irritating as the blue is, I have just been using AE CC, and rarely opening CC 2014.  However, I'm not sure which irritates me more ... the "blue issue" OR the removal of MP4 (and other) encoding from CC 2014.  I'm pretty sure it is the latter, because while there is a chance I could get used to the blue (and just swallow more ibuprofen then I already do), I will never get used to the major disruption in my workflow that the lack of encoding has caused.

Not to hijack this thread, but I am just curious as to how many people may also find the lack of MP4 encoding (or other removed container/codec) equally or more troublesome than the "blue issue." ??

For me, I have understood most of Adobe's changes when it came to AE, but this has to be THE MOST ASININE decision in it's history.  I simply don't understand the mentality behind removing something that is far from being antiquated or needed.  The "jump to Media Encoder" paradigm is problematic at best, and oft-times infrutiating ... especially since it doesn't dymnamically update, even with a new save.  PATHETIC.  This must be reversed.

[R Neil Haugen]

It intrigues me that most of the info online talks of mp4 as only for "devices", that mpeg4 has a vastly heavier compression than mp2, for example. Or the H.264 stuff often wrapped in an mov file. PrPro's exports of the mpeg4 seem totally inline with the online discussions ... it's listed in my AME in what, two small-frame sets for mobile device playback?

Yet ... my GH3 also puts out mp4 files (not that I use that much) that do seem a little better in quality than the 420x360 or whatever that mpeg4 size in AME is. So, is there a difference between the mp4 my GH3 puts out and the tablets & smartphones create? I don't know.

But there are many other codecs available for export, which means that for me, the lack of say a 1080p 23.97 version of mp4 with all the other ones available is a non-issue.

I don't see why having the option to go to AME is a bother, however. Granted, I'm exporting from PrPro, and it sounds like you may at times be coming out of Ae ... which might be a very different workflow.

Neil

[TimmyCrackCorn]

Actually, I need to amend that post (wish there was an EDIT option -- like almost every other board I have used in recent memory [waves to Adobe]) to say, that really what I mean is H.264, not MP4.  It does get a little confusing because MP4 is a wrapper, and H264 is the codec.  H264's don't have to be .MP4 files, but probably 99% of the people encoding to H.264 wrap it in an MP4.  Especially if you are encoding out of AE, as I believe it is the only option.  But you can have H264 AVI's and MOV's, etc.

For me the issue is H.264, but it may well be the removal of other formats such as FLV, yes the MP4 "format", etc.  It's really the "deprecated formats" issue.  Why those can't be re-enabled like they were for CC, I don't know.  Although the very term deprecated means that they will be removed.

Adobe claims that H.264 and other formats out of AE have always been buggy, however, I have NEVER had a problem in the many years and hundreds and hundreds of projects I have used them for clients.  Now using the completely twisted, time-consuming, and all-around nightmare of using the AME-method ... now THERE I have had problems. Mind boggling really.