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Add UI Scaling

Forum|Forum|12 years ago
January 26, 2014
26 replies
8478 views

The After Effects user interface is very diffuclt to work with at 4k, even on very large monitors. To wit, on a 32" monitor at 3840x2160, the text of a layer name is 1/16 of an inch tall– 8 layers are packed into each vertical inch. The Console Debug "AdobeCleanFontSize" workaround has no effect on some aspects of the interface, such as layer names, text in effect control panes, etc. This undersized UI poses legibility challenges, and slows workflow by requiring an extrordinary level of pointing accuracy to click on things.

Illustrator solves this problem elegantly by adding a "UI scaling" slider control to the "User Interface" pref pane. Photoshop solves this problem a bit less elegantly but still effectively with a "UI Font Size" and a "Scale UI to Font" option. I suggest the AE team adopts one of these appoaches. I'd also suggets that this be a very high priority. It is necessary for most AE artists to work at 4k these days, making this an annoyance that I deal with every single day. I feel this is the most glaring feature oversight in AE currently.

Thank you for your consideration, AE dev team. And if you are a fellow AE user reading this and you have the same issue be sure to upvote, because apparently upvoted posts in this forum is what passes as a feature request/bug report nowadays.

Thanks!

UI and UX

Show previous replies

T

tn12345678910

Participant

YES! This feature is so needed. Giant 4K+ monitors don't play well with tiny text and human eyes. Needed this for a long time now.

A

A27373342yvuf

Participant

How's it possible that there's still no option inside After Effects to manipulate the blody font size of the UI text elements ?

I'm not talking about what the current version of the Debug Database View under AdobeCleanFontSize is capable of changing. As this only applies to certain things. It doesn't include: font size for layer names, project items, the Effects Controls, Effects & Presets and more...

I mean ? For real ? We a small indie company or what ?

there are people that have vision impairment, that use a wide screen with a high resolution

Don't even dare to tell me to increase the scale and layout within windows itself.

fredBerria

Participant

Everything is tiny on wide screen (and retina too). Even Chrome tools bar seems far far way. My workaround was to buy some glasses.

Danny51

Inspiring

Yes please! Adobe Team, whats the ETA on this very basic feature that other Apps already have?

A

avanrossum

Participant

People have been asking for this for at least 13 years. I doubt it will ever show up, but we can still hope

Shebbe

Community Expert

I would also like to see a fully smooth scalable UI via a slider. It would probably require a redesign of the way their UI functions though... don't see it happening very soon.

It does scale along with OS scaling however so you can use that as a workaround for now although all your software will be affected by it.

Swandive stream

Inspiring

As of current the font size is so small that I can't see what I am doing easily. It's considerably prohibitive when I'm struggling to read the layer names and other elements (24" screen). This is a common issue for users.

R

Rick Gerard

Community Expert

This is a very common feature request. It has my vote.

K

kumashu

Participant

Hi there.

I have a lil problem. I have high rez monitor and using AE CS6 but I couldn't find about change UI font size menu.

Is that possible? My OS windows 7.

Best,

Kuma

Swandive stream

Inspiring

@Jessica McMillan

(I can't find an inline reply function on here)

I'm using Illustrator 2025 and only see Small or Large options for the slider. It doesn't have to be exactly like Blender does it, but a notched slider with scale options would work. Also, certain windows like Preferences need to be resizable as on larger scales the bottom is cut off. There is a large grey area without contents that could be resized without issue.

But something like you showed in your screenshot would work fine. After Effects is probably the worst in terms of accessibility with the lack of UI scaling (I can barely see what I'm doing). Given that anyone with less than 20:20 vision would likely struggle to see it, it does mean that a large chunk of people (especially older) would find it difficult or impossible to use the software so I would be inclined to make this a priority.

To use a metaphor it's like having a large shop with interesting products for sale and nicely styled shop, but the only entrance is a catflap that nobody can get through (except cats). It doesn't matter if you extend the shop into the basement to include more stock, when nobody can get in.

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