Add UI Scaling

[surfacist]

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!

[kumashu]

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

[Mylenium]

No. This stuff is fixed and AE CS6 doesn't support any high-DPI displays. You have to live with it.

Mylenium

[kumashu]

Thanks all!

>See the "resizable user interface text" entry here:

Thanks Todd for answer my question. Also I saw the article of link.

I'm waiting  for resize UI to become to able to.

[Charles Brepsant]

Hi everyone,

This feature has been added to the new 13.1 release, as I can read on this page, correct?

I am working on a 21'' 1920x1080 monitor on windows 7, and the text has become much, much too big to my liking - it is taking so much space it is detrimental to my working environment.

I've looked for options to change that but cannot find any in the preferences.   Can I do something to solve this? 

At the moment the text is so big I cannot even see the timeline, as per my usual layout settings - see attached screenshot.

Many thanks

[Todd_Kopriva]

There is no feature for controlling the font size in After Effects.

The page that you link to just says that many of the UI controls scale automatically to the right size for high-DPI displays.

[Charles Brepsant]

Hi Todd,

Thank you for your answer.

But that is exactly my problem, the size is not right size for this high DPI display.  On a bigger monitor such as size would work, but not on my relatively small 21'' monitor.

Is there any way for me to backtrack to a smaller size?

Many thanks

Charles

[Charles Brepsant]

Ah i got it, just had to scale the DPI font size in Windows.

Thanks!

Charles

[meetdemo]

@i am having same trouble...just adjusted font size of text and problem  got fixed.

cheers man..!!

[gleeful_warmth4812]

So what is the best adjustment in terms of UI text size in a UHD 32 inch dell monitor? What I understant is:

a. very small text size (cant work)

b.very big windows fonts and medium AE UI text size

c. change monitor resolution (2560x1600) text mayby blurry.

Any ideas?

[vinun25284364]

Update your CPU display drivers, it works for me now for 4k monitors.

[Snakedogman]

Over 4 years later and we still can't resize the UI font in After Effects.

Even though it was apparently "near top priority" in 2013:

resizable user interface text: As people use After Effects on larger and larger monitors, on which the size of each pixel is smaller and smaller, the single size for the user interface text becomes a problem. We’re looking into a variety of user interface “skin” improvements for the near future, and this one is near the top of the priority list.

Just a couple of points larger would be nice, especially when working on a laptop. (and no I don't want to scale my whole Windows interface with the dpi scaling because it just makes AE blurry).

[Colorful_Ocean5EA9]

Im pretty new in AE and Adobe products but seeing this article and lack of improvements over the last 4 year does not bringing me close to move over to this platform.

Im on retina & 30" monitor, no way that I can work on it!

Im really sorry for people that have vision problem!

[artisanaltv]

I just purchased a new Windows system, and After Effects just got smaller compared to how it looked on my Mac. Even though I have my windows display scaled up to 120%, which makes all my other apps very easy on the eyes, After Effects persists in being tiny. I just wasted about 20 minutes searching for a solution and all I can find is Todd K.'s post from six years ago saying this was "near the top" of their priorities for new features.

What happened to have this drop off the radar? Even Cinema 4D, which is a UI dinosaur in a lot of other ways, allows you to change the display font size.

Grrrrrrr.....

[iaa1]

That this remains an issue is a shame on Apple, Adobe, Microsoft - everyone involved in UX design.  It is not solely an Adobe issue.  It is an industry issue.

What Adobe in particular and vendors in general need to recognize are THREE issues

1. High DPI systems are intended for USER CONVENIENCE.  In most cases, to show high DPI videos and images, in some cases to cram more apps on the screen.  What we have is high DPI imagery and more app space, but what is sacrificed is readability.
   
   
2. Font shrinkage as a % of screen size, relates to readability, and poor readability is poor User eXperience.  The response to run our displays with lower DPI / lower resolution is ridiculous.  Why buy a high DPI system then?  And running any system outside native mode degrades the GPU performance.
   
   
   
3. In AE I need high dpi for images, but not for menus.   Menu fonts are too small.   Why does AE make this a problem?  A basic app like TERMINAL lets you set font size.  Is Adobe too small to go big?

[Patrock3000]

Well stated. I had to buy glasses to use After Effects on my higher resolution monitor. This is bad for the health of their users.

[Veronica Sargent]

Hello. So, I have a Surface Book 2. I used to use After Effects CS6 on my other computer which I believe was like an HP Note or something like that. After Effects opened fine on that HP laptop, but when I opened it up on Surface Book 2, the layout/workspace was extremely small. I looked around for an answer to my problem but couldn't find it anywhere. I came across this article and I thought that all hope was lost. But, after a while of racking my brain to try and figure it out! I got it!

So, since my text was super small. This is what I did.

I went to the application that was on my desktop

I right clicked it and went to "Properties"

Then this pops up:

So then I went to the compatability tab and I checkmarked "disable fullscreen optimizations".

But even when I had that clicked, nothing changed.

So, then I saw the option of "Change high DPI settings" and this pops up:

It had different settings before, but this is what I changed it to. If you copy your settings with what I did to mine, I'm pretty certain that it will help! 😄

Mine went from looking like this:

To looking like this:

So yeah! I hope this helps anyone who stumbles across it~ 🙂

Also, I had tried doing the display settings with my computer and change the resolution and all that, but that only ended up making my entire computer look out of shape because it made everything look humongous and it didn't help After Effects look that much bigger. But yeah! I'm glad that I found the solution to this! ^.^ :DDDD

[Snakedogman]

I actually find C4D's UI one of the most flexible as well as pretty nice to look at. Certainly way better and more customisable than anything Adobe makes.

[camimaslaton]

Thank you Veronica, the only post that actually helped 🙂

[Rick Adams]

It is March 29, 2021, large monitors have become more affordable. I am looking at a beautiful 40" version. I have so much room for the timeline and all the effect controls. Now if I could only make the interface fonts a little bigger, it would be perfect.

In 2013, this was a high priority. What happened? I am glad to see that a Windows user was able to create a workaround for their system. I and using a Mac Pro, 10.15.7, and After Effects 18.0.0. I can see that I would be tilting at a windmill to ask if this is still a priority but I would encourage Mac users to post a comment here and maybe we can push this up the priority list. My tired, old eyes will appreciate it. Thank you.

[Buddycat]

Thank you!   Just got a 28 inch monitor and ran into this same problem, and it worked!  Much easier to read!

[Declan Z]

Thank you so much for sharing that, Veronica! This is the most helpful thing in this entire thread, and solved the issue for me. 😃

[Sandro5D5C]

it still is a struggle. how can i do this on mac.
why does adobe not react. its a shame!

[w.mokrynski]

I'm working on 5k2k 40" screen on a Mac, and the some of the interface text is smaller than text on my phone. Much of it is grey on black. I have to physically lean into my screen to read much of it.  Unbelievable that there is no ablity to adjust interface font size, especially since this has been a complaint for years now.

How difficult can this be to implement? Can Adobe please supply me with a new pair of glasses so I can magnify their interface.

[Sandro5D5C]

hello someone at adobe.

I find it incredibly ignorant that they just don´t care on everything that is written here. Nobody does answer, nobody does offer a solution. unbelievably unprofessional for such a big company which gets well payed for software without listening to those who have to work with these tools every day.

respectfully and in good hope that maybe something will happen in the end (maybe, the end is a software from another company),

ST

[Snakedogman]

The joys of subscription software and monopolies. Sadly there aren't really competitors for After Effects, so development is basically non-existent (not hating on the developers that do work on AE, I'm sure they do what they can with the resources and direction they get from Adobe HQ).

At least we're finally getting multi-frame rendering back!