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Participant
July 11, 2013
Answered

Is it even possible to increase the font size in the Illustrator CC UI? Panels are unreadable!

  • July 11, 2013
  • 13 replies
  • 67312 views

With the demise of my beloved Fireworks, I am giving Illustrator CC a try. Right off the bat it is unusable due to the microscopic font sizes in the UI, panels in particular. Is there any way to make the UI more readable?

Correct answer AshutoshChaturvedi

126% made a big difference for me. Thank you Sanjay! Suddenly it's like the '90s all over again


ellencarnahan  wrote

126% made a big difference for me. Thank you Sanjay! Suddenly it's like the '90s all over again

Thanks for reviving this old thread. We have this feature in Illustrator CC 2019 - How to customize the Illustrator workspace

13 replies

Participating Frequently
August 5, 2020

Just increase the font size in windows, it just increase font size as well as layout size. It works fine for me.

 

Wonderful Uncle Steve
Participant
December 11, 2017

On Mac OS is 10.13.1 I went to System Preferences....Displays....Under Display..Resolution changed from Default for display to Scaled and from default I selected the option just to the left for my 27 inch Mac, yes it increased the size of everything but it is a simple click to change back.

Participating Frequently
June 15, 2017

I don't think Adobe gives a damn about Mac users. This UI problem is in every one of their applications. We have all been complaining about this for the last 4-5 years and nothing yet. Does Adobe even look at this forum.

rcraighead
Legend
May 18, 2017

If Blender, an open-source program, can do this with ease, why does Adobe make it so hard to adjust UI font size?

Participating Frequently
September 27, 2016

Hi all, to get some 'ears' on customisable scaling UI (tool palette esp.) can i suggest you request here Creative Cloud Wishform (not product specific) rather than on this forum, its more likely to be actioned. Thanks, Jim

Participating Frequently
September 27, 2016

Hi all, to get some 'ears' on customisable scaling UI (tool palette esp.) can i suggest you request here Creative Cloud Wishform (not product specific) rather than on this forum, its more likely to be actioned. Thanks, Jim

Participant
May 10, 2016

It seems that the question has been answered, but I have the same problem, and cannot change the size of controls in my Surface Pro 2, I am reading that Adobe simply didn't think about this "detail" of basic accessibility, I am growing more appalled and frustrated... I really cannot work with this size of control panels... I am guessing what I press, and more than often miss the button I intend to click...

Quite frankly, appalling...

Hernan Bonomo,

Program manager for the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities.

Participating Frequently
January 23, 2016

HEY ADOBE-- allow users to choose larger icons and font sizes. STOP TELLING US TO CHANGE OUR MONITOR RESOLUTION. If a shoe doesn't fit, I don't change the size of my foot. I choose a larger shoe. I am blowing out my eyes on a daily basis trying to use your interfaces. FIX IT. It seems so easy.

The new Photoshop (which has a horrible flat grey interface) at least offers 3 font sizes for menus.

Participant
January 20, 2015

How is this done on the Mac side? The fonts in the UI of InDesign and Illustrator CC are microscopic and contribute to major eyestrain. What is the point of being able to enlarge the panels if you still can't read the fonts within them? I have two Apple 27" displays. I really don't want to res down my monitors for the UI, esp if it results in edges that are not crisp.

sanjaykr
Adobe Employee
Adobe Employee
January 27, 2015

Hi lynne's test,

What is the screen resolution of your Apple displays? There is a way to enable HiDPI resolution by typing following command on terminal

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist DisplayResolutionEnabled -bool true

and after running above command and re-logging, you will see some additional screen resolutions in display settings. When you select one of the HiDPI screen resolutions from your display settings, All your app's size will become double. But this mode will be really helpful if your screen's PPI is close to 200, else everything on your screen will look very big.

Sanjay.

chrisstraight
Inspiring
January 27, 2015

I've been using this app called RDM for about a year to switch between display resolutions. Works on multiple displays. Remembers settings on restart/shutdown. It has settings for HiDPI. Doesn't work very well on a standard Thunderbolt Display because of the native resolution but I can kick my late 2013 15" MBP up to an unusable 4096x2160. Usually keep it around 2560x1600 with no issues.

It's a small app that sits in your menu bar. Found it on Reddit. http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/vi9yf/set_your_retina_macbook_pros_resolution_to

Participating Frequently
December 18, 2014

I'll chime in here too...

I have 20/20 vision, and am a designer who works with the Creative Suite all day long.

Adobe continues to infuriate with it's incredibly hard-on-the-eyes interface. In this day and age, there's no excuse for poor UI. Shame on Adobe.

By all the comments I am reading on here, we should repeat our complaints independently in the general forum instead of them being buried on one thread.

Here's a link... Adobe Creative Cloud

quovadis123
Participating Frequently
January 3, 2015

well... I just received a BenQ 32" 4k monitor, that is specifically made for graphic design and color proofing.

I have windows 7 scaled to 150%.

Photoshop and Illustrator palettes are unusable they are so small. I have to hold my face 10" from the monitor to see anything.

There must be away to increase palette and text size?

The work around I found was to set my monitor at a lower resolution 2560x1600, but that defeats the purpose of having a 4k monitor at 3840x2160 native.

I must be missing something?

Instead of adding silly, undemanding,  juvenile, little features and filters to the next edition of photoshop, it may be a good idea to make it usable first at higher resolution.

quovadis123
Participating Frequently
January 3, 2015

Basically, I have to return my 4k graphics monitor because it is natively unusable with Adobe graphics software!!

How stupid is that!?