P: Font sizes in UI are small and unreadable - we need to be able to resize with greater granularity

Report · Feb 02, 2022

I’m writing about a problem I’ve encountered that seems to have a lot of people frustrated on the forums, but that Adobe apparently hasn’t done anything to address. This pertains to both LR Classic and PS 2002.

I use LR Classic CC and Photoshop 2022 on a new Macbook Pro (OS 12.1, M1 max chip), connected to an external monitor with a resolution of 2560 x 1440. The problem is that the fonts in the drop-down menus (and to a lesser extent, on the panel labels) are spidery and difficult to read, and there’s no way to adjust them or make them larger and clearer. From what I’ve read on the forums, this problem is even worse for those who have upgraded to 4K monitors.

The usual solution (and the only one offered by tech support) is to use the Mac’s system preferences to change the monitor display settings to a lower resolution. This isn’t a workable solution because external monitors don’t work well when they’re not at their optimal resolution. If you try to scale them to something other than the default setting, you lose sharpness. I’m a professional photographer and I can’t work on a blurry monitor.

In the “preferences / interface” panel of LR, there are options to make fonts larger, but these have no visible effect on drop-down menu fonts (and in fact I still don’t know what they actually adjust). Some responses on the forums suggest that people think these DO affect those fonts, but they’re mistaken. Whether the efficacy of those settings is affected by monitor resolution, I don’t know—but it shouldn’t be.

What's really needed—and will be even more important as people transition to 4K monitors—is the ability for the user to adjust font size and sharpness in the panels and menus without rescaling the monitor resolution. This should be well within the technical capabilities of the Adobe programming team. It could simply be part of the "preferences" panel -- an option for "Font sizes in drop-down menus" and another for "Font sizes in panel labels." It may require some collaboration between your engineers and those at Apple, but I assume there’s precedent for that.

With all the griping about this problem on the forums—complaints that go back years, mind you—it’s hard to understand why nothing’s been done about it. I’d appreciate it (and so would a lot of other people) if you could look into this and come up with a fix.

Thanks.

Report · Jul 13, 2025

Lightroom Classic's interface is visually outdated, inconsistent with the rest of the Adobe suite, and functionally hostile on modern displays.

The UI looks and feels like something from the year 2000 — small icons, generic buttons, poor hierarchy, and awkward spacing.
On a 5K monitor, it’s nearly unusable without external scaling tools. Fonts are microscopic, and the only available UI setting is "Small" or "Large", which is not sufficient.
The interface doesn't match Adobe standards — it looks completely different from Photoshop, Bridge, or even Camera Raw. Icons, fonts, and controls feel like they belong to another era.
There is no DPI-aware scaling, no font size slider, and no support for accessibility or larger UI modes beyond the most basic toggle.

In 2025, this level of UI design is unacceptable for a flagship professional app.

Please consider rebuilding the interface with a modern, modular, scalable UI framework that respects screen resolution, accessibility, and consistency across Adobe apps.