P: New user interface lacks contrast and many usability cues, lots of other problems

[J Isner]

I just updated to Photoshop CC(2015) version 2015.1. Adobe changed the UI to the flat look you see on phones and tablets. I do not see any way to select the classic interface, which I'm sure many desktop users of PS prefer.

This feels yet another attempt by Adobe to be trendy without caring about what users want or need. Didn't they learn anything from the dumbed-down Lightroom import fiasco?

[Guest]

As someone who has been very vocal about the UI issues with CC, having installed 2017, I can say that many of the problems have been resolved.  Have you even installed it?  I think your comment is a little unfair, but totally out of line if you haven't even tried it.

[mrsnak]

It's not going to change - they've now applied this same UI to Illustrator. They are Hell-bent on this and seemingly nothing is going to stop them.
What we now have is trade-off between UI functionality and new features. You can't get one without the other. Since we all are forced to rent Adobe programs now, the vast amount of users longer have the choice to "vote" by not upgrading, as we did in the past.

[richardm57619961]

Yes totally out of line, a turd has uses beyond being a turd, you can fertilise plants with it, PS UI on the other hand.....

[mrsnak]

I'm having display issues when I first open a file. Image opens (slowly) off-center and out of window visibility.
Very wonky.

Anyone else having this issue? Mac 10.11.6

[mrsnak]

The problem is that most of us were very happy with the original UI. Form followed function and it worked extremely well. Then the flat trend came alone and Adobe went crazy with it. All we are seeing now is repair to the flat UI to try and get it semi-functional again. If that is "many problems being resolved", with respect to the inferior flat UI trend, I might agree. Adobe is trying to throw us a few bones, but they still don't seem to understand what made the original UI so good. If they do, it's because of management directive to be trendy to "keep up" with what Google is doing, and still figure out how to make it work. I'd be having a hard time as staff caught in the middle on this, too. 

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

> most of us were very happy with the original UI.>

I think so, too. But it would appear that someone at the top of Adobe wanted even more similarity between touch apps that have gone flat, and our desktop apps. Probably in the name of consistency because people, myself included, do find too many differences between interface elements in different apps difficult to adjust to. It's unfortunate that their first choice of "consistent interface" wasn't very usable, to say the least about that. "Consistent" can be achieved without being "identical."

 At the same time that Adobe wanted this new look, the PS team had been trying to get it all on the same page, dialogs and main window, so they took what they were handed and have really tried to compromise between the CC "look" and what makes us happy enough. From being around this long, I know that almost every change is met with "WTF?" often followed by people getting used to it, so they don't leap to fix everything. They wait for public response, and good for this site keeping at it to get the changes we needed most.

I still think the difference between OK and Cancel could be better enhanced so I didn't have to look. I think they've improved the contrast, but we have the nice dull blue highlight option, so couldn't they use that to indicate the command that has focus?

Other than that, the main purpose of an interface is to get out of our way visually without impeding our ability to identify the elements we're working with, and I think they've just about achieved that. It may not be as aesthetically pleasing, but it serves some company purpose that we've got no say in, and we can probably get used to it now until the next WTF? UI comes down the line.

At least they didn't bring back those horrible sideways-tabbed docking systems they loved briefly. Something to celebrate.<G>

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

> Anyone else having this issue? Mac 10.11.6>

I've updated PS on El Capitan now, and I'm not seeing images open off center or slowly. Sometimes trashing prefs helps when you change full versions, if you didn't do that already.

[J453]

I would start a different thread if you're still seeing this issue. A video to show what you're seeing would be helpful as well.

[mrsnak]

What I'm seeing now is just a massive slowdown with a file opening, even a small one. Makes it unusable at the moment.
Will go back to the previous version until I have time to beta-test the new version for you. 😉

[richardm57619961]

Fortunately I use PS mainly for 3D texture work and dds, I can't see me needing the "new features" for a long time coming.
I'd happily pay and upgrade was it not for this enforced UI "following the trend" 2D bland drab nonsense.
Nobody asked for this, and you could have a legacy checkbox that overrides all the new grey dysfunctional fluff.
As Adobe only seem capable of following the latest trend, ruining the UI and making things more difficult for the end user, I hope it's a trend that dies out sooner than later, or a viable alternative appears in the meantime.
Adobe have clearly and cynically taken away the choice, that just makes me want to dig my heals in 😉
Enforced renting means they can do what they will, as and when they please, employ their entire user base as paid beta testers.
I wish they'd drop the pretence of "listening" they clearly have a roadmap and everyone's on it.

[richardm57619961]

Just a reminder, all they have done is fix features that were ruined by the new UI design that nobody asked for.
Keep up the pretence of "listening", your not fooling anyone.

[Roger the Photographer]

It's still a turd, I agree completely. I'm working with it right now. True, they're repaired a few really stupid things like the fields and such. But by Jove, this UI is so drab, so hard to read that I can hardly stand it.

Pray tell me: why is the Preferences window so small that they have to put ultra small text in it? Why is it so drab? Why no colour like a decent interface? Why the charades that are supposed to be OK, Cancel and other buttons? Why not give me my preferred interface which is built in the computer OS anyway and available to every programmer, even not very good ones?

I could mention about any dialog window except, quite miraculously, the Save As window that seems to come out right from my Mac OS! Oops, I just made a mistake. I should not have mentioned that one, they probably simply did not think of it.

OK OK, maybe the word "turd" is a bit vulgar, I don't know. But the idea behind the comment is right on.

If I may, I will shout it: STOP TRYING TO REINVENT THE WHEEL.

Because, you see, your wheels are kinda squarish.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

@jeff Sass

I'm one of the people who left long, and detailed criticism explaining all of the terrible UX decisions that had befallen poor defenseless Photoshop.

So today I just updated to the latest versions of all this CC junk.

And behold! Most of the stuff I pointed out has been changed.

It's like you guys actually listen or something.

And though this IS an improvement. It feels more like doing the bare minimum. I'll get more into that stuff later, but first... there is a wayyyy bigger issue that needs attention, pronto. This is "uninstall and go back to old version" level of broken. I bitched a lot about how terrible PS had gotten, but I still used it... but this...

This NEEDS to be fixed. For almost 20 years every time I open Photoshop I press CTRL+N,Enter. And I have a new document. This is is done everytime I open the application. Hundreds of thousands of times a year. And now it's broken. How do you break "New File"? You have to go out of your way to break this. Why? Is this new window that great to make it worth 10 seconds of waiting for it to load?

This is unacceptable. Flat out broken and needs hotfix patch. Either give me an option in the settings to go to the "classic" way of creating a new file, or fix this so that it loads instantaneously.

CTRL+N,Enter should instantaneously give me a new file with the size of the clipboard.

Currently I can press the Enter key over 50 times after hitting CTRL+N before the stupid UI is responsive. What freaking decade is this? Does Photoshop have to go to space on a dial-up modem to load the New File dialog?

I don't think my laptop got 50 times slower over the course of 10 mintues while installing the latest version. I'm pretty sure Photoshop just got worse.

On to design. Seriously though, fix that, you just took the premier Photo Editing application of the world and made it not worth paying for.

The new file window design:

So these new tabs and thumbnails are better than the dropdowns we had before, but they make the overall experience of the New File menu much worse. They are not, and absolutely never will be my primary focus. I want my actual settings front and CENTER. I'm going to repeat that. The settings should be centered on the screen. and I shouldn't have to scroll to see them. I never had to before, why do I have to now? Why are you making what was easy, now harder and slower?

I understand that most newbies don't understand DPI, or screen resolution, or pixel density, or have all the common dimensions for print and screen devices memorized. I get that, I empathize with them. They need a better option, and this is it. And it is very good for them (I won't say great, because the icons on the thumbnails are completely pointless and could have been done much better to supply some actual utility). But it's good. It's not bad at all, and I see what you were going for.

But they are of no use to me. Do you know how often I use the templates in Photoshop? Like maybe once a year? and even then I go through and make sure the actual settings it gave me are what I want, and even then they aren't and I modify them based on the original supplied suggestion.

I want a little divider/separator with a little arrow on it. And when I click on it, alllllllll that template bullshit goes far far away where I won't ever have to look at it agian. And THEN the dialog can be centered! So I can look directly at the settings, which are what I actually care about, and not have any of them needlessly obscured because the size of the settings can adjust to put everything in view, so I don't need to interact. I can just observe the settings all in one quick glance, and then press enter to confirm, OR if I need to change something, then interact with it. This should be a very low effort, passive task. There should be no reason to introduce scrolling into this.

Example: (clicking on the "Clipboard" dropdown would cause the giant "newbie" mode to show)



But again, most importantly... I don't even want to see this screen at all 99% of the time. I just want to hit the keyboard shortcut and within less than second I should have a document.

Note, I changed the Close/Create buttons. Despite the rounded corners just being flat out ugly, they are also completely unreadable in the current version. Here is a comparison between CC on the left and mine on the right



If I can't do the following, you have failed.

Print Screen,Ctrl+N,Enter,Ctrl+V

I should have a new document with a screenshot in it. And I shouldn't have to wait to input those commands. I should be able to do all of them as fast as I possibly can, and when the program catches up, I can see it did what I told it. Create a macro for it. That is your new benchmark. This isn't "can we make it better than the previous version" it's "can we at least not make it worse".

I'm still waiting on a version that is better than CS6. Please make it.

I'll leave my comments for the changes in the stuff I brought up in the last version for another day.

[J453]

Preferences > General... and check "Use Legacy New Document Dialog"

[Guest]

I'll leave my comments for the changes in the stuff I brought up in the last version for another day.

Maybe do us all a favor and play around with the preferences before you post another novel.   Just sayin'.  😄

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

My hero. Now that I see this, I recall this isn't the first time Adobe has given me a new dialog I had to turn off. But in the past there was at least an option in dialog itself.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I had checked under the UI settings, since this was a change to the UI.

[J Isner]

I looked for the option in Preferences > General but I do not see it.  

Photoshop 2015.1

[Jeff-Adobe]

Hi John and Jared,
The new "New Document" dialog is new to Photoshop 2017.0 (18.0) so the preference is only present in that version. It might be easier if we move discussions around that dialog to a different thread specifically for that dialog: https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/new-image-dialog-is-sluggish-would-love-to-sw...

Thanks,
Jeff

[J Isner]

Since I update using the Creative Cloud desktop app, I would expect the option to be found there, but I do not see it in the preferences and I won't risk pressing the UPDATE button unless I know I'll be asked because I hate surprises.   It's unclear to me what purpose it serves as a Photoshop option unless it will protect my old version the NEXT time I update, assuming  Creative Cloud checks the Photoshop option.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

> Since I update using the Creative Cloud desktop app, I would expect the option to be found there, but I do not see it in the preferences>

The ACC has absolutely nothing to do with the various application preferences. So I don't know why you'd expect to find them there??? It WILL, however, protect your old version if you click on Advanced and choose not to uninstall it. It will also keep your old preferences, which do NOT cover new features, if you ask it to, but enough people have been seeing odd things, those old preferences in the NEW version may be corrupt enough to generate some issues.

Perhaps you meant something different?

[Roger the Photographer]

The New document dialog is so ugly and fuzzy that I can hardly read the text in there. What's going on here? Fuzzy text in a dialog? Are we going back to the '90s?

I hear that I can get rid of it... temporarily. Not sure that I understand that twist. Come on, guys,  I've no time to lose on this. You cannot expect that such an ugly and fuzzy and confusing dialog (at least on a mac pro) will go unnoticed? You're not trying to tell me that you put out this horror and didn't know it was an absolute no go?

Guys, the scare the bejesus out of me.