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?

[brucet53718289]

Let's all send Adobe gray on gray, barely visible Christmas cards 🙂

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Bob Laughton: I must admit I had a quiet chuckle to myself when I just received my Christmas message from Adobe:- "May your 2016 be filled with colour and delight" Yes please!

Bruce Thomas: Let's all send Adobe gray on gray, barely visible Christmas cards :)

[Antonio_Starace]

Still too much contrast. Make background lighter or text darker to match the real Adobe style.

[allebarat]

^^ More like it.

[Antonio_Starace]

That's it!
The sad thing (for us customers) is that "they" think of this as an achievement.

[J Isner]

Has anyone brought this discussion to the attention of influential Photoshop bloggers like Scott Kelby (kelbyone.com)? The world seems oblivious to the problem outside of this discussion. The Lightroom import fiasco made headlines within days, but this is ten times worse.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Bruce - thank you for the specific issues.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

You should do this. Any additional pressure that can be applied to fix this is appreciated. Adobe's designers deserve the bad press for this.

[J Isner]

I did, and others are encouraged to do the same

http://kelbyone.com/contact-us/

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Looks like a Filter > Other > High Pass

[brucet53718289]

Nice work! And that certainly sums up the problem.

[brucet53718289]

Chris Cox, another specific issue is the way PS now jumps around a strange combination of Windows OS and PS light and dark dialog boxes. Just ask the designers to stick with the native OS schemes and all may be forgiven. The example below are the boxes look like on my Windows 7 PC.

[morris.c]

Well, check this out:

http://www.setopacity.com/articles/20...
wrote by Seth Shaw, Lead Designer (Twitter @sethshaw)
I sent a message, asking him to read this thread.. I hope he will..

--------
BTW I'll rollback to PS 15.0.1, right now I'm having a really bad experience.
My interface was already small and unreadable due to Windows scaling issue.. now is flat..
So, if one day they will fix the scaling issue, I will have to update..
No way to escape from this UI.

[Earth Oliver]

Graduated 5 years ago from Ohio State with a BS in VisComm... no real experience to speak of aside from working at Adobe.

And this is the guy who has "redesigned" the interface which we professionals have been using since he was in diapers? Seriously?

That makes me angry.

[Guest]

Oh stop. Do you really think one person single handedly revamped the entire interface? Of course he didn't. There are many artists involved, and they answer to creative directors and marketing people.

Stop beating up the artists folks. Concentrate on productive, constructive feedback.

We've all been the person who has labored over a project for months, only to find out the client hates it and tells us in no uncertain terms.

Don't be the client. We all hate the client.

[brucet53718289]

The 'angry' queue is getting longer. I absolutely expected the designer of this madness was never a working pro photographer.

[J Isner]

Yes, but so what? He created an iPhone app as his senior thesis.

[AnnShelbourne]

The Client pays your bill — or doesn't!
Give your Client unusable junk and he won't continue to use, or pay, you.
This new UI falls full square into the Unusable Junk category.

[Antonio_Starace]

Well, I read the article and it seems he thinks he did a good job. Everyone thinks to be doing good until someone tells you that you're wrong, so I assume no one ever told him.
By the way, of course he is not the only responsible of the abomination so down the article you can see the names of the geniuses (sarcasm) who made this.

http://www.setopacity.com/articles/20...

[brucet53718289]

I messaged the link to this page on Seth's Facebook page just in case he has been sheltered from the storm.

[Antonio_Starace]

I directly emailed it.

[Bob Laughton]

"Tabs are 28px in height, which I felt were large enough to be touch friendly while retaining pleasing proportions" says Seth.

I'm sorry, but where does all this ridiculous "touch" nonsense keep coming from? Are they meaning a metaphorical touch with a mouse/Wacom pointer or do they actually think that pro Photoshop users are doing their retouching work on a bloody iPhone?

This gets more bizarre by the day.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Bob Laughton:

"Tabs are 28px in height, which I felt were large enough to be touch friendly while retaining pleasing proportions" says Seth.

I'm sorry, but where does all this ridiculous "touch" nonsense keep coming from? Are they meaning a metaphorical touch with a mouse/Wacom pointer or do they actually think that pro Photoshop users are doing their retouching work on a bloody iPhone?

This gets more bizarre by the day.

With the ubiquity of tablets, many laptops are implementing touchscreens. This has been happening for over 5 years on desktops and laptops in the windows landscape and has more recently hit critical mass due to Windows 8 RT and Windows 10. There have been "talks" of iMacs and MacBooks eventually implementing touch screens as well. And with the implementation of more and more features that seem to originate from iOS being put into OSX, it's no surprise people would make that assumption.

This could be Photoshop making sure that those on devices that have touch screens can have a more holistic experience. And that's not a bad thing. Their execution of it is though. The UX patterns they're using are correct for devices that are not used by professionals or don't have access to standard peripherals (such as Mouse, Keyboard, Wacom). If you are designing solely for a device with touch, some of these patterns they're implementing make sense.

I feel like early in the process someone would have said "Why don't we just have an option in the UI settings to switch to a touch-friendly interface" and they were shot down saying "No, people should be able to easily and fluidly transition back and forth in their workflow the way we can choose at any moment to use the mouse or a keyboard shortcut". Neither side is wrong, but both could benefit from a bit of a compromise.

That said. We're talking about mostly a technical overhaul. Things like the height of an element being changed to allow easier touch access has nothing to do with the horrendous new iconography, or the poor contrast in 2 of the 4 themes, or the unprecedented lack of affordance on UI elements that have had them for decades, the removal of clickable surface areas that explicitly go against Fitts' Law, etc. None of these aesthetic changes make any difference to a technical improvement. But they do hinder the users. They add an unneeded learning curve and require a higher level of focus to do basic interactions. They consistently slow down all users both advanced and novice.

This is a monumental failure of interaction design caused by a fundamental lack of understanding users and the history of the medium. I'm not against change, I seek it out, but only because it's how we improve things. This is not an improvement. I'm not one requesting that we make everything look like it did in the last version, a change to something different that is an improvement from the last version is what I truly seek, but for the time being an option for "classic" mode would at the very least make the software usable again.

[brucet53718289]

Very well said Jared.

[AnnShelbourne]

Your comments are on-target on all points.

Now that we we learn more about the team which was responsible for this atrocious UI, I have to wonder how on earth people with such limited experience of both computer UX (as opposed to iPhone toy apps.) and of the professional imaging and Print industries were allowed to go anywhere near Adobe's CC Professional Programs.

Whoever allowed this lunacy to proceed owes a huge apology to all of Adobe's Professional customers because you have reduced our productivity-levels by 50%.

Some rapid internal re-assignment of jobs at Adobe seems to be imperative.