P: User interface inconsistencies

Report · Oct 17, 2014

Photoshop CC 2014: All in all the user interface is not consistent.

The Photoshop colour picker from e.g. filter gallery (top) is not used in e.g. Picture frame and Flame (bottom) where instead the crappy standard Windows colour picker is used.

All in all it feels like the usability and design is inconsistent and some (e.g.Picture Frame and Flame) are simply not up to the standard in Photoshop.

The sliders look different, as do buttons dropdown menus, text fields etc.
In Tree the angle is set using a plain slider and not the angle control from e.g. Inner shadow.

Some filter windows have an icon at the top left corner while most don't.

Some filters use a window of their own, some (e.g. Filter Gallery) show multiple filters in one window and others (Blur Gallery) integrate as panels docked at the side.

Is this really representative of your ambitions and best effort in usability?

Report · Oct 18, 2014

The Flame, Picture Frame, and Trees filters are using an experimental framework to render their UI on the fly. Yes, it is not yet consistent with Photoshop. It is still a work in progress.
(but how the heck did that color picker get by QE?)

Report · Oct 22, 2014

Looking at this from a Mac point of view, when working in Frame and Flame, the color picker is also using the OS native color picker (which is much nicer on the Mac side). But as Chris points out, these are newer experimental features. Further, they aren't Filters in the more traditional sense. Frame used to be in Edit > Fill, but it ultimately made more sense to store it (menu-wise) in Filter > Render because you are rendering new content from scratch. This process is built off of Scripting. The more traditional Filters are built off of plug-ins (Filter Gallery being a single plug-in that incorporates many of the edge detection Filters into a single interface). Because Frame and Flame are actually scripts, they don't have the same access to the PS architecture as a plug-in or a feature that is powered by native code.

So inconsistencies will appear based on how a function is brought into Photoshop. Everything that is native should be the same but anything that is brought in via plug-in (especially if it is a third-party plug-in) or scripted could potentially have a different look, as each is susceptible to different factors of the OS UI.

Report · Oct 22, 2014

Please write up a bug for that color picker. That's just hideous, and even scripting has access to the Photoshop color picker.

Report · Oct 22, 2014

Yep, I'll take care of the bug report. I didn't mean to imply that scripted functions could get the color picker, I just meant this could be a reason why things like buttons, sliders, and title bars might appear different.