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Photoshop CC on a High DPI display on Windows 8.1

Forum|Forum|12 years ago
November 2, 2013
17 replies
87006 views

I'm using a new Lenovo Yoga 2. The native resolution is 3200x1800. Most Windows applications use scaling to enlarge the menus and other aspects of their user interface. However, Photoshop CC is basically unusable at this resolution because it does not honor the scaling. I have to drop the resolution down to 1600x900 before launching Photoshop CC. Extremenly inconvenient.

Anyone else have this issue on Windows?

high_dpi

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Conrad_C

Adobe provided an answer in another thread on this forum this week that indicated that the problem is entirely with the unavailability of the necessary Microsoft APIs, and nothing to do with perceived Mac vs. Windows favoritism.

As I recall, resolution independence code also partially existed for a very long time in advance on the Mac but was not fully usable for several versions of OS X; apparently the introduction of Retina displays forced Apple to finally finish the job. So there wasn't a simple switch to throw on the Mac side either.

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UnnDunn2

Participant

I just installed Photoshop CC 2014 on my MacBook Pro Retina running Windows 8.1 at 2880x1800 resolution and 200% DPI. It does, in fact, appear that the new "experimental" 200% DPI scaling setting in PS CC 2014 does the trick. But you have to go into Photoshop and enable this setting manually; it still doesn't respect the system-wide setting. And it appears that the only possible scaling setting is 200%, which could cause problems for those who prefer 150% or 175%, or even 300% (which is starting to become the optimal scaling level for laptops like the Yoga 2 Pro).

Oh well, something is better than nothing, I guess.

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leehu123456789

Participating Frequently

Looks like there is a solution coming, but only to CC2014 users - older products are considered "obsolete" and will not be updated. I think that's outrageous

Herbert2001

Inspiring

Playing devil's advocate here

Why is that outrageous? At some point older software may no longer function with newer hardware. CS2 no longer works on Intel Macs with later MacOsX versions, for example. Updating old software to run on newer hardware can mean an enormous job for the developers - especially in this case. And why would they do that for free?

The point of updating to newer versions means you gain access not only to new features, but also software that has been tested on new hardware. And that costs time, energy, and money.

If you wish to continue to work with older versions, then you merely do not update to a retina screen when using Windows.

Besides, Adobe is not in the business of updating older software in a way that would cut into its profits with CC 2014.

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leehu123456789

Participating Frequently

I figured someone would

Ok, I was a little annoyed - maybe it's not outrageous, but it's annoying. Yesterday I was told CS6 is obsolete - it is a product that is still available for sale and upgrades - if it is obsolete, why is it still for sale? If it's still for sale and doesn't support current tech then there should be some kind of warning - I nearly upgraded Photoshop CS5 to CS6 a couple of months ago at a cost of £230 for something which is considered obsolete - at no point in the discussion with the sales representative did they tell me that I should be wary that the product was no longer supported and may not work with current hardware (on the forums, there are many discussions about hi-res on windows stemming back to Nov last year, so it's been a known issue for some time). I'd have been most upset to pay £230 for an upgrade, buy a new laptop a few months later and be told the software is obsolete... which is the situation I'm now in with DW CS6 - for me it's purpose is fine, I don't need the latest features, but I have to plug my laptop into a monitor or upgrade to CC2014 for it to work reasonably.

One of the heads of Adobe was quoted only last May as saying that CS6 will continue to be a viable and supported platform as an alternative to CC, but that clearly hasn't lasted long.

Personally, I think if you can still buy it outright on their site it should be supported and they should retrofit the scaling into it - it's just underhand to carry on selling a product that they know will become unusable for people as they upgrade to newer hardware without at least some kind of warning/disclaimer. And if one of their main honchos said last year that CS6 would continue to be supported then they should stick to that until they retire it.

Left a very sour taste in my mouth and if this is what they can do to a product you outright own, with no actual ownership of CC moving forward, seems they have carte blanche to change their minds, hike prices etc. without any notice, leaving their customers with little or no choice or comeback...

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BryanCrow

Participant

Good News. True HighDPI Support is coming soon! Adobe announced it along side the Surface Pro 3.

Chocolate and Peanut Butter: Surface Pro 3 and Adobe Photoshop | Surface Blog

As SP3 ships June 20, I'm hoping Adobe CC will put out their HighDPI & touch support update by then too.

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BryanCrow

Participant

You can see Michael Gough with Adobe announce and demo it in the Surface Pro 3 Keynote video (Jump to about 30:45):

On-demand Webcast: Microsoft Surface Event

...and his tweet:

Twitter / michaelgough_: @panos_panay and his team ...

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Cheers Big Ears

Participating Frequently

Seem to remember this being a much longer thread....

So well over six months now and no solution? Time to fit in a whole new apple product though... ipad lightroom, no surface, nor android though - hmmm....

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franksavarese

Participant

This forum is useful only if Adobe folks follow the threads and realize when it's important to listen and take action. From what I've seen and heard they do neither. My daughter uses Photoshop cc and got a MS Surface Pro which she loves because she travels a lot. But she can hardly read the menus. I'm older than her and to me they're invisible. True it's only a 10" screen, but the 1080 display looks great with everytrhing else. I'm a photographer and longtime fan of Photoshop. I work on a desktop, but would love to buy the Lenovo Yoga Pro2, or the Sony Flip13, etc., so I can work in the field and also display my photos by flipping from one to the next on a tablet.

With all due respect to Thomas Knoll and the other Adobe geniuses who MAY be working on an elegant solution, here's what i think we need: An addition to the VIEW menu that toggles on/off an "easy-read" function. When ON, anytime the cursor is moved from the image display up to the menus, or left to the tools, that area of the screen enlarges 2X or 3X until the selection is made and the cursor returns to the image. It can enlarge about 1/3 or 1/4 of the menu bar at a time. This eliminates the need to change screen resolution, which is NOT the way to solve the problem. I want my photos to look great, why would it make sense so spend so much for a high-res screen and then have to dull it down?

If anyone out there agrees with me, maybe we should all demand action. I'd love to see someone from Adobe send me a response to prove they're actually listening to users. Or paying attention to the marketplace.

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Anonymous

franksavarese wrote:
I'd love to see someone from Adobe send me a response to prove they're actually listening to users. Or paying attention to the marketplace.

Did you even READ post # 28??

It says Adobe has been working on the solution for some time with MS. Getting either company to move quickly is impossible as this is not their only issue.

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

There are none so blind as those that will not see. The most deluded people are those who choose to ignore what they already know’

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britmansellAuthor

Participant

Just as FYI, Adobe Lightroom CC works great on this High DPI display. It's crisp and looks as we all hoped it would.

However, Photoshop and Illustrator are microscopic.

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Pieter Kappetein

Participating Frequently

Completely agree, I have the same issue, in fact the fonts are so small you hardly read them and it is almost impossible to use Photoshop while lightroom is fine

Conrad_C

Correct answer

Community Expert

Adobe provided an answer in another thread on this forum this week that indicated that the problem is entirely with the unavailability of the necessary Microsoft APIs, and nothing to do with perceived Mac vs. Windows favoritism.

As I recall, resolution independence code also partially existed for a very long time in advance on the Mac but was not fully usable for several versions of OS X; apparently the introduction of Retina displays forced Apple to finally finish the job. So there wasn't a simple switch to throw on the Mac side either.

Noel Carboni

Legend

No disrespect to anyone involved, but clearly it's already possible to paint high density graphics on a Windows system. Saying that the OS doesn't provide an easy way to port existing Adobe software isn't exactly putting the horse before the cart.

Adobe rolls their own UI elements via some kind of platform independent control library, which now knows how to do high ppi on a Mac. It would have been awfully short-sighted to implement all those changes in a way that only works on Macs.

-Noel

Chris Cox

Legend

UnnDunn2, upon thinking about it that's actually a very good question. Seems like at the very least it ought to be an option that users could select.

Perhaps Adobe has been exercising a bit of wishful thinking that their engineers would solve the problem in short order, since they HAVE essentially solved it for Apple Retina displays on the Mac side. It's a bit hard to imagine that the work to do that was all Apple-specific.

Given that the "manifest hack" listed above would cause the document pixels to also be scaled up, there could be potential performance issues as well. I only booted it up and tried it in a virtual machine to see if it would work; I didn't try running it that way for any length of time.

-Noel

That hack doesn't entirely work.

Again, we've been working with Microsoft on how to make UI scaling work correctly on Windows. There were lots of problems to be resolved (not just in our code). But we've been working on the issue for quite some time.

Noel Carboni

Legend

Seems like it's about time Adobe enabled the code that they did to support Mac Retina displays for Windows too.

-Noel

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

This kind of sucks. There was a fair lead time between the request for Retina display support and it happening, so add that to the time it has been implemented, and it adds up to significant amount of time. I can't remember who, but an Adobe staff poster said they were working on a similar fix for Windows open ages ago. I guess there isn't the same media attention as with the latest Mac Book Pros, so Windows user are a low priority. It won't be the fault of the Development Team, who will be under instruction what and where to put the time in. But it definitely leaves a bad taste!

Noel Carboni

Legend

The software will come. I sure hope professional monitors in large sizes and with a couple hundred ppi are on the drawing boards somewhere. What I would give to have 25 megapixels on a 30 incher. Imagine being able to see your entire photo at 100% zoom, down to every detail.

-Noel

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