Photoshop CC on a High DPI display on Windows 8.1

[britmansell]

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?

[Noel Carboni]

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

-Noel

[Trevor.Dennis]

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]

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

[Conrad_C · Accepted solution]

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]

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

[UnnDunn2]

Adobe has made this excuse for years and years. Maybe it's valid, maybe it isn't. But from my perspective, Photoshop is basically unusable on my MacBook Pro with Retina display running Windows 8.1.  We know it is possible for applications to scale properly to respect high DPI settings on Windows, and Adobe charges a pretty penny for its products. Excuses like this are becoming intolerable.

[Noel Carboni]

  You're running a system combo no one can buy off the shelf, UnnDunn2.  That's known as riding the bleeding edge.

I'm curious...  How do most Windows applications in Windows 8.1 handle the scaling (you have to dial in a sizing option of Extra Large - 200%, or maybe a custom option of even more, right)?  Does it look nice and sharp in general?  I'll bet fonts are nicely formed.

Is there any way you could grab your desktop on that system showing various applications (e.g., File Explorer, IE, maybe a few older desktop applications, etc.), and post it here?  I'm really curious how things look with the ultra-dense display.

-Noel

[Northcoast Enviro Center]

Oh and Noel, here's a screenshot taken from my Yoga 2 with a bunch of programs running.

Scaling is set to 200%. Some programs scale well and some don't.

[Noel Carboni]

Thank you for that, arcataroger.  I like what I see, though it's clear things can get very small for you (e.g., your CMD window or that little system tray pop-up).

Now if the display makers would just get to it and make 30" 200+ ppi display...  And not charge the price of a car for it.

-Noel

[Herbert2001]

Noel Carboni wrote:

Thank you for that, arcataroger.  I like what I see, though it's clear things can get very small for you (e.g., your CMD window or that little system tray pop-up).

-Noel

The CMD window in Windows can be easily customized by right-mouse clicking the window bar, and adjust the settings to a larger font, more lines, etc.

[Noel Carboni]

Of course, but he didn't have it set as such.

-Noel

[Mike_Abbott]

Excuse my ignorance in this area - can I seek some clarification from the Windows HiDPI users... before I buy a new laptop...

Take for example the new dell XPS 15 with its QHD+ 3,200 x 1,800 screen.

Could I set up the screen resolution in Windows to be 1,600 x 900 - ie 'half resolution'. Does that solve the problem - ie would that look just like a native 1,600 x 900 res screen?

Mike A.

[Northcoast Enviro Center]

Nope. LCD screens have a native resoltion and look like crap when set to something different.

http://www.howtogeek.com/119117/htg-explains-why-using-your-monitors-native-resolution-is-important/

It'll make Photoshop functional in the meantime, but you'll hate yourself for having purchased a hidpi screen if you go that route.

[Noel Carboni]

Have you personally used one at exactly half resolution, Roger?  That might be an exception to the "rule" and really should be answered by someone who has tried it.  I haven't.

-Noel

[Northcoast Enviro Center]

Just tried it. Same difference... extrapolated pixels, similar to upscaling in Photoshop.

Looks to my eye as (in)tolerable as any other non-native resolution. Is there something about 1/2 resolution that ought to make it special that I'm missing?

[Noel Carboni]

Well, yeah, I was thinking there's the possibility the monitor would map exactly one pixel to exactly two on the display, and the result would be as sharp as with a low ppi monitor at its native resolution.  But apparently it's not the case.

No doubt this depends on the monitor and controller.  Thanks for checking.

-Noel

[Northcoast Enviro Center]

I see what you're saying. My guess (and it's only a guess) is that the smoothing algorithms, such as ClearType for text, rasterize and do sub-pixel smoothing for a certain resolution and it doesn't scale up well when you just double the pre-smoothed output at the monitor level. It's like taking rasterized, anti-aliased text and upsampling it instead of rasterizing at a higher resoution to begin with.

[BIT-101]

The issue is that the internal manifest is reporting to the system that the app is high-dpi aware. And it is not. So it does not get properly scaled. The fix is here: http://surfaceproartist.com/blog/2013/12/11/hack-makes-photoshop-and-illustrator-readable-on-surface... It takes a very minor registry hack - adding a single entry to the registry - and saving a text file in your program files dir.

[UnnDunn2]

So what excuse does Adobe have for shipping a manifest that incorrectly reports its High-DPI support? Why are we forced to implement registry hacks when Adobe could implement and release this patch with minimal effort?

[Noel Carboni]

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

[Chris Cox]

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.

[BIT-101]

The hack works fine. I understand that it scales the entire app up, which is not ideal as it is really the same as just changing the resolution of your screen. You will not be taking advantage of your high res screen. On the other hand, if I can't read the menus or see the icons, the app is useless to me. I have avoided using PhotoShop on this machine because it was so annoying. If you look at the date on a US dime, the menu text was about that size.

I understand that Adobe is working on a solution that will allow it to use the full resolution of a high dpi monitor and yet still be able to scale up the UI elements to a usable size. And I understand that this would be preferable. But in the mean time, the user should be able to choose between these two options.

It's my understanding that the internal manifest is reporting to Windows that the application is high dpi aware, which it seems to me is false, but I don't claim to fully understand what that means. At any rate, if this takes a longer time to fix, I strongly suggest making this a user-choosable feature. It would at least make the app usable to those on high dpi screens until this is fully worked out.

[LukeW]

The 'hack' works, the only thing that does not work is the icons which are blurry.

[D Fosse]

LukeW wrote:

The 'hack' works, the only thing that does not work is the icons which are blurry.

No, it doesn't, not if the image is scaled along with the UI. That defeats the whole purpose of a high-resolution display.

Yes, I understand that it makes the application at least useable, which it otherwise isn't, but that's precisely what defines it as a "hack" and not a "solution".