Photoshop CS5.5 UI too small

[dsjohnson84]

Hi everyone. I realize this topic has been posted before and I still haven't found a solution.

I finally got a new Laptop (last one was from 2010...) and I had downloaded and installed Adobe Design Standard Suite, used it for years. After getting the new Laptop I reinstalled my CS5.5 products BUT when I open Photoshop the UI is incredibly small. My UI Interface Options only give me "Small, Medium, Large" and it's already on Large. Changing my screen resolution does not change anything either. Illustrator and InDesign are fine, it's just Photoshop.

Is there a solution to this yet? My research has yielded me no luck.

Thanks in advance!

[Peru Bob]

Change your screen resolution in Control Panel.

[dsjohnson84]

That was the first thing I tried, doesn't work.

[Peru Bob]

I don't think that there is anything else you can do for CS5.5.  It was not designed for today's high resolution screens.

[dsjohnson84]

WOW... well apparently I just didn't lower my resolution enough... I just matched the res of my previous laptop (1600 x 900) and now the UI is fine, but it's so crazy that I cannot use the power of my resolution to be able to work within adobe. Does CS6 work better at a resolutions up to 3840 x 2160? On that note does Adobe still allow upgrades or is it ALL subscription based now? I know for a while you were still able to upgrade to CS6 without having to go the Creative Cloud route...

[rayek.elfin · Accepted solution]

Perhaps this will be of help?

Adobe App Scaling on High DPI Displays (FIX) | Dan Antonielli

Even the latest version of Photoshop is arguably still rather limited in regards to retina screen support. Depends on the size of the screen whether or not it looks right - and on personal preference. Ideally an application ought to allow for a seamless GUI scaling, but precious few apps exist with that particular feature (Blender and Paintstorm come to mind).

[dsjohnson84]

This is great! Thank you!

[rayek.elfin]

Well, first try it out - I know it works for many people, although some have reported it not to work. Did it work for you?

[Dansky01]

This is an amazing solution, Dan!  It worked first time and was not difficult.

Would it work for the tiny gadgets ported over from windows 7 to 10?

Many thanks

[Stephen Kay]

Dear rayek.elfin:    Thank you for the programming text to fix the very small text in the Photoshop UI.  I also used it to fix the same issue in Bridge.   Much appreciated.

[Leanna286384919d7b]

yes thank you this worked like a charm

[D Fosse]

What most people miss is that this negates your high resolution display. It scales everything up including the image, by using four screen pixels to represent one image pixel. In other words, it turns your high resolution display into an ordinary low resolution one. Not what you paid for at all.

Newer Photoshop versions, from 2014, have true high resolution display support, by just scaling up the UI, but still retaining the high resolution for the image. And since rayek.elfin wrote the post above, Photoshop's support has improved considerably. It now follows the scaling you set in Windows, in 25% increments.

So this is not a fix, it just pretends to be a fix. The fix is a newer Photoshop version with real support.

[JRMCGRAW]

Please note Dan's updated fix for this issue as noted (Please try the new solution by following this link: Windows High DPI Fix) at the head of the page corresponding to the link above (https://www.danantonielli.com/adobe-app-scaling-on-high-dpi-displays-fix/). This link (https://danantonielli.com/app-scaling-on-high-dpi-displays-fix-2019/) will take you to his tutorial "App Scaling on High DPI Displays (FIX 2019).  It doesn't involve registry edits 😉 and it worked for me with Windows 10 Professional and Photoshop CS5 using a Retina Display 🙂

[jpi09]

Hi, this worked perfectly for my new Surface 7Pro (i5/256, Win 10 Home). Awesome fix!

Thanks a million!

[doane2u]

Just got a new 4k 27" Samsung monitor and was devistated to find my CS5 menues unreadable. The link you gave to Dan's fix worked. Thanks so much!!!

[D Fosse]

Note that this works by essentially turning your high resolution screen into a standard low resolution one. Everything is scaled up. The high screen resolution is wasted.

To take advantage of the higher screen resolution, Photoshop still needs to display the image at 100%, one image pixel mapped to one screen pixel - any scaling can only apply to the interface, not the image. This is what makes Photoshop a special case, and this is why 4K/retina support took a while to implement and requires OS support to work.

Vector data including text works differently. This is always rendered at native screen resolution regardless of scaling. In that case scaling everything is the right way to do it. That's technically a lot easier to accomplish, and so apps like Ai and Id could get 4K support early on.

Web browsers took the brute approach. They don't attempt to display the image at full resolution. They just scale it up so that one image pixel is represented by four screen pixels. Which is what the Antonielli hack does too.

[Dustin337678154z9p]

I know that this is an old post but the solution to this is actually pretty simple on Windows. If you open the folder containing the shortcut you use to launch Photoshop ->right-click -> Properties -> Compatability -> Change High DPI Settings -> Override High DPI scaling behavior. Scaling performed by -> System... This issue goes away!

[D Fosse]

@Dustin337678154z9p 

It's not a fix at all, it's sweeping it under the carpet. If that's good enough, then by all means.

What this does is turn your 4K display into an ordinary HD display. Instead of 3840 x 2160 screen pixels, you now have 1920 x 1080 screen pixels. One image pixel is now displayed on screen using four screen pixels.

So that's a lot of wasted money.

High resolution screen support in Photoshop was introduced in the CC 2014 version. CS5 is way before that.

The thing with Photoshop is that it needs to scale up the UI but not the image. The image needs to use the full screen resolution, obviously, otherwise it's all wasted. That was not possible until CC 2014.