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Answered

Photoshop user interface - too big or too small

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
September 12, 2016
8 replies
83929 views

I am new to photoshop. When I first started using the program and trying to follow along with my instructor in an online course, I noticed that everything on my screen was larger - the tool icons, the panels on the right, and especially the layers panel which blocks half of the workspace when it's open. I found some information about changing the user interface and changed it to 100% but that is too small; I can barely read anything on the screen. Auto and 200% are the same and too large. Is there any way to find a happy middle ground? This is very frustrating!!

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Correct answer

When Adobe Creative Cloud upgraded my Photoshop CC to the latest version (2015) I started having issues that the user interface of Photoshop was too big. Simply put, the menus and icons were so big that they were in the way of the Photoshop image canvas and it made it very difficult to work.

Even on a 1920x1080P 22" monitor, I was not able to work in photoshop because the side menus and UI took up the majority of the screeen. This article explains how you can fix the photoshop menus from being so big and in the way.

Within Photoshop CC itself play around with a couple of settings including going to:

Edit
Preferences
Interface
Change "UI Scaling" to 100%
Change "UI Font Size" to Medium.
Hit Okay
Close and restart Photoshop CC
Your menus should now be smaller and higher resolution in Photoshop CC

D

dermalists43720573

Participant

Hi there - I ran into this issue every dang time I switched from desktop to laptop and was pulling my hair out.

I searched high and low and came up with this solution which worked like a charm for me..... it literally saved my skin so thought I'd share it with you 🙂

https://danantonielli.com/adobe-app-scaling-on-high-dpi-displays-fix/

K

kathleenm90423663

Inspiring

This worked for me - thanks!!

N

nicolag83644335

Participant

****IF the UI scaling in preferences doesn't work (like it didn't for me)

you'll have to check your graphics card to see if the driver is up to date.... or in my case I had to actually ROLL BACK the driver to the last one and then all my UI in photoshop and windows 10 looked perfect.

C

CinemaPlugins

Participant

doesn't work. no matter what I do, photoshop is either too small or too big. prefs "UI Font Size" has no effect. its either auto/100% (same thing) or 200% and gigantic to the point of stuff not fitting on screen.

williamc69235129

Participant

Whew! Thank you Kikea! I was having to back up 10' :-) to navigate!

A

Anonymous

Correct answer

When Adobe Creative Cloud upgraded my Photoshop CC to the latest version (2015) I started having issues that the user interface of Photoshop was too big. Simply put, the menus and icons were so big that they were in the way of the Photoshop image canvas and it made it very difficult to work.

Even on a 1920x1080P 22" monitor, I was not able to work in photoshop because the side menus and UI took up the majority of the screeen. This article explains how you can fix the photoshop menus from being so big and in the way.

Within Photoshop CC itself play around with a couple of settings including going to:

Edit
Preferences
Interface
Change "UI Scaling" to 100%
Change "UI Font Size" to Medium.
Hit Okay
Close and restart Photoshop CC
Your menus should now be smaller and higher resolution in Photoshop CC

JJMack

Community Expert

The problem is what you posted does not work when you have both Low resolution and high resolution displays on your system. If you use Photoshop CC UI scaling set 100%. You will find Photoshop UI is fine on your low resolution displays and too small on your High resolution displays. Photoshop UI scaling is a Global setting not a setting you can set per display like you can do with a features like Windows scaling.

JJMack

C

Cotomono

Participant

JJMack - You are right.

V

victoriah51661017

Participant

Having the same problem here. Illustrator and ID working fine, just Photoshop with problems. Have tried Environmental variables but it mucks up the others that are working correctly.... very frustrating!!!!

JJMack

Community Expert

Yes add a second low resolution display. Have Photoshop's window display its UI on your low resolution display and edit you Image on your high resolution display in floating windows. The only Photoshop UI elements that will be on you High resolution display will be in the floating windows frames. Top document name and mode rulers and bottom status. Windows can be set to scale you High resolution to a lower resolution you like not as low as 200%. Photoshop is code to have what it display not be scale by windows so it can take advantage of High resolution displays. Set Photoshop UI to 100%. Your both displays will be 1X for Photoshop. Here I use three displays. Two 100 DPI displays 1600px x 1200px and a 185dpi 3840px x 2156px in the middle. I tile the windows wallpaper and scale the tiles so the tiles display at the same scale. The displays physical sizes are close.

How my system displays look