Rich Tooltips? Pretty poor, actually.

[Jon-M-Spear]

A more badly conceived concept in a 'pro' application I cannot think of.

Who on earth thought it would be a great idea to introduce these condescendingly distracting semi-animated kindergartenesque tooltips?  Who are they aimed at?  I'm aware that they can be disabled.  That's not the point.  My concern is the ideology behind them.  Where the hell is Photoshop heading?

Despite the occasional introduction of useful new features, every time this 'professional' app gets an update, the workspace becomes increasingly dumbed-down and irritating.  And as for the patronising New Document window!  What's the purpose behind these meaningless icons and pointless template graphics representations.  Is there any way to display it as a grown-up's list, rather than a kid's photo album?

Is this how Adobe justifies the updates  - when there's really nothing much to update these dates. Tinkering for the sake of it?

I ceased using Premiere Pro a couple of years ago for pretty much the same reason.  Perhaps it's time to shop around again.

[Barb Binder · Accepted solution]

Who on earth thought it would be a great idea to introduce these condescendingly distracting semi-animated kindergartenesque tooltips?  Who are they aimed at?

Rich tooltips are aimed at new users, who find Photoshop both overwhelming and intimidating. For experienced users, it's a checkbox in the Prefs, as you noted, to remove them.

And as for the patronising New Document window!  What's the purpose behind these meaningless icons and pointless template graphics representations.  Is there any way to display it as a grown-up's list, rather than a kid's photo album?

You can disable the "patronizing" new dialog box in Prefs as well.

As previously mentioned, these features are to help new users get up and running, and the updated New dialog box displays templates for them as well. Experienced users may want to take a minute to turn these features off and focus on some of the new intermediate to advanced features in the new release:

• Customizing path display
• Variable fonts
• Depth maps
• Redesigned and much improved brush management
• Curvature tool
• Copying entire layers

or not. And if you want to help shape future versions of Photoshop, feel free to contribute your ideas here: https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family?topic-list[settings][type]=idea​.

[Jon-M-Spear]

Please don't forget that I was a new user once - about 25 years ago.  Photoshop wasn't any less intimidating than it is today.  In fact it was probably more so because the plethora of online tutorials, hints and tips etc didn't exist.  

In those days Adobe regarded its customers as reasonably intelligent people who could work through their learning curve without patonising popy-upy, zoomy-in tooltips and templates.   

As I said.  Dumbed-down.

[ryan_edwards]

the industry is dumbed down, its more open than it was 25 years ago.. so more people are using these tools.

adapt or don't... the industry will only become more inclusive as time progresses.. and will have to cater to that (rich tool tips etc)

[heywow]

Just a suggestion, maybe if Adobe asked their users with every new install if they want rich tool tips turned on or not it would be recieved better. The artboard of PS, AI & ID are my workspace. By putting pop-ups all over the place you are effectivly walking into my place of walk and distracting me from what I'm here to do. Work. To add to that, when I'm not working, as a freelancer, I'm lossing money. So I totally aggree with @Jon-M-Spear. There is a better way to do this for experienced users and simply asking our level of expertise before spamming our workspaces could save you a lot of headaches.

I'd also add that if I need to learn something I usually go to Youtube or Google so I can have the tutorials in another window or monitor. It isn't really practical to have large tool tips popping up. It's kinda too much for experienced users and not enough for new users. Adobe is best when it doesn't try to solve all the problems (or even non-problems) but just focus on making it's software less bloated and more crash resistant.

[D Fosse]

Then just turn it off.

Go through Preferences first thing after install. Almost anything introduced in the last ten years can be reverted or turned off, plus a lot more.