I recently opened Adobe Express with some skepticism – and to my surprise, it’s actually a well-designed, genuinely useful tool. Clean, fast, cloud-native. It even handled 4K video editing for digital CLV, and sped up my workflow significantly.
A week later, I try the Photoshop and InDesign betas… and it feels like I’ve been transported back to 1998.
Why does Express follow modern cloud logic while the “flagship” apps still rely on archaic user setting management? Why do we still have to reconfigure every shortcut, color profile, workspace, brush, and action with every fresh install? Why isn’t all of this synced centrally in the cloud by now? And why doesn’t a new install simply ask if it should restore all my preferences?
Even if cloud sync isn’t possible yet – why is the folder structure such an incomprehensible mess? Some preferences are buried in the user's Library, some in the system-wide Library, some under Application Support, some in mysterious “Program Preferences” folders. It’s chaos. Why isn’t there a single, unified directory where all app settings live? Something clean, transparent, and restorable?
I get that there's legacy architecture behind this – but how long do you plan to keep piling complexity on top of legacy? Every other modern software suite manages to stay organized. Here, it feels like the folder structure was designed by a very confused pigeon with OCD.
Adobe, it’s 2025. Express proves you can build smart tools. So why is the rest of Creative Cloud still so painfully broken?
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