While you're making changes......

[sleerfnivek]

With all the new features and tools that have been coming out, I'm hoping that a couple things might be able to be included along the way that have been annoying me for 15-20 years. They should be rather simple but would make a significant impact for me and I suspect many others.

The first is actually very simple.... Can we please get some color and contrast in the workspace? It seems to me that a huge company like Adobe, that so clearly defines photo editing that Webster's Dictionary includes as a verb, "To Photoshop", should be able to provide a GUI consisting of more than a colorless, low-contrast, light, dark, and darker GUI.

With so many menus, icons, tabs, etc in the workspace, why in the world aren't you taking advantage of the human eye's ability to more quickly and easily discern color than shapes? I know that Adobe understands this well because when I had to replace a credit card and forgot to update my account there was a huge RED notice on the toolbar to tell me until my new card arrived. There's also a blue "share: button in the upper right corner which tells me that Adobe REALLY wants me to use it. 

Why does Adobe get to use the benefit of color to influence my behavior, while I'm unable to use even a hint of color to differentiate tools and menus? 

I know that once you open the door to color, you'll have people wanting every possibility under the sun. But is that really an issue? After all, the tools, toolbars, menus, icons, etc already have colors assigned. In my setting, it's 535353 for the toolbars, active tabs, dialog boxes, etc. It's around 454545 for backgrounds to the items set within them. Everything on the interface appears to exist within 8-10 shades of grey....no matter which "color scheme" is selected. 

Yeah, I know. The bland interface is probably designed to not pollute the environment with color allowing us to focus more on the subject...but how many of us work in a windowless greyscale office with grey office furniture? I'm sure it could pose a problem for some, but I'm not proposing that the color arangements be changed. Just asking that you allow us to select the colors for the various elements. You don't have to please everyone, or anyone for that matter. We get the ability to please ourselves. 🙂 So I could do this for example, and many would probably be disgusted.

But it simply wouldn't matter. You already have a color picker. The color codes are embedded...so let us pick the colors! (I tool care of that annoying floating but useful toolbar that uses far too much space as well)

OK. Now the other thing...Can we PLEASE get an option on the lasso tool to make the edge hard? This has driven me nuts for I don't know how long. Like many, I've found workarounds but seriously, every other basic editor I've ever used has the ability to make a hard stop wherever the edge is. Several cheap ones can only do this. It would be so much easier if I could just toggle a hard edge function on and off as needed. Sure, the lines cut through individual pixels, but if it would just take the pixels that are more than 50% selected and leave those that are less than 50% selected it would do just what's needed. 

Other than that, I'm happy with the way things are going. The new tools are exceptionally cool (although messing with the adjustments panel was a bad idea) I can't wait to see what else is coming! 

[jane-e]

Can we please get some color and contrast in the workspace?...The bland interface is probably designed to not pollute the environment with color allowing us to focus more on the subject.

By @sleerfnivek

Over the years Adobe has thankfully listened to their users and removed all color so that we are not distracted by the interface when making important adjustments. When they added the ugly glaring blue Share button and we protested loud and long, they listened and gave us a preference to change it to a neutral color: Preferences > Interface > Neutral Color Mode. Some folks figures out how to make it disappear altogether.

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/preferences.html#neutral-color-mode

Personally, I would shudder and cringe if I had to work with your color scheme in Photoshop! 😊

Adobe also listened to us with the adjustments panel. I know it's in Photoshop beta.

To toggle from the Lasso tool to the Polygonal Lasso tool and vice versa, press or hold down the Option key (macOS) or Alt key (Windows).

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/selecting-lasso-tools.html

Jane

[Jeff Arola]

You turn off Anti-alias for the Lasso Tool and various other selection tools before drawing to make hard edges, but you can't switch in mid draw, it's either aliased or not.

[Chuck Uebele]

As Jane mentioned, when Adobe added blue to some controls, you would have thought the world was ending 

Personally, I didn't mind it, but too many colors are distracting.

[Stephen Marsh]

Perhaps a moderator could change this topic to an idea instead of a discussion...

[Chuck Uebele]

Moved 

[jane-e]

Shouldn't feature requests be one per thread so they can be discussed individually and upvoted? This is from Pete:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-ideas/how-do-i-write-a-feature-request/idi-p/1238...

Jane

[davescm]

'The bland interface is probably designed to not pollute the environment with color allowing us to focus more on the subject...but how many of us work in a windowless greyscale office with grey office furniture?'

It's not about focus on the subject but about colour adaptation of our eyes and brains and colour correction. Neutral colours around the image lessen the chance of making misleading colour corrections. Colour is critical in many professional environments.

An example (taken from https://cpictures.homes/color-perception-illusions) 

The two central rectangles in each strip are exactly the same color.

.

Surround them with 50% grey :

Dave

[Stephen Marsh]

@jane-e – you are right the OP isn't really suitable as it currently is for voting as there are multiple requests (sorry, it was my suggestion to change to an idea from a discussion).

[sleerfnivek]

Yeah. I'm trying to train myself to shorten things that I write and it's not working well. lol I used the word focus in lieu of color adaptation.  
So yes, I understand exactly what davescm is saying already, and my super fast throw together was an extreme example that seems to have distracted from the point. 

What I'm after is the ability to control the colors of the specific elements as I determine for my particular use case without it impacting anyone else but me. The colors are already coded and it shouldn't be that complicated to replace the codes with a variable and allow the variables to be controled through the GUI. That's all I'm after. If I felt that a particular set of tools needed more contrast or color to make my life easier, I could do so without impacting anyone else. I would never go as far as that example I gave. It was just to make the point of being able to more quickly and easily identify and click. The benefit would vary by the user based on historical usage, type of usage, etc but that's why it should be able to be individualized. 

Regarding color adaptation, as I said, I did use the wrong word, but I don't thing color adaptation has anything to do with it. The amount of color, especially dimmer colors, outside the image I'm sure has little to no effect except when working with limited colors. The whole reason one has to make boxes like that and surround them with extremes of different colors to illustrate the effect is because it takes such extremes to make it happen. If you're working on a photo, you usually don't have any pure blocks of color anywhere in the image. Whatever colors you have a usually surrounded with varieties of other colors. Those colors on your screen, where your focus is are determining the interpretation, not the colors outside of your focus area. Yes, they can impact it if big and bright enough but to impact it enough to truly cause percepton to be off, it would have to be significant. I'm sure the color of light bulbs, desks, walls, and more have much more impact than some dull but colored icons around the edge of the screen. For example, How different are these when you look at them?

 
Even though there is still a considerable amount of red and yellow on half, the effect is nearly gone. Yet even this is extreme compared to icons, tabs, and menu bars that are less colorful, take up a much lower amount of space, and vary in color.... and again, solid blocks of color like this rarely if ever exist in photo editing. 

In other words, I doubt that the reason for the lack of color has anything to do with color contamination. More likely it was a design decision and nothing more. 

In either case, even if it was the reason, it shouldn't be that difficult of a change to make and I should be able to change the UI coloring to whatever pleases me the most which would make it more valuable to me. 

[Jqqerry]

I personally have a "well...why?" mentality when it comes to changing the color scheme of menus and UI.
But I can agree with some of your comments.
"user-customizable"
To be honest, I turn off most of the menus and just work with the Brush and CloneStamp, so the color advantage may not be there for me.
But I can see how someone might need these things.
So, i am vote.

[Lumigraphics]

I'm all for fewer things to break. Adobe is already struggling to publish a product that doesn't have huge bugs, and I can only imagine how many security holes are lurking in the old codebases. Photoshop needs FEWER features, ones that aren't broken, and more stability.

[D Fosse]

I don't thing color adaptation has anything to do with it. The amount of color, especially dimmer colors, outside the image I'm sure has little to no effect except when working with limited colors.

By @sleerfnivek

Any interface color can potentially interfere with critical color work, which is what some of us do. The application interface needs to be absolutely neutral.

We don't want any interface color, end of. Everyone here will agree with me.

[Jqqerry]

@D Fosse I agree with this content as well. Actually, when I work, I focus on the full screen mode without seeing all the menus. Because they call everything with shortcuts and open it up anyway.
So I honestly think it would be good for people who need this if I had a custom function, but did I really have to watch the UI while working? That's what I think....

[D Fosse]

The application interface serves an important function: it's an immediate visual reference and "zero point" for the eyes. If you remove the interface altogether, you're in many ways back to square one, and the off-screen environment becomes more intrusive.

And this is why the default dark interface is not a good idea, at least not if you work for physical media (print). It removes this visual reference, with the net effect that everything looks good. You have nothing to judge against. This is fine and even desirable for video, but a big problem for photography.

I do mostly use a dark interface in Bridge, and for this reason: I want to see the potential in the image. But when I open into Photoshop, I need to see what's wrong with the image, so I have a light interface there.

Those who use a Lightroom > Photoshop workflow (as I do), will run into this constantly: it looks perfectly fine in Lightroom, and then when it opens into Photoshop, you can't understand how you missed the muddy highlights. So you need to go back. I do love Lightroom, but the Lr UI has a lot of problems. You can set a white image backdrop, which turns the whole interface into an over-contrasty dizzying mess.

For the record, Capture One is even worse: it doesn't have a dark interface, it has a dead black interface. How anyone can work with that is beyond me.

[davescm]

My earlier demonstration was purposely extreme, to demonstrate the point of eye adaptation, but coloured elements on the interface do make a difference. We spend a lot of money on good quality, 10 bit monitors, with good uniformity, plus calibration and profiling hardware and software. We do also try and work with reasonably neutral surroundings behind the monitors. The last thing needed is a multicolour interface interfering with fine colour adjustment. Take a look at the pushback on the blue share button if you need confirmation of what other users think.

That said, if this was optional and took very little development time then go for it - each to their own as they say. But if such development takes away from fixing some of the long standing issues then I would vote against it.

Dave