Photoshop CC on a High DPI display on Windows 8.1

[britmansell]

I'm using a new Lenovo Yoga 2. The native resolution is 3200x1800. Most Windows applications use scaling to enlarge the menus and other aspects of their user interface. However, Photoshop CC is basically unusable at this resolution because it does not honor the scaling. I have to drop the resolution down to 1600x900 before launching Photoshop CC. Extremenly inconvenient.

Anyone else have this issue on Windows?

[JJMack]

johncuracao found a good solution for Windows users Re: I found a solution to Photoshop CS6, Windows 8.1 HiDPI, Small UI probl

The solution has been around for quite some time however I have only been able to find it pointed out on three web site.   A Microsoft forum site, a Surface pro blog  and some other site not directly related to Photoshop. 

The solution works with CC 2014 as well as CS6 and is ideal for display like the surface pro 3 has where Adobe CC 2014 2x UI preferences scale the display's  resolution so low that Photoshop UI does not fit on  screen.  Where scaling the display 1.5x  Microsoft default scaling for the Surface Pro 3 works beautifully.   Scaling 1.25x also works but the UI is stll on the small side.  In any case Adobe UI is not really touch friendly.  Adobe UI should be use with a mouse or pen your fingers will be too big if your older than two or three years in age.

[BrianKeith68]

This solution worked for me.

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

[descender]

Windows 10 is here -- it's gradually offering itself as a free download and install all this week and afterward.

Windows 10 changes this question significantly, and mostly for the better.  Gone, vanished, at the operating system level, is the problem of an app window changing visual size when you move it from one display to another display with a very different DPI.  Windows 10, by default, rescales any window that you drag from display to display such that it will be the correct visual size after the drag is finished.  One caveat: they have not reached the level (and I don't know if they plan to) of allowing this to work when a window is split.  Only when a window is completely contained within one physical display or another, or within two displays of the same DPI, will it actually get right.  If you drag a window halfway on one display and halfway on another of different DPI it will retain the scaling that it had on the originating display.

So this almost takes care of the issue we're discussing here.  But not quite.  Here's why: the newly correct scaling ability native to Windows 10 (and video drivers that work with it) only applies to a window, and its children, that are fully located on one physical display or another.  And there's the problem.  A very common use of two monitors in Photoshop is to put your image and main menu, and nothing more, on your primary monitor, usually the high DPI one, and put all your other tools on your secondary, older, usually lower DPI, monitor.  Now because those tools, etc., are child windows and not base level apps/windows of their own, as the OS sees them, when you move them onto your lower DPI monitor the OS sees no cause to rescale them.  So, for example, we have Photoshop set to either 'auto' or '200%' in the Interface preference panel so that it is large enough to be usable and readable on a high-DPI display, but then when we move our tools to a not-as-high-DPI display, those tools are still scaled 200%.  So the toolboxes and filters etc. look unnecessarily huge and large-print and unwieldy on the secondary display.

Adobe could potentially solve this by making the tool windows not child windows, but that's a rather extensive change that most programming teams would not contemplate.  More likely Microsoft needs to rethink its strategy for when and how items are rescaled.

Alternatively, Adobe could consider giving us another new setting -- a separate setting for tool UI scaling as distinct from main window UI scaling.  That would solve the problem for me perfectly -- I would set my tools to 100% and main window to 200% and everything ever mentioned in this thread would no longer be an issue.

I'd also like to mention that Windows 10 loads PS much faster, and that's far from the only thing it does faster and smoother.  In general, it feels as though its entire I/O stack and networking stack were rebuilt by a better team.

Best of luck to all.  Oh, and by the way, Lightroom continues to work perfectly on Windows 10 with no catches that I have found yet and no DPI issues whatsoever.

[JJMack]

Your Windows 10 works differently then mine then I see no scaling of windows when dragged from display to an other the has a different PPI resolution. I do not even know Windows 10 knows what ppi a display has.  I believe plug and play display identify the number of pixels a display supports.  As far as I know plug and play does not  identify a Display's size.  So I do not know how an OS could find your display's PPI.   You could for example have three 4K displays on your system one a 24" display  one a 27" display and the third a 30+" size.  like a 60" 4kTV. Each has a different ppi each displays 3840x2160pixel.  So all three display can display exactly the same number of pixels and can display the exact same image however the image will be a different size one each display and when split between displays the two image parts will differ in size.  Here is my Windows 10 Displays set up I have three displays on my system two have a 16:9 aspect ratio one a 3:2 aspect ratio. All three displays are different in size, ppi and number of pixels they display.  I will also show you some windows 10 screen captures.

As you see in my configuration Windows 10 has no idea as to what size my displays are it just knows the number of pixels each has.  Display 2 is the largest of my displays and displays more pixels the my smaller 16;9 display number 3  It displays  fewer pixels then my smallest display number 1.  Windows 10 also tiles wallpaper differently the windows 7.  Windows 7 would tile wall paper in the 1 2 3 order Windows 10 tile in the 3 2 1 order so I have to construct my wall paper differently for Windows 10 then I did in Windows 7 and I have to do the scaling for the different ppi  the displays have so it will fit correctly. 

In the screen capture toy will see the Chrome window dragged between display.  The number of pixels did not change there was not scaling for my display different ppi. I see three different size chrome windows because of my displays different ppi

The right image is the smallest image its on the 12" 216 ppi Surface Pro 3 display that surves as my Workstation's third display.

[descender]

Then perhaps I can conclude that something other than Windows 10 has brought this improvement on my system -- maybe the new driver from nVidia that targets Windows 10.

To be clear, when I move an app from one display to another it retains the same actual size, not the same pixel dimensions, so they are being rescaled.  There is a moment of incorrect appearance when the window being moved is halfway on one display and halfway on another display of different DPI.  At such time the window retains the old pixel dimensions so the part of it that has slid (incompletely) onto the new display looks either too large or too small depending on which direction it is being moved.  But as soon as the move is complete and the entire window is on the new display, the scaling takes effect and the size is perfectly equal to before the move.

So perhaps my driver and the monitor .inf files are PPI aware, I don't know.  I'm not an expert on it, but I always thought Windows was perfectly aware of pixel pitch and density on monitors, it's just that it was not programmed to make any use of that information.  When people said "Windows is not DPI-aware" I believed they did not mean that it was strictly ignorant of the variables, just that it contained no effective code for using them.

[JJMack]

My two 16:9 displays are attached to a single Nvidia Quadro 4000 and I have Nvidia new windows 10 device driver installed. The Chrome window number of pixels does not change when dragged from one display to the other. So the Chrome window is larger on the smaller display that has a an 84ppi where the larger display has a 96ppi so the window displays smaller.  The Chrome window is not scaled when dragged from one display to the other.

Please show your windows screen captures......

[descender]

I promise you it is as I say on my system.  I will go and grab some screen shots as soon as I'm not exhausted and busy in photo processing.  Now that we're not discussing any particular problem it's hard to put effort into decorating the discussion with more stuff.  I trust that your system is working exactly as you say.  I wonder if the Quadro series just doesn't behave the same as the GeForce series in this respect -- I wouldn't expect such a thing but it seems possible, at least.  Another offhand wild guess which may or may not have anything to do with it: I have two monitors in landscape orientation and one in portrait.  Maybe something about the mix of that results in forcing some kind of different mode, I don't know.

[fededav]

Do you know if there's a solution now?

I installed my version Photoshop cc 2014 and I used UI 200% but it's too small

[mrgrip]

Chris, Adobe needs to get on Microsoft's case about this. Myself and many, many new users are now upgrading there monitor, or monitor's to High-Res, Especially 4K! Almost all of your video related apps support the creativity of 4K but not the ability to display at a decent view able size?  Let's go Get on it guy's!!! Adobe is not the only act in town.