Premiere Pro CC: can blue text interface be changed back to yellow?

[ninose11]

Just wondering if there's an option in preferences to change the color of the interface text. It used to be yellow and now it's more difficult to see.

I notice the blue text across the entire range of updated programs: AE, PP, Photoshop, etc.

So is it a setting in the cloud itself that would allow me to change the color back to yellow?

If not, not big issue, I'll just have to get used to it. Love the new interface in any case. Much more responsive with no issues.

Thank you, Adobe!

[R Neil Haugen]

I've got amazing color-senstivity, especially for a 60yr old male. Been tested numerous times, my ability to blast through the color-test charts always puzzles the eye docs. So ... yea, I CAN read this. I can work with it, though I do prefer the 'old' way, as it was clearer to scan quickly.

That's not the issue, is it? Whether or not someone like me with WAY above average eye sensitivity to all colors/quantities can use it? Unless of course, Adobe wants to tell the majority of males especially that we DON'T want your business.

As noted above, that deep "soft" blue is way too close to the background for good readability and quick "scanning", even for someone with eyes/visual circuits like mine.

For most males, with slightly less capability ... that dark blue is a nightmare. Separating that from the black/charcoal background IS going to create literal headaches. This isn't a "preferences" issue ... this is a phsyiological failure. THEY WILL NOT BE ABLE TO GET "USED" TO IT. It's a physical thing ... though I've found over the years that trying to point out the simple fact that known physiological human design makes something hard for certain people means absolutely nothing to most folks who don't have those issues. Which of course makes it quite clear that most people don't give a crap if they design something so that someone else simply will have painful attempts at using it ... if the designer likes it themselves. And they will roll eyes and otherwise act incredibly childish and stupid and uncaring about the physical problems they cause.

Most "sound engineers" think the way to solve hearing issues for those with most hearing disabilities is simply to make it all louder ... which is, if you know anything about this stuff, incredibly stupid and asinine. It just makes "difficult to discern" into "painful".

This color palette is exactly the equivalent. Sadly.

Neil

[{KMS}]

Same here...the UI overhaul is flat terrible (not the flat design, but the color choices).  My eyes are more strained looking at the UI.  The contrast is just too high.  It is nice to look at screenshots of the new UI, but using it for hours is terrible.  Just a side not, why are the tabs so tall now.  Seems like a waste of space.  I don't need to click the tabs with my finger...

[melat3mg]

This was a HORRIBLE design decision. I find the neon blue nauseating. And I'm stuck with it in AE and Premier?  Who makes these decisions???

[David Kuspa]

We actually did use a brighter blue color during our beta cycle, but some of our beta testers felt it was too bright and harsh, so we dialed it back.

Have you tried adjusting your Appearance preference Brightness slider to a lighter gray background? This also brightens up the blue a bit.

David Kuspa | Adobe | Sr. Experience Designer, Digital Video & Audio

[Jim_Simon]

Is someone from Apple now working at Adobe?  🙂

I just had to chime in on this one.  Given the addition of the much less useful Clip Mixer and the default and unnatural Rectified Audio waveforms, it seems a good bet that the PP lead is a new guy from Cupertino that Adobe unfortunately feels lucky about acquiring.

To my mind, there's been a lot of wasted resources on stupid shit that might make some few editors feel better because PP now looks like FCP, but doesn't really add anything truly useful.

While I generally prefer blue to yellow as a color, this new mix is definitely more difficult on the eyes.  There's not enough contrast between the blue and the background.

[ninose11]

Is it possible to create a poll in this forum? I know I can do it on dvxuser.com. This blue text seems to have been an issue with so many people, that I think it would be helpful if someone put together a poll, possibly along these lines:

• Do you favor or dislike the new blue-themed interface?

If you dislike it, and had the opportunity to choose your themed color, which would it be?

• The Adobe legacy Yellow color?

• White

• Red

• Green

• Cyan

• I would prefer the option to select my own color theme

(the color attracting the highest number of votes, could be the one Adobe gives us as an alternative for anyone having difficulty with darkish blue.

Ideally, what could be better than an option that just let's us select our own color, like we can in Adobe Audition for audio waveforms.

[dutchy_on_a_bike]

I'm sorry and don't mean to disrespect anyone at Adobe but this is just wrong. It reminds me of Steve Jobs "you're looking at it wrong" to paraphrase. I have seen the screen shots, watched the video and I will not be upgrading until this is fixed. The whole interface is just a mess, especially After Effects. Just admit this was a mistake and fix it! Please. Mark

[Steven L. Gotz]

I still say that mine is much easier to read than your's Jon. But it almost looks like my font is sharper. Maybe it is the screen capture utility?

[R Neil Haugen]

It just amazes me when simple RESEARCH would have told anyone that putting a DARK blue thin line or text on a charcoal to black background is difficult for many people ... especially men ... to even SEE. For an awful lot of men who aren't particularly "color blind" ... just well, normal ... deep blues tend to desaturate to ... deep grays.

Wow ... wasn't this a brilliant move?

Of the three primary colors, blue is by FAR the worst. The eyes/brain are more sensitive to both red & green.

It's like the many sound engineers I've worked with that absolutely believe the best way to get an auditorium's sound set up for better hearing by those with various hearing impairments is simply to increase the decibels of "volume". And roll their eyes at anything else. Um ... actually, for most folks with hearing difficulties simply raising the volume makes it muddier or more distorted ... and frequently more painful. In any form, WORSE. What the hearing - impaired need most is clarity of sound, with perhaps the 300-500hz area *slightly* lifted. And rather than a big speaker system for a room ala a rock band, small local speakers that are optimized for those frequencies, therefore avoiding reflecting off anything.

This ... *&%^ blue thing ... is just as ill-informed. And considering that what percentage of the user-base are male and WILL have a far worse, even painful time, in dealing with deep blue text? Huh. Not ... wise.

neil

[tombo]

Just updated to the latest AE and I totally agree... The Blue IS harder to read than the yellow was... Period.

This needs to be dealt with asap.

[tombo]

Here are 2 screen grabs... same project in AE CC and AE CC 2014... pretty obvious which stands out... especially when using 2K Dells.

[eikonoklastes]

I can confirm that the blue text is significantly more readable on a high DPI display.

On a regular display, the dark background bleeds into the text making it much darker than it should be.

Also, like it's been suggested, increasing the UI brightness also brightens the blue text, which makes it a lot easier to read. I suggest everyone on regular screens do this.

This seems like a basic oversight by Adobe, considering most people are still on regular displays.  A preference would be nice.

[AHAp Jonathan]

Please listen to the users on this one Adobe. Readability isn't very good. Our production company would love to have the option to use the yellow color again. The answer that this is a "major change in the user interface across many programs", simply doesn't justify a decrease in usability. Blue text on a black background is in my taste cold, and a bit like "wargames" from 1983.

On another note, this is really a small part of the PP upgrade and I would like to thank you for all your other feature upgrades. We really appreciate your work!

[Steven L. Gotz]

I still think that there is something odd going on. Maybe it is the way that screens are being captured, but once again, the blue on my screens look a lot sharper than the blue on the ones being posted.

[jsimpsonJSD]

Adobe....please.....it doesn't matter what flavor or "intensity" of blue you use, simply don't use BLUE for tiny text on a dark background.  Period.  Maybe leave it as your "new look" by default, but please allow provisions for the users to change it to suit our individual needs.

Happy users = customer loyalty.

I love your products and use them every day, have for twenty years or better. Please lose the BLUE.

[actionfigure00]

It's a legibility thing for me too. The yellow really stood out. The text is almost ok, but when you're motion tracking in AE, for instance, and you have hundreds of keyframes butted up against one another, you could still make out a yellow, selected keyframe. The blue blends in to the point of being comical almost.

Gimme a check box for blue or yellow, design team. Pretty please.

[Stingray1]

Since you said pretty please…

Instructions for changing the hot text colour in After Effects 2014 on Mac OSX.

__________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________

First quit your favourite design and animation program.

Next in the finder press on the ‘Go’ menu whilst holding down the ‘alt’ key.

Select ‘Library’

Navigate to ‘Adobe After Effects 13.0 Prefs.txt’ in this location:

/Users/<username>/Library/Preferences/com.adobe.AdobePremierePro.plist

Drag a back up copy of this text file onto your desktop by holding the ‘alt’ key before dragging,

Open the file in TextEdit and use Edit>Find>Find…

Type in ‘hot’ and you should find this:

"Hot Text Color (0xAaRrGgBb)" = "0xffc69100"

  "Hot Text Color Override? (1 or 0)" = 00

First change the colour override to 01 instead of 00, meaning yes instead of no.

The last 6 characters are c69100. They simply represent a hex colour value for in this case yellow text (because I’m in AE 2014 with yellow text).

Change this text to a colour value chosen in Photoshop, something like “00ff4e” for a bright green. Look for the hex values in the colour picker preceded with a # symbol.

This gives you: "Hot Text Color (0xAaRrGgBb)" = "0xff00ff4e"

Save the file and restart AE.

__________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________

This is tested for the release named After Effects CC (2014).

If you want to change the blue text in the October 2014 release and be the envy of all your friends please give this technique a go and tell me if it works!

Pretty sure it won't work for Premier Pro though...

[jonny9091]

Couldn't get that to work on the October release...and nothing similar for Premiere Pro.

Ugh...looks like I need to go back to the previous version until this one is usable.

[nlphoto1234]

Good God...  The blue is not NEARLY bright enough to stand out and be legible.  I don't wear glasses, my near field vision is great, but the lack of contrast is making me squint!

Contrast is key to legibility...

Please give us a way to fix this...  Everything else about this release (and Premiere CC in general) has been awesome, but this one feature!  thanks!

Nick

[surfren]

I'm fairly okay with the blue text. It's not such an issue for my eyes on my monitor.

The chief gripe I have is the bezier handles in the Effect Controls window - they are *dark* blue on a dark grey background and are close to impossible to make out. This makes absolutely zero sense.

If I want to manually affect easing, I have to change my background grey to light so I can make out *something*, and then switch back to default dark and continue.

[Steven L. Gotz]

I have started a big project and finally got to the point where I needed After Effects and Premiere Pro - and I had to lighten up the interface to see the scroll bars. Not a big deal, but a little odd. I have never had to change from the default before.

[shooternz]

Its modern..its fresh,,, its clean..it represents a call to action...

You old guys are just so resistant to change!  

[Jon-M-Spear]

Old guy here.

That's as may be, but it doesn't make it any more legible.   😞

[shooternz]

I agree with you.

Welcome to the Curmudgeons Club.

[Steven L. Gotz]

Welcome to the Curmudgeons Club.

I have been a member for quite a few years. I admit that it got worse when I turned 60 and the last couple of years it has become a significant part of who I am.

But there is no legibility issue on my system. Not from the blue text, anyway. A little lightening of the interface took care of the scroll bars. I see fuzziness in other people's screen shots. But not in mine when placed side by side. I think that needs to be figured out. If you all were seeing what I am seeing you probably wouldn't be complaining.

So what is the difference? Why is the blue font clearer for me than for you? And it isn't my eyes. As I said, side by side mine looks better.