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Adobe to Unclutter Photoshop UI
spotplace writes "It's not common to see a company blast their own product for failing to adapt to times and people's necessities, unless they're trying to give you a reason to buy the latest and greatest of said product. That's exactly what Adobe has done. John Nack, senior product manager at Adobe, says the old Photoshop interface doesn't cut it anymore: "I sometimes joke that looking at some parts of the app is like counting the rings in a tree: you can gauge when certain features arrived by the dimensions & style of the dialog. No one wants to work with — or work on — some shambling, bloated monster of a program.""
Inspiration for new UI can be found here
(I kid, I kid)
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Good, now can you do Acrobat next?
No one wants to work with -- or work on -- some shambling, bloated monster of a program.
Then how do they find people to work on Windows?
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
the Photoshop UI always confuses folk like me. They should drop CMYK support while they are at it.
I'm still using 5.5 most of the time because I didn't like the last major overhaul with 6.0.
Allow photoshop to multitask. I cannot believe that still in 2007, with my Macbook Core 2duo with 3GB of RAM, I cannot edit images while I am using my scanner. Why can't photoshop scan negatives in the background while I work on other images in the foreground?
Jonathanjk.com
I'm always glad to hear of a serious attempt to clean up the user interface of a major application. All too often, keeping an interface clean comes second to keeping it similar to how it was in the previous major version. As it sounds like they will be splitting the existing functionality between modes for different classes of tasks, I just hope they don't mess up and force their users to continually switch between different modes to do everyday tasks.
Insert self-referential sig here.
3ds MAX comes to mind.
I'm talking to you, AutoDesk. Your competitors are getting better and better, and with more modern interfaces. It's not your fault your the oldest--but it is your problem. Pick the best of your competitor's interfaces, and steal it.
Feel free to contact me to do this for you. I gaurantee that with your functionality and a modern interface, you will be unchallenged again for another ten years.
expandfairuse.org
- everything you need, nothing you don't.
- make dramatically more configurable.
- I don't expect most users to customize the app--nor should they have to do so
- with the power of customizability, we can present solutions via task-oriented workspaces
- start deprecating (and later removing) outmoded functionality
- polish what's already present
Yes, no, yes, no, yes, yes. Unfortunately 3. and 4. are direct contradictionsThe Original comments
Reduce, reuse, cycle
this is a bad idea for 2 reasons:
1) those who use it for real/business reasons will have to completely relearn the interface
2) it will make it easier for untalented idiots to post their bullshit "art" all over the internet
Since I started with Word 2007 (using it on a daily basis) i must say, the ribbon is one of the best new features of Office. It saves me a lot of trouble and it is very intuitive. Maybe that is a good place to start. (now bash me for my Office simphaty :)
I take my children to see Madonna(..), but I never for once ever thought I was in the same business.Chris Rea.
Must have been all the people in their forums bitching that their interface needed to be more "GIMP" like ;)
What I've always wanted is for Photoshop to use several windows for editing! One for tools, another for layers, another for the image, etc. The way Photoshop is, I can't use my window manager to manage the different components of the interface, and that bugs me. I'm unaware of any graphics editing software that does this.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
use a ribbons!
Photoshop is one of those apps where the users (at least the ones who tend to pay for it), graphic designers etc. are usually power users who spend all day with it and make heavy use of keyboard shortcuts and are used to its quirky interface. Changing too much of the UI at once could affect the productivity of a whole lot of people. Not that it matter too much since photoshop is the only choice for them so they'll just have to learn it again but still...
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Few Photoshop profis I knew in past were telling to work effectively in Photoshop (or any other similar application for that matter), you need to learn (1st) keyboard shortcuts and (2nd) plug-ins menu.
It always seemed to me that Photoshop professionals were unfased by the clutter of its GUI.
In many aspects, Photoshop is optimized for several workflows and most newcomers work solely within one of such workflows: steep learning isn't much of problem then.
But probably do-it-all freelancers would be happy with cleaner simpler interface...
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
This guy uses underlines for things other than links on his web site.
I, therefore, think he's the last person in the world who should discuss how to improve a UI.
I've been using Photoshop since v1.0. The interface has always sucked.
I know why they're doing this: They took a hard look at Picasa, which is what I use 95% of the time for my own photos. Can you hear me now, Adobe? Photoshop professionals are using Picasa.
Why can I get beautiful, professional, artistic results in seconds with Picasa that would require weeks of training to even understand how to achieve in Photoshop? That is one of the questions Adobe needs to answer.
You CAN do that if you set your scanning application to scan your slides directly into files on the disk, and work in Photoshop while that runs in the background.
Which is the way you should be doing in the first place - scan to disk, not scan to Photoshop.
Now... when this might not work?
If your scanner does not support something like this - like if you have an old flatbed SCSI or parallel relic.
Get a new USB/Firewire scanner.
Or if you are blowing up slides to insane (a perfectly normal thing) proportions like from a 35mm slide to a B2 poster size.
Then you might have problems with your computer - working on large files might be hard because of all of those megabytes streaming through your USB port.
Which is why it is not wise to do that in the first place - not because it might slow you down while working in Photoshop.
Hell... you can always just stop for a second when that happens.
Its because your Photoshop work might overburden your computer and it might take a second or two to "think it over".
The scanner does not have those two seconds - it keeps goin' over the images with constant speed.
Now... do you really need to risk half or all your images coming out messed up just so you could save some idle work cycles?
But... there is a solution.
Get a cheap machine and a half decent monitor and set them up as a scanning/file server.
Dump images there, and copy them to your Photoshop station over the network.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
yes, photoshop is lacking in the wizards department. A few random wizards that pop up second-guessing what you're trying to do and that ask a bunch of silly questions ultimately resulting in the automatic execution of only two or three possible outcomes. Maybe they could even hire clippy to solicit help by drawing upon a database of five or six different help-topics incessantly.
ôó
The whole floating windows and palettes system is fiddly and pointless.
I used to use TV Paint on the Amiga, when you opened up an image it opened pretty much full screen except for a palette on the right. You could hide this with one keypress.
Professional systems in the past have had this approach, full screen canvass with a palette. Think Quantel Paintbox and the like.
An artist does not want to have to keep shifting windows around.
But please, *********** NO RIBBONS ***************! !
And whatever you change, make sure the old interface is still available.
The irony that this product is THE most used among design professionals, and is itself an ugly monstrosity, designed by committee, very badly.
This has needed to happen for a very long time. Although it does mean that those of us who are professionals are probably going to have retrain to rid ourselves of the esoteric plethora of keyboard shortcuts we've had to learn to use over a long period of time.
Just one personal gripe about PS in case anyone from Adobe is reading -- why on Earth are the dialog boxes modal? When I open up a dialog box, decide that I need to move the picture underneath to see it better (since dialogue boxes are all sizes under the sun), but I can't do that can I? No, I have to close the dialog box, move the picture, and re-open the dialogue box -- that's just plain dumb!
Like most people out there, I love what I can do with Photoshop (and most other Adobe apps) but I despise the product. I would jump ship tomorrow for a better product. I don't doubt for one second that I am alone. Adobe needs serious competition. Considering the preposterous cost of their apps, and the fact that they don't make them well, I don't really understand why there's not a long list of competitors, those guys can't be the only ones who know how to code this type of application.
John Nack's ideas are correct. Photoshop still has a lot of problems but the UI is definitely the worst part. Today, this application is where Office 2003 stood a few years ago. Everything was cluttered and Microsoft needed to redesign it badly. They did a great job with Office 2007, and I picture something similar with the next Photoshop.
I sincerely hope they will implement a skinnable UI. Not that I dislike the current theme, but somtimes when I work with really dark pictures, I would prefer a black menu, not grey. In fact, it would make sense if the UI could adapt its colors to the picture you're working on (user's choice function only, of course). Sometimes the menus are incredibly disturbing because they break the pattern.
Full Tilt
Adobe, go out and license the Office ribbon. I know I'll get trolled, flamebaited, blah'd for saying that, but the ribbon is task-based and works really, really well in Office. While it may have come from Microsoft, the amount of thought and work put into it has really made a difference to Office; regularly used features are now effortless to find, and some older - but hidden away - features have been made more prominent as to actually be useable. Consequently, the addition of ribbons to Office has not removed any of its functionality, but it has removed the 'bloated' feelign of the interface, exactly where Photoshop needs to go. Now back to my first sentence; whether Adobe licenses it is irrelevant. They just need perform the same exercise as Microsoft and reach some similar conclusions.
Believe it or don't, but I still use PaintShopPro v. 7.0 for any photo manipulation, including personal photos, making silly manipulations and the like.
The interface isn't very good at all, but that's what I know, and once you get used to a system you get used to it. Many end-users (including businesses) don't have the time and/or effort (as has been stated previously) to adapt to a new interface. However, the marketing department is always looking for new customers often moreso than supporting the existing ones, so this is not a surprising move on Adobe's part.
--- There is a man in a smiling bag.
Are Amateuts some kind of Aleut?
If they are, I suppose it make sense for them to buy their people in graphics shops. Warmer than an igloo, that's for sure.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Only it is Photoshop, because that's the way he's doing it. The advantage of scanning directly into Photoshop is that it isn't saved to either an intermediary lossy or huge file and it is ready for you to work on in your interface once it has scanned. The majority of scanners I have used scan to JPEG to keep the colour at the slight loss of quality, which might not always be acceptable.
Photoshop's scanning seems to be modal for arbitrary reasons. Whether you want to scan to disk or scan and edit then with faster processors, more memory and dual core being common, why not take advantage and make things that don't have to be modal into non-modal operations? If your rig can't handle it then just don't do anything while the non-modal dialog completes and everyone is happy.
Like... I have this huge image opened, it has tons of layers that interact with each other, and I am trying to achieve a certain effect.
Or I am presenting multiple versions of the same design to a customer.
So I open the file, blow it up full screen, zoom on the details I want to present and then... I start turning layers on and off.
Now... If I could not move the palettes around, I would have to move the image around constantly. And if that image is a couple of hundred MBs, and couple of dozen layers... that might take some time to show on screen properly. Palette is much easier to move (and redraw on screen) right or left.
Not to mention all those people that like their tools on the right, or their palettes on the left, or what ever.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
ribbons gibbons.
Okay, Many users has always blamed Gimp UI, i just love it because it is intuitive and very clear and does things how you exept them to be done. (Still it miss few great things like smart objects what came on CS3 and smart layers what came PS 7(?)).
Now many users need to wakeup to that fact, Photoshop UI is more terrible than Gimp. Because Gimp does not try to be UI for everyone and for every task. It just try to be good photomanipulation application. No 3D, No video and so on. (You can add those edits with plugins).
Now we need open brainstorm to get better UI for photoshop users like gimp has http://gimp-brainstorm.blogspot.com/ . To get ideas from new users and old users. Photoshop UI should change to be better. There are stupid ways to do things, like almoust every edit goes trough image > adjustments, EVEN it would be done for layer or for selection. On gimp, this is done via menu color or tools. Image menu always does what you exept to be done for image and layer to layer. You dont do something to layer via image menu. And Gimp is better because it does not mix image and canvas meaning.
Like if you open 3 pictures to same picture in photoshop, everyone has own layer. Why you need to still edit them as "image" when you edit layer (gimp edits it as layer) and you edit image as "image". And you edit canvas as "image". No sense at all.
By usability in view, photoshop gets worse points vs Gimp. But by technical view, it gets better points (because 16/32bit and faster preview).
Now, lets hope Adobe gets better UI what could make SENSE.
ps. There is more 'stupid' usability errors on photoshop than Gimp, not because there are more options. Because Photoshop tryes to be best for everyones. Gimp allows very good customazion, it just rocks with good windowmanager (like compiz-fusion) because you have floating windows and dockers, you can have many pictures open and still you find what you want very fast. But it still has many entrys on taskbar!
ok. I want to quality myself as an expert. I have used Photoshop since it was Barney Scan XP. I have been certified twice to teach photoshop, and have taught classes on expert photshop. ( Color models, the layers interface and channels ). I had a hand in the design of the UI for a photoshop competitor, and worked for a year doing UI design/QA on it. ( and compairing to how photoshop worked and/or didnt work. )
The interface for photoshop has devolved to the point that when they bring out a new version, You NEED to buy the help book. Hell, I do! Things just are so far from being intuitivly obivious, and the guys doing UI design, they used to be good. The early versions from 1.0.7 to 5.5.1 were all fine, but 5.5.1 started to get a bit messy. By CS1(PS8) they were a bit cleaner, but you spent most of your time, thinking that the tool was somewhere else. I remember that I put a note on my wall, as to where I would find things just to rememind me how they had changed. Dont forget that Photoshop 6s color models were extrodinarlly powerfull. You can still do wonders with color control though the workflow, but again, they missed on the UI/explaination. Integration of ImageReady was a tragic mistake.
So many things could have been made easier, and now a simpler UI is a feature? Sucks Less? Suck how much less? Why did tney screw it up in the first place? FEATURE BLOAT, just like Microsoft word. How hard is it to manage a system of alacarte appliations? Its like Linux trying to integrade the webserver into everything, Like I.E.s integration into windows. Im going to stop here, beause I feel like smashing my computer.
You want to see simple? Look at Coyote Linux. Simple, small does its job well. a 4k web server!
Adobe get a CLUE! But the only way they make money is to redecorate the feature list...exactly how car companies sell new cars with diffrent tail lights. every year... diffrent tail lights.
You can always switch to a lossless or LZW (still lossless) TIFF - which is what you SHOULD be doing if you are going for the quality.
BTW - scanning to JPEG means that it is the software that saves the file - not a direct stream from the scanner.
To save a JPEG, image first has to be complete in the memory - then saved with lossy compression.
TIFF allows (on professional scanners) for image to be streamed to the disk as it is scanned - one line at a time.
As for scanning directly into Photoshop...
What the GP said was "scanning slides". Plural.
On some higher quality (now even some cheap new ones) scanners you can set up multiple scans, each with their own size modifications, resolutions, sharpening, on-scanner color correction (very important when scanning slides done on different films) - and just hit "SCAN ALL".
You don't get one image scanned - you get up to 40 images, one after the other.
Now... being those are slides you are scanning you are probably blowing them up (not resizing in Photoshop... that is just adding pixels... talking higher resolutions here) to poster sizes.
It is never wise to scan couple of GB of images into a application.
Not to mention cases like "UPS! Your computer just crashed. What? You didn't save all those images? Tough luck."
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I really, really, really, REALLY hope the have the option to switch between any new UI they create and the old one.
._.
UNLIKE FLASH MX.
Anyone who's ever had a look at their plug-in SDK can tell you that the UI is the least of what they need to overhaul
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Kids these days...
In my time, we were lucky if we had any apples, let alone two.
Two apples? Only for a birthday. If you have been good the whole year. Maybe.
Throwing away perfectly good apple core? Vandalism!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I want the Ribbon to be contained and not spread.
Really if MSFT had left my menus in place (or at least the option to display them, even it wasn't the default) I would be OK with the ribbon. But as it is forced down my throat I became a lot less happy about it.
The keyboard shortcuts are long gone. Especially the ones you kind-of knew but not by heart.
The Ribbon is great for people that hit spacebar 209 times to tab over, but for those us well acquainted with Word it is a fucking reset.
I wonder if this has been catalysed by the need to move from Carbon to Cocoa for future versions of OS X?
Ability to refine edges and quick select alone made the upgrade for me worthwhile. I question your self-proclaimed power user status if you can't recognize the improvements they've made over time. I would rather jump in a lake than go back from CS3 to CS2. Anything before Adobe 7 would GREATLY improve my workload to the point I would need twice the time to do anything.
Something like this http://www.naked.la/, might provide some inspiration for them. Basically this company is launching a beta tonight of a next generation photo editing toolsuite that includes non destructive and resolution & bitdepth independent editing.
Apple only unfortunately.
Jilles
Oh yes, it certainly is "offtopic" to talk about an already existing configurable interface on a commercial image editing program in an article about a commercial image editing program's luminary writing about contemplating and preparing for a change to a configurable interface. Um-hmm. The humor is beyond the moderators, I'm sure. :-)
But what is even funnier is that this post, which describes exactly how Winimages works, is modded +3 insightful. Yet when I posted that we had already done this along with an invitation to try it for free... zap. You gotta love the mouth-breathers.
This, people, is precisely why you need to read slashdot at -1. It certainly is why I read at -1.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I've always found Adobe's programs useful, but for some reason I've found their interfaces to be counterintuitive, messy time-wasters. PhotoShop is just the worst of a truly horrible bunch in that respect. I absolutely love what you can do with images in PhotoShop, but I can't count the number of times I've had to get up and walk away from the computer in a rage because something that should be dead-simple is buried where no sane person would look for it.
I can't wait to see what the re-design looks like. I only wish to hell they'd asked me first. Not that I'm a world-class expert, it's just that I have a feeling some guy from Adobe sneaks in every so often and has Audition or PhotoShop or Acrobat report on how I use them just so the next version can piss me off all over again.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
...PhotoGIMP!
The should KEEP the Photoshop UI since it is the standard for graphics professionals. What they should do is standardize the keyboard shortcuts better with the newly acquired Macromedia apps. I've only just started using Flash, but I've noticed that some of the normal Photoshop shortcuts don't work in Flash. Alt+t for Free Transform? Nope, try just the letter Q. Because Q makes sense? Shift key to constrain proportions? Almost. Unlike EVERY other program on the market (thanks to Photoshop v.1.0), when you constrain proportions, the image anchors and then grows/shrinks proportionately. But in Flash, you have to hold down the shift key AND the ALT key to keep the image in the same spot as you resize, otherwise it resizes all sides based around the center point instead of an anchored point. I know Macromedia always tried to stand out, since they were always second best to Adobe products, but their UI was just dumb in most cases. Hopefully Adobe will do a better job of integrating Macromedia tools with version2 of everything. Siderant: why have Dreamweaver AND GoLive now? Kill one and integrate the best features into the other.
#2 The crappy interface
#1 The zooming with the scrollwheel does not work as I expect it to and I have not seen any options to customize it to my needs.
Those two reasons alone keep me from using it and staying with Paint Shop Pro.
( a thinly veiled one at that ) to cut down on features as a pre-cursor to moving to their subscription based purchasing. A snr level spokesperson at Adobe laying the groundwork for cutting down on their development budget. The subscription based model means they remove the requirement to innovate continually to get new sales and produce revenue, as with subscription model revenue is a constant stream whether they release new versions or not. Win win for the corporation/shareholder, lose lose for the end user.
Yes, there are ways of saving without the lossy compression (hence why I said "large" as an alternative to lossy compression) and other alternatives but that doesn't change the fact that there is no real reason for the scanning dialog to be modal.
Modal dialogs are there for when you don't want the user doing two things at once (e.g. "no you can't edit the image because I'm still in the middle of saving it"). If you're working on image A then why shouldn't you be allowed to have image B scanning in the background? A single thread is all it needs, and it might go slower than doing them in series but people won't want to wait. While some situations are more applicable than others then it is still a design/development choice that didn't necessarily need to have been made the way it did.
And you being a cock muncher is a good reason for a company to have explicit STFU policies in place. I don't know how good or bad WinWank or whatever it is you've got because you are trying to pimp your program in such a manner here automatically makes your program look like cock, too.
I just loaded up the GIMP, made a new image, clicked on the brush icon and changed the brush size. You know... the one that was right fucking in front of me on the default menu. I know most of that other garbage in your post is not in the gimp, but we've heard that same old shit so often before I think every slashdot user could tell you now that the GIMP doesn't have CMYK or have a whole bunch of filters that like one or two graphic designers actually use and no one else never needs. "Teh gimp suxors" posts are getting really old so just drop it please. And I am so sick of some photoshop fan boys coming around here constantly bashing GIMP because it's not an exact duplicate of their precious little jewel photoshop. Don't like the GIMP, I have a real simple answer for you: DON'T USE IT.
Incidentally, I find it delightfully ironic that every GIMP article some photoshop fan boys come out saying the that gui on the GIMP needs to be more like photoshop. Well, here's mud in your eye -- the ui on photoshop isn't perfect either. Hell, I've known that ever since I started using photoshop. Maybe you're just too indoctrinated in the Adobe way to notice any more.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Since Adobe bought up Macromedia the offer for design apps got really poor. And among designers it seems like either you use Adobe or you are just an amateur. Compare this with the market for music software, how many different interface approaches one can chose from to create music. And it is considered a good thing. The "you need a Marshall Amp for professional sound"-times are really finally over. As a graphic designer you are already a tramp when you have been spotted near Corel Draw.
Graphic designers should demand more totally different tools instead of waiting for Adobe to change the one official App that exists. And they should *create* their own tool, too. It's as easy as never before.
I hope my sarcasm meter is just broken... otherwise you're an idiot.
*wooosh*
;) Not to mention that there is no "-1 *Whooos*" mod.
Note parent suggesting to make it more like GIMP. A program considered by many to have an awful UI. (And the only one I have seen to date that pops up a window arguing why it's really a nice UI, thank you, when being installed.) Also, GIMP does not have CYMK.
This leads us to the following conclusion: GP was a joke.
(For some, this may be more obvious. I opened this discussion thinking "Ah, gonna be some gimp-bashing here today".)
Though being modded -1 for missing a joke? How cruel
I lost my sig.
They removed the help button.
Did anyone else see the Adobe Notes thing? John Nack basically admits that Adobe's help system is useless and wants you to write notes to remind you how to do things in Photoshop.
Here's a practical example. Let's say you go into Photoshop's Unsharp Mask dialog box. "Amount" is straightforward, but what the hell do "Radius" and "Threshold" mean, exactly?
I don't know, but you know what should be able to tell me? The help system.
Here, have some more more espresso. You can never have too much coffee.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Now I'm wondering what are authors of those Photoshop alternative programs going to do? Will they improve their UI in same way, or just evolve the current thing? I'm talking about Pixel for example http://www.kanzelsberger.com/ ... the best thing on Photoshop UI is, it works when you learn it. Now you're going to learn again something completely different even if it's the very same program :)
Photoshop for Linux? Wine? No. http://www.kanzelsberger.com
mod -1 SPAM
You actually think your early-90's UI design is a viable alternative to Photoshop?
Possibly because photoshop isn't designed for n00bs, and Picasa is. You could say the same thing about AutoCAD: In microsoft draw, I can do things in 2 seconds that would take me weeks to learn in autocad! You can say the same thing about the UNIX command line vs. windows 98. Or about mapping software like ArcGIS vs. Google Earth. Should I go on? Software designed for professionals to use all day long is rarely suited for casual users, just like a dump truck isn't the best vehicle when I run down to Lowes. It's always going to be hard to use because those complex tools won't be buried twelve menus down where the casual user can ignore them. If you don't know the difference between LAB/RGB/CMYK, etc you probably shouldn't be dropping a grand on this particular software anyway.
The interface DOES suck, but I think that's mostly due to the fact that the photoshop user base might well revolt if the interface changed much all at once. Many of them have been using the same tired old GUI for a long, long time.
---> You
---> Sarcasm.
This paradigm reminds me of Eclipse. It's not just a Java IDE - it's also a platform on which you can develop any program at all - and because of the wide variety of features and modes, it offers what it calls "perspectives" - your "modes" - to switch among sets of open windows, button bars, and so forth. It is a little confusing at first, even to an experienced computer user, but once the paradigm is clear, it works wonderfully!
I hate call waitin`~+~~~
NO CARRIER
Absolutely. Though it's actually a late-80's UI design. Came from the Amiga. The interface is still generally more efficient than Photoshop's is in many areas. And the application is a *whole* lot faster overall, which of course also enhances viability as compared to slower designs. Any other questions I can help you with?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
And have someone disagree with you and mod you troll or flamebait. No-one will read your comment. Except maybe a Google spider or three.
[ think ]
And I thought robots couldn't understand humor.
It's likely that they're going to borrow elements and concepts developed when they were working on Lightroom. Which wouldn't be all bad - Lightroom is really easy to use at a basic level, but it's not difficult to access more advanced features either.
...when Macromedia and Adobe were in litigation over Photoshop's user interface. Can Macromedia have it, now that Adobe no longer wants it?
Oh, wait...
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
Is this the new "feature" that will drive the next upgrade of Photoshop?
Hello Valued Customer,
We finally fixed our horrible UI, and you can have it for a minor upgrade price of $200!
You're welcome!
Maybe for an encore, they can stop hiding the OpenType features in InDesign.
MS Office's behavior in this regard is not an innovation in UI design; this is a decades-old idea.
At a high-level, HCI research in this area will generally characterize an interface as static, adaptive or adaptable. Static interfaces never change, adaptive interfaces change based on the system's reaction to outside conditions including the users past behaviors, adaptable interfaces change when the user directs them to change.
Your preference that "the UI should not evolve or change with the user" describes a rejection of adaptive interfaces. And research (http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=985704&jmp=indexterms&dl=portal&dl=ACM/ gives a good starting point of references but you can easily find more by searching for "adaptive interface") supports your intuition that adaptive interfaces on computer software hinder users more than they help.
But that doesn't mean that UIs should be static. Research also confirms (again, see the previous citation for examples) that adaptable interfaces which allow users to customize the UI according to their preferences can let users be even more productive than a static interface.
Uncluttering the UI is a nice touch. What that really means is you'll have to re-learn how to use photoshop. You'll be searching for 20 minutes to find that damn art history brush they "uncluttered".
More seriously though, I want native Linux support.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Illustrator is ten times worse.
...It just seems like Adobe is finally realizing that workflow 'presets' and customization is the way to go with an app this powerful. That was one of Luxology's showcase features when I discovered modo a year ago. And 'sharing the customization solutions'? Luxology has been doing that, as well. I know of no other graphics app that has the UI cleanliness and customization power that modo has. Wonderful app...modo users, help me out, here!
Who the hell uses the UI in photoshop anyway? I barely touch it and use keyboard shotcuts for almost everything. This seems like pointless revisionism to me. They are trying to show off the fact theres obviously a new UI coming for PS, and how we should all buy it when it comes out. The current UI is fine, its quick, easy to use, simple, whatever, its only a bunch of friggen buttons on the side of the screen! Photoshop is probably the most comprehensive and complete tool / bit of software i've ever used. I have a very hard time thinking of new things that could be added to it which don't go into plugin territory. My guess is adobe are running out of things to add and this new fangled UI is gona be one of the things selling the next version. If it ain't broke don't fix it I say.
Yeah.. well... thing is once upon a time you just couldn't do that.
Back in the days of SCSI drum-scanners, and later SCSI flatbeds. One of those babies cost couple of tens of thousands of dollars.
And while they do suck in transfer and speed compared to today's 100$ scanners they still kick ass in the optic department. Not to mention that you don't throw away something you took out a credit to pay for.
Now... on the off chance that those dinosaurs do work on your brand new Photoshop station with their ancient drivers would you rather have them work, or just sit there on the desk?
Because... even if Adobe did want to allow users to scan (into Photoshop) and edit at the same time - who says all those drivers and interfaces could take it?
So... Adobe can either leave it as it is (its working... why fix it?) or change it so users can scan AND edit at the same time.
Only thing is... besides the idiots who would call in to complain how they can't edit the image WHILE they are scanning it (and how slow their new silver with daisies Mac got), they would get calls from people DEMANDING that Adobe fix their scanners because - they have tried that new Edit&ScanTM thing and all their images got scanned full of scan-lines or not at all.
And since Adobe does not provide drivers for every scanner in the universe (and might even get into a legal trouble if they tried to do that) they would suddenly be in a whole bunch of problems that they can't fix since it is not their problem to fix.
But tell that to someone who paid 50000$ for a SCREEN.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I am not among them. I think The GIMP is great software and I use it frequently.
Funny how the /. posters complain that The GIMP's interface isn't enough like Photoshop to be worthwhile and here Photoshop's proprietor is telling us that they're walking away from that "shambling, bloated monster of a program".
When Adobe completes this work I'm sure will be regaled with another cadre of posts in every GIMP thread talking about how The GIMP is falling farther behind Photoshop's interface (where we're supposed to assume it's The GIMP's goal to be more like Photoshop). Meanwhile, the lack of discussion of software freedom (the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify programs at any time for any reason) highlights how little some users have been taught to think of the social role computers play in our lives.
Digital Citizen
I think that Microsoft's "ribbon" based GUI in MS Office 2007 is an incredible step ahead for UI design, and that it hasn't gotten the credit it deserves.
Could you explain me why don't you use IrfanView and plugins? Most things can be done even with MSPaint! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ksvaig8Fr5E
It's improved, but in my opinion it's still slower and more bloated than it needs to be. Foxit reader has a much smaller footprint and is (in my opinion) much more responsive.
Hey it's still better than the Gimp's interface :P
If you dig a little, it sounds like they're planning to rewrite most of the UI in Flash. Say goodbye to performance and to looking like a native citizen of your machine. Flash itself went down this route and its CPU requirements have increased astronomically.
I am really, really keeping an eye on the emerging world of OSX-only lightweight image editors that leverage Core Image. The first one to merge a decent UI (which rules out Pixelmator and its fetish for illegibly-transparent palettes) with something akin to PS's adjustment layers will get my $30-75.
egypt urnash minimal art.
I would think it HAS to. They could have pushed away from Carbon two or three years ago if not for Adobe and Quark, to a (much) lesser extent.
They need to "shit or get off the pot", to use a Texas colloquialism, and either EOL Carbon now, or their software maintenance timeline will take on a curvature similar to Microsoft's Win16 > Win32..
Not to mention, the resource drain maintaining that codebase, and the sheer "uncleanliness" of it all.
The Mac is dead, long live the Mac! (Cocoa/Widgets vs. Classic Apps)
Drop CMYK support!! Haha, you must be joking because the whole print industry standard is CMYK! Also while I'm posting for all you GIMP supporters out there, anybody that is in the industry (design and the like) use photoshop and there is a reason for it. I used GIMP for one day two years back because my company only had a license for PS 5.5 available, and I went back to 5.5 because it was better. Thank goodness I have a copy of CS3 to use now.
In truth it was a very mild attempt at humor. I am sorry if it whistled over anyone's head. Actually I have never used Photoshop (I have worked closely with artists who do use it though) I am mostly a programmer and I use the Gimp a lot. Generally I am doing stuff for screen so RGB is fine for me and I quite like the Gimp UI. I would like the Gimp to have CMYK so I can convert more print and media targeting Photoshop users to the joys of Free software.
The main reason I use Photoshop instead of one of the decent open source apps is because photoshop is the only one that really does a good job of deferring rasterization. A vector layer in photoshop (like a text layer) stays that way no matter what you do to it unless you explicitly rasterize it by simplifying the layer or merging layers.
I wouldn't mind them using actionscript to customize the UI, myself, if they'd just stick to that... having little XML files with embedded actionscript fragments instead of little XML files with embedded javascript fragments (like Firefox or Konfabulator) shouldn't be too bad. If they actually go all the way and require you to buy an extra $700 program on top of the $200 upgrade (or $650 new copy) to customize it, you can include me out.
I don't mind the interface at all. When I first get on to photoshop, I spend a minute arranging the palettes how I want them, and then get to work. At home, I've saved the arrangement as a workspace called "NORMAL." It's flexible, I can have everything up if I needed to, but I usually don't. Granted, it's nice when I'm on my 24" screen at home, but I can see how it could be difficult on a smaller screen.
That said, I agree on the multitasking front- why can't I move windows around when I'm in a dialogue box?! Why can't I scan and work at the same time?! But those aren't interface things-- they're more like multitasking program changes, right?
... than Mac OS X blatant disregard for the Human Interface Guidelines. I'm still using Photoshop 7 here and have yet to face a problem related to the interface, even though most of it retains the same interface it had back in v2.x.
The question here, is what Adobe's follow-up to the aging Photoshop interface will be. With any luck, it won't resemble any of the interfaces created by Kai Kraus.
8==8 Bones 8==8
I downloaded Pixel to evaluate it. I created a block of text. I went back to edit it... and I can't see how to select a block of text that's already created to modify it. Clicking on the text, selecting the layer, right-clicking and selecting all, using various key and click combinations, it doesn't matter what I do, nothing selects the existing text. Not only that, but I ended up with a bunch of empty text layers I had to individually delete.
This isn't a matter of it not behaving like Photoshop. This is a matter of not being able to figure out how to do a fundamentally basic operation.
perhaps if you recalibrate your meter to the "British humor" setting the joke might work?
"Photoshop" is not doing the scanning. The UI in photoshop doesn't even belong to photoshop. It belongs to the scanner driver and proprietary GUI.
On the Windows side, it used to be TWAIN, I don't know if they use it on OSX. SANE is a damn fine solution in need of more way more cooperation from Canon, Epson, Nikon, etc. FYI: http://www.ellert.se/twain-sane/
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Screw Acrobat, they totally destroyed the Flash 8 interface with that abomination Flash CS3, and that needs fixing pronto.
Comment of the year
Need I say more?
Ok, Dynamically Linked Libraries (.DLL files) are loaded up once and reused for each running copy of the application. The OS IS smart enough to reuse the code for two "different" copies of the same program.
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
That wouldn't be a problem if you decouple the backend mechanics from the presentation/gui. Better yet - publish an API so third parties can build their own UIs to taste.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
You have think of the children!
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
When I read the part about making Photoshop configurable so that photo manipulators get what they need, and pre-press processing people get what they need, what went through my head was:
"Yeah, pull that CMYK separation stuff out of the main program and add it back as a pre-press module for the only guys who really need it. That makes sense. .... Hey, that's like The GIMP's design, isn't it?"
O <-----Me (not to scale)
| <-----How far I've had it up to with ASCII visual metaphors
---
|
/\
I just posted the top 10 User Interface Design Principles that I use in all my usability assessments. Based on those 10 topics alone, you can use them them to judge any device/software/website/etc. When applied to Photoshop, you'd have plenty to write about. I'm currently evaluating Flickr's usability, but that's far from over. Evaluating Photoshop's UI would take much longer due to it's complex design elements. The task analysis can include hundreds of standard photo retouching processes.
Know your user
Let the user control the interaction
Capitalize on what the user already knows
Maintain consistency at the interface
Provide effective feedback
Expose the interaction to the user
Minimize reliance on user memory
Minimize the impact of user error
Aesthetic matters
Always test your interface with users
http://www.jozefnagy.com/?q=node/47
Photoshop's UI is unusable to anyone jumping in.
I've watched it grow uglier and uglier over the years.
Photoshop is bloated and slow.
It may be the "industry standard" but it sure does suck.
Sure, it's "powerful", but there are plenty of other tools out there that will do 99% of what photoshop does, but with a cleaner interface and often better performance.
But then again, all Adobe products have horrible interfaces, bloat, and performance.
Oh, horrible prices too.
I guess that's the privelege you get when people blindly elevate you to the status of "industry standard" for being Mac friendly back when all the "artists" and "enlightened" fools touted Mac as the holy grail of creativity and usability.
Now it may be that I'm either crazy, or that I've been using Photoshop for the last 10 years or so, but I find the interface to be fine. The redesign that was done in CS3 was amazing, and Photoshop should stick with that style. If you find the UI to be cluttered, then chances are you aren't using all of the tools in photoshop, and it's too advanced of a program for what you're trying to accomplish. That's why Adobe released Photoshop Elements, which incorporates a much more simple UI with reduced functionality for those people who find Photoshop's interface (and price tag) daunting. This isn't just in Photoshop though people. Whenever you have a program that is tailored to do very complex things while also allowing many things to be done, you are going to have an interface that seems daunting and "cluttered" by those that don't know/use all the features. Take Maya or 3DS Max for example. If you don't know what a NURB is, then you're going to find the menu that deals with them excess clutter that should be eliminated. However if you're a 3D modeler that requires extremely high detail and fluid shapes, then the NURB menu, and all the other menus, are going to be a godsend. If anything, the only revisions Photoshop needs in my opinion are native linux support, the ability to open a .ps and other vector based formats while retaining the vector data (i.e. not having to rasterize it upon import), and icon support without the use of third party plugins.
He has posted a clarification on his blog, dispelling anyone who thinks his original post was him claiming on behalf of Adobe that the Photoshop UI was bad. Instead, it is just not good enough.
Read up here http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2007/11/clarification_o.html
insight through the mind
Simple as that. I have spent a looooong time to learn the UI and quirks of de-facto image manipulation program on the market - do not make it a lost investment. If I will decide to torture myself and learn it all again I could just as easy choose GIMP (what is, btw, an absolute proof that photoshops' GUI is JUST FINE).
Of course I can as well just stop buying every new version and switch. There is enough 'streamlined' image editing shit around - think Elements or ImageReady for a start - modifying PS would not even be a fight in that market...
Perhaps the best way to unclutter the UI would be to make it free software (open source) and let the users-developers themselves customise it to their own liking?
I use both GIMP and Photoshop on a regular basis. I'd rather use GIMP than Photoshop any day. It's way easier to use. I hate dimwits who've only used Photoshop that whine that GIMP needs to be more like Photoshop.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
I learned very early on that Photoshop's current UI is excellent if you have two monitors. It is horrible on one monitor. This is a critical point that most people trying to use it on one monitor seem to miss. You need one screen for your image and the other screen for EVERYTHING ELSE.
:)
I have a nice workspace saved with all the winlets / pallettes broken out and filling up the second screen. Even the new top bar that they have in CSx I put on the right screen across the top, since it is detachable / dockable.
As another user commented, I am surprised by how good and how well thought out Office 2007's interface is. Usually when you try to contextualize stuff you end up making it frustrating for power users. This has not been the case with Office so far, and I could see Photoshop trying something like that.
The big pitfall to avoid is making it difficult for power users to have access to all the features all at once. I have every palette activated and arranged on the second monitor, so I have instant access to anything I want at any time. The most used pallettes are on the left, near the edge of the screen that crosses over to the primary monitor.
Keyboard shortcuts are also key with photoshop, as others have mentioned. There are some REALLY obscure ones, such as CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-E to put a flattened copy of active layers into the current layer, but I use that one ALL THE TIME, less so now with the advent of adjustment layers but still frequently.
I have used Photoshop for everything from broadcast television graphics to high end photo retouching and photo collage work / print layout design. It's like an extension of my being at this point. It will be interesting to see where they go with it.
--Mike
GIMP has been able to decompose to CMYK (and then recompose, as well) for years now. Have you been living under a rock, or did you just mean something more specific than what you actually said?
I'd swear they already did this when introducing CS3. Now, at any given time, you can have open only the palettes you need at any given time. Re-opening others with just a single click as needed, instead of having to go through a menu or two to open them again. I actually prefer the new docked palettes. It strikes a balance between a clean interface, and maintaining usability.
It's not like Photoshop can EVER have the kind of minimalist interface you see in say... Alias Sketchbook. With the exception of pushing all the tools and palettes to another monitor, I think the Photoshop UI is as clean as it can be while staying usable. I hope they don't screw everything up, considering what we're paying for the software to begin with. <__<
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Are you saying that sarcasm is beneath him?
Yeah, that's what the PS interface needs, is twelve new levels of option-hiding. It took me an hour to confirm that half the tool pallete options really are hidden behind the other half, and no, there isn't any way to fix it. How about instead of trying to guess what you want to do, they make a clearly labeled, logically categorized button for each function the application can perform? Would that be too left-field? I though we got over this kind of nonsense when Microsoft apologized for those horrible "smart" menus.
I was pleased with the new single row toolbar and the collapsable pallates. Most of all I liked the fact I could hide the options-bar, although I'll admit I leave it open now that I instinctively reach for the top for some functions. More custom options are better than no options even if it's a bit of work getting the workspace to behave the way you want. But you can save the config's which of course is very handy.
Funny how with a 6-digit userid you still don't understand that not all slashdot /. posters have the exact same opinions, and in fact there's some saying one thing, while others say the other thing.