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Adobe to Unclutter Photoshop UI

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the time-for-a-facelift dept.

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.""

5 of 403 comments (clear)

  1. Good News by bazald · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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    1. Re:Good News by wrook · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not sure if this is really on topic, but I fee like rambling...

      With respect to forcing users to switch between different modes, one of the things I find irritating about modern software UI design is that... well, that it's *designed*. Some guy (or girl or whatever) sits in a room and decides what I'm going to be doing.

      In the (good) old days, there was no fancy pants GUI. You had a command line and a shell. And you chained together useful tasks through the shell. When you were in "find a file" mode, you just used "find" and piped it through some filters to do what you wanted.

      My feeling is that these large applications are cluttered and bulky *because* they are designed to work in an integrated way. Instead, the functionality should be separated and the *user* should choose what they want to see and when. If the user wants a "photo touch up" mode then the user can create a mode for it and put all the "photo touch up" tools in it.

      But this becomes very complicated. Asking the user to create modes from thousands of features is ridiculous. So the application shouldn't show the user anything that they don't already know how to do. When the user wants to do something new, the application should teach them how to do it, and then the functionality should be available. Before that, it's invisible. Once the user knows how to use the functionality, they should put it somewhere.

      "Modes" and "known functionality" should be transportable with a configuration file that the user can take with them on a USB key. That way you can go to your mate's desk and have it work the same way it worked on your desk.

      I guess the key for me is that my software should work like my kitchen. I should have the tools I want, where I want them, when I want them. I don't care how great a kitchen designer you are. My kitchen is set up how *I* want it. Maybe I'll hire you to come in and give me pointers. But I *don't* want a predesigned kitchen with tools that can only go in one place.

  2. Re:Inspiration for new UI by mpathy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I read the article and I was sure, to find a GIMP joke here - because the UI of Gimp is really a bad joke ;) There was already a good GUI redesign - but because this guy was ignored by the GIMP developers (which are not really open-minded) he started "GIMPshop" - http://www.gimpshop.com/ - a picure can be found via Google Picture Search. But they want to stay with their window policy which is IMHO unusable for a image manipulation program. I don't say that GIMP should orientate on Adobe Photoshop. But at least it should also do a complete redesign of the GUI. For a complex program like that they also shouldn't go to tight with the Gnome UI definitions, it is completely okay to go the "blender way" - a own UI for a program like the blender 3D program.

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  3. Re:Good by mtmra70 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Have you used the latest version of Acrobat? It is VERY different than any other version.

  4. Re:Inspiration for new UI by m2943 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    but because this guy was ignored by the GIMP developers (which are not really open-minded) he started "GIMPshop"

    The purpose of GIMPshop was to "replicate the feel of Adobe Photoshop". Well, Adobe just told you themselves that the Photoshop UI sucks. So, clearly, redesigning Gimp to be more Photoshop-like would not have been a good way of improving it.

    I don't say that GIMP should orientate on Adobe Photoshop. But at least it should also do a complete redesign of the GUI.

    Phrases like "a complete redesign" generally just indicate that people have no idea what's wrong or how to fix it; they are not helpful. In fact, I see no indication that the Gimp needs a "complete redesign". What it needs is dockable palettes and better multi-window handling. If you can identify other *specific* problem areas, please do so; but comments about "complete redesign" are bullshit.

    I think what most Photoshop users don't like about the Gimp really is that the menu entries and shortcuts are so different from Photoshop so that they can't find anything. Well, tough. The Gimp menu structure is no worse than the Photoshop one, and Gimp users are used to it. At least the shortcuts are much easier to change on the Gimp than in Photoshop.