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.""

Comments

yes, they need to make it more like the GIMP :-)

[dominux]

the Photoshop UI always confuses folk like me. They should drop CMYK support while they are at it.

Never mind a new UI

[CrackedButter]

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?

Re:Never mind a new UI

[killmofasta]

The reason to run multiple copies is to scan and work at the same time. ( Scan, Edit, Print ). I run multiple copies at the same time, on diffrent machines. ( image production stations are set ups as ( fast littke hD space for scanning( I used the bunduled scanner softwarem, but there is also an educational versions there, from when I was a studient), EDIT is the fastest( 1st copy of photoshop upgraded from 1.0.7, Medium HD space, Print is slowest( Second copy of Photoshop purchased new ver 5.0.4), and a slow machine with an increadible amount of space for versions, backups, and FTP. ( No copy ).

I can scan and print while Im editing. and clients can browse the FTP site and can see work in progress.

Set yourself up right, and you can do a lot. ( Oh.. btw, the scanbox, printbox and server are all 1U sustems. They all fit under the 10/100 hub. ) The EDIT station is a 4U unit, and its all rack mounted. My Main screen is a SONY 21" and my tools pallette is some old bezarre IBM flat screen.

I am thinking of upgradeing to Photoshop CS2, but they want a lot for the upgrade, and I figure that IF I need to do raw color work, more than I am, I can get CS2 for like $250.

Did you ver think to scan into Photoshop Elements? or have ImageReady still installed?

Oh.. The reason you cannot run multiple copies of Photoshop at the same time? Two actually, 1. When its running it has to have full access to the graphic drivers for performance reasons. You want Photoshop to run as fast as possible right? When you switch it to backround, it freezes the GDI, and realeases its exclusive hold. Same with the file system your swap drive is on. It takes almost direct control of the filesystem on the swap drive, again for performance reasons.

Also scanning. Oh Jeez this is going to get technical...ok...There are two types of Photoshop Plugins, PIMI and PITI. The PIMI plugins all run inside of Photoshops memory space. A PITI plug in can allocate memory space outside photoshos memory space. It used to be that KPT powertools, and Mr Sa'ki's plugins were the only PITI plugins besides... ready? Scanner plugins. Scanner Plugins and the TWAIN interface have to be PITI plugins because when an image is being scanned, photoshop cannot allocate the memory for it from its space beforehand. Its left for the PITI plugin to allocate memory dynamically while its scanning. Ever notice how scanning a file, and saving it is a LOT slower than opening a file and saving it? And its not just the scanning part thats slower. its because a PITI plugin does not have full access to the filesystem. Did you get all that?
There are now 4 plugin types. but its not pertinant to this discussion.

BTW, everything I know about this technology I learned from the author of Mr Sa'ki's plugins.

You are running a seperate HD for swap space arent you? Yes?

Good News

[bazald]

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.

Re:Good News

[wrook]

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.

Ribbon

[Poorcku]

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 :)

John Nack is correct

[eebra82]

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.

Re:Inspiration for new UI

[mpathy]

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.

Photoshops UI, from an Expert.

[killmofasta]

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.

Re:Good

[mtmra70]

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

Re:Inspiration for new UI

[budgenator]

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.
They did and you got it backwards, they made the GTK, Gimp Tool KitMiguel de Icaza, used that for the basis for Gnome. De Icaza used GTK because it was GPLed and the Qt toolkit from Trolltech was free as in free beer at the time. The Gnome supporters started a Holy-war against KDE because of this and now de Icaza is a Microsoft shill, ain't life strange?

Re:Inspiration for new UI

[m2943]

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.