Photoshop CC 2015.1: New user interface lacks contrast and many usability cues, lots of other problems

Here's a possible workaround. Go to a dual monitor setup with a hi res monitor for the image and low res monitor for the tools, panels, etc. At low resolution, the flat UI will somewhat more usable.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Stop the endless interface changes and blatant disregard for the Mac UI..

How about you stop screwing around with the finder integration on the Mac? Keep it up, and programs like Affinity will be easy to replace photoshop with. My latest update to Photoshop was extremely annoying and disorienting. We professionals are tired of your UI experiments. Leave it alone and develop something new and useful for the marketplace.

I went back to the previous version and now I have my classic and right interface back. Just disappointed that now I have Camera Raw 8.
I'd have preferred not to revert to one version back but just get rid of the last crappy update.

Great job Adobe, if you don't fix this absolute disaster and show signs of taking notice of your Professional user base then I'll have no option but to move away from Adobe products entirely.

Sincerely,
A Creative Cloud COMPLETE (All-Apps) Subscriber

I have never felt the need to complain about Adobe products before but agree that this new UI is absolutely awful. It is 10 steps backwards!
Icons that were identifiable now all blend together and any drop down box or slider is so hard to identify. It needs to either be darker or lighter in the window and not all the same colour across the board with a tiny underline.
Also, why are the swatches suddenly huge? The smallest setting is twice the size of the old swatch.
Can we have an option for a legacy interface or a redesign of this one please?
Heck, if you are willing to employ me, I'll do it.

I am also a CC (full bundle) subscriber.

Maybe something like this, @Nathan

What a difference! Thanks for doing that Morris, it really illustrates how much easier it is to identify the boxes.
Now can you make the icons work too :)

Adobe: Please revert to the old interface (or design one complete new.)

To be clear, it's not just the dropdown boxes, it's interface as a whole that is bad. There are no redeemable changes I've found. I looked through thinking, "what can be salavaged. If we went back to the last interface what good things can we keep from this new one". I couldn't find anything. There's nothing worth keeping here.

UPDATE:

If you have any kind of backup or a backup from your time machine prior to your upgrade you can grab the old cc2015 app and overwrite the new one, and you’ll be up and running back to normal before this whole cluster mess.

I’m disappointed that this has been going on for a week now and only 1 Adobe person has said anything on this topic. I think it’s going to take alot more people rallying in on this before it’s going to noticed by adobe. This topic is in the (? section) and probably should have been started in the (problem section) to get there attention.

Now that I have my old version of photoshop back, I will NEVER updated my photoshop again until it stops running!

THANKS for NOTHING Adobe!

I think what we are all trying to say is that Adobe have slowed us down and therefore lowered our productivity (at least that's how my employer would put it).

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled What's Wrong With the December 2015 Photoshop Update.

The new Photoshop CC (2015.1/ 20151114.r.301 x64) interface is such a strain on the eyes. Why change it so drastically and create a learning curve? When you look at it, it just looks like something went wrong with the programming, as if its some kind of incomplete beta test.
Your users have work to do! This isn't a hobby for some of us. This is our livelihoods that you are tweaking with!
Also, I opted not to erase the previous version and it got erased anyway. Now I am scrambling to figure out how to downgrade when I should be doing work.

Horrendous - simply horrendous. As with many others, I've used Photoshop professionally every day for years and you've just made my working life worse. Why?

OK, I hope that now Adobe has got the point. If not, this will be the worst financial disaster for them over time. I've two points to add:

1. Following a suggestion given above by Greg Justice, I went into Time Machine and dug out Photoshop 20015 version 15.0.1. I have now side by side in the Applications folder PS 15.0.1 and PS 15.1. Tonight I will archive 15.1 to make sure it doesn't start up first. 15.0.1 is what I want, reasonable interface, quite decent. I vow that I will not update till I am pretty sure that their next update is back to something I can use.

2. The new version messes up the shortcut Ctl-tab that allows to cycle through windows and tabs! And no, it's not the Mac OS, it's the new Photoshop. If I try in succession both version, the shortcut works with 15.0.1 but not with 15.1, it is as simple as that.

As I always have 5 to 10 files open at the same time, this shortcut alone is reason enough not to use 15.1.

Get back to work guys. We're not a bad bunch, we will forgive you this misstep. If you roll it back.

This mess is inexcusable. The Mac interface doesn't look like Mac software. The Windows interface doesn't look like Windows software. Adobe has gone to great lengths to piss off their users on both platforms. If that was the goal, then we can all say, "well done."