So, Photoshop CC 2019 came out and finally solved the inconsistency of Ctrl+Alt+Z to undo multiple times, brought better support for thumb wheel scrolling, ...
But it brought new inconsistencies and incomprehensible UI changes with it :
- Resizing shouldn't be proportional by default, pressing Shift should do that, as it does in Illustrator. Shift is used to add constraints in rotation, why in the world would it remove a constraint for resizing? That just makes no sense.
- Clicking outside of the element you're resizing should ABSOLUTELY NOT commit the change, it's something you'll do by mistake to out of three times and forces you to redo what you just did.
- Resizing using the fileds at the top of the interface should not be proportional by default, or at least not reset itself to proportional every time you resize something
- The settings window is still as terrible, especially when it comes to GPU management (but that's true of the whole CC family to be honest)
- Tools like Liquify should allow you to preview what you're doing with the other layers enabled or disabled
- Some tools still have weird scrolling and zooming mechanics, this problem dates back all the way to CS and don't seem that complicated to fix
All in all, this "update" feels a lot like a huge downgrade from something that was pretty functional and efficient to something filled with inconsistency and insensitive UI details. The whole UI needs some modernity, like automatic DPI adjustment, transparent integration of the tools that inexplicably need their own window to run and so on. This is expensive software and the competition is getting better, so I think it would be time for a serious revamp.
TL;DR : The UI is pretty whack at this point, it detracts from the huge amount of legitimately smart and useful tools Photoshop has to offer.
But it brought new inconsistencies and incomprehensible UI changes with it :
- Resizing shouldn't be proportional by default, pressing Shift should do that, as it does in Illustrator. Shift is used to add constraints in rotation, why in the world would it remove a constraint for resizing? That just makes no sense.
- Clicking outside of the element you're resizing should ABSOLUTELY NOT commit the change, it's something you'll do by mistake to out of three times and forces you to redo what you just did.
- Resizing using the fileds at the top of the interface should not be proportional by default, or at least not reset itself to proportional every time you resize something
- The settings window is still as terrible, especially when it comes to GPU management (but that's true of the whole CC family to be honest)
- Tools like Liquify should allow you to preview what you're doing with the other layers enabled or disabled
- Some tools still have weird scrolling and zooming mechanics, this problem dates back all the way to CS and don't seem that complicated to fix
All in all, this "update" feels a lot like a huge downgrade from something that was pretty functional and efficient to something filled with inconsistency and insensitive UI details. The whole UI needs some modernity, like automatic DPI adjustment, transparent integration of the tools that inexplicably need their own window to run and so on. This is expensive software and the competition is getting better, so I think it would be time for a serious revamp.
TL;DR : The UI is pretty whack at this point, it detracts from the huge amount of legitimately smart and useful tools Photoshop has to offer.
Gauthier Abel
Photoshop needs to be more unified, the separate interfaces for some of the different tools could totally be reduced to a tool/panel pair just like the "normal" tools. For example, there's no reason why Liquify and Filter Gallery couldn't use the normal UI space. Filter gallery could be made into a simple layers-like panel and change depending on the currently selected layer, much like Illustrator handles the FX.
I might be wrong in some things, but what's certain is that some parts of our beloved Photoshop are getting old. The price point is becoming quite hard to justify in my eyes, especially when some competitors benefit from some new modern technologies and programming techniques, whereas PS is lagging behing in terms of performance...
Warren Heaton