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Photoshop's challenges with focus, pt. 2

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Re: Photoshop's challenges with focus, pt. 2

#51

Post by esafak »

ndiddy wrote: post #47
jacobolus wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds plausible. Most of the features are kind of gimmicky bolt-ons added piecemeal and not really integrated with each-other. They make for cool 10-second demos but then most users ignore them because they aren't part of a coherent system. The result is a menu after menu of gimmicks, like a cabinet of hyper-specialized kitchen tools bought from infomercials. There has been limited product vision about the core…

Microsoft actually does a fairly good job with this. Here's a part of a talk that goes over a single feature in PowerPoint (a slide animation that morphs the contents of one slide into a different slide) and demonstrates how this feature interacts with the enormous existing PowerPoint feature set in interesting ways. https://youtu.be/_3loq22TxSc?t=1409 It's obviously a stupid gimmicky feature but whatever team Micros…

Thanks for sharing that fascinating video! It seems like a fair bit of work went into it. One criticism I have is that it is undiscoverable and opaque; it is not obvious how it is going to behave. I wonder how many users are aware of it.

Re: Photoshop's challenges with focus, pt. 2

#52

Post by MontagFTB »

tobr wrote: post #45
MontagFTB wrote: post #24

Hey all- I am Foster Brereton and Principal Scientist for this UI effort. Suffice it to say, the article and this thread have had their impact on the people behind the software. We are aware we got a lot of things wrong. As the primary technical lead on the UI migration, a lot of the implementation details ultimately fall up to me. Two things I can tell you: the engineering team does care about Photoshop (I’ve been o…

Kudos for engaging! It’s been a while since I used Photoshop on a daily basis, but my impression was always that the UI felt a bit stuck in time. Like no one had thought about how to make little things in the UI better in a way that improves daily work. You’d see new ideas crammed in on top, but very little refinement of what was already there. (Is the ”Wind” filter still only possible to apply left or right, not up…

Thank you for the constructive feedback. I agree power users are a "keystone species" and improving their workflows will benefit everyone.

Improving existing workflows without disrupting them is extremely hard to do, and often "improvement" is in the eye of the beholder. To be clear, I am not excusing issues within the application that we must fix. The team is working hard across multiple departments to gain consensus on how best to move Photoshop forward, including gathering feedback from users.

Re: Photoshop's challenges with focus, pt. 2

#53

Post by pkcoskfiwjfj »

freedomben wrote: post #40
Neywiny wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So just to confirm, Photoshop is willing to ship regressed products to paying customers and views that as preferable to just not doing that?

I'm far from an adobe fan, but I feel the need to defend them just a little here. Everyone with non-trivial software has to do this to some extent. Perfection just isn't possible. The real measure is in where the company finds the balance. I think Adobe needs to tilt toward the perfection a bit more, but this is not something that people can do unilaterally without buy in from the very top of the chain, which I'm gue…

Yeah, but there’s a world of difference between “not perfect” and “we rounded a few sliders, and now the modal is a nightmare to use”.

Rolling out a new UI for such a staple piece of software is smart. But doing it the way they are doing is absurd. Why even release it when you have basically nothing to show besides a broken modal, rounded sliders and a couple things made thicker? That’s not being mindful, that’s just someone’s unfinished staging build that got pushed to production by mistake. It’s insane that they’re doing this to Photoshop (of all apps). And honestly, quite insaner that anyone would defend anything from Adobe after all the crap they’ve pulled (and continue to pull) over the years.

They are wrong. They are going about it the wrong way. And paying customers deserve a hell of a lot more. Adobe OWES us a better treatment. Big time.

And unfortunately Photoshop very much is the monopoly many think it is. Those complaining about Photoshop being hobbled because it can’t hallucinate AI slop are not Adobe’s target audience and main source of income. Adobe’s only as crap as it is now exactly because it knows it holds basically the entire graphic design industry in a stranglehold. No other apps are currently even close to Adobe’s in terms of compatibility, functionality and support—unfortunately. I wish someone would come and claim Adobe’s crown, but that is simply not happening.

Re: Photoshop's challenges with focus, pt. 2

#54

Post by MontagFTB »

freedomben wrote: post #39
MontagFTB wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a word: they were. We do use Photoshop (though not to the level or extent of most users) and noticed the regressions. Shipping software is in perennial tension between getting it perfect and getting it out the door. Going forward, we would like them fixed, too. Personally my hope is the message from user feedback like this is heard loud and clear, and we respond appropriately.

Disclosing my bias up front: I think Adobe is an evil company and I actively avoid them. This is not personal against Adobe employees however. I know there are a lot of people who want things to be better and work their asses off toward that goal. Indeed, I don't think most people can appreciate how hard the tension is between shipping and perfection. As a fellow perfectionist, it kills me to ship things that I know…

Thank you. Differing opinions of Adobe aside, you sound like the kind of engineer I'd enjoy a beer with.

Re: Photoshop's challenges with focus, pt. 2

#55

Post by bcjdjsndon »

notglossy wrote: post #44
MontagFTB wrote: post #24

Hey all- I am Foster Brereton and Principal Scientist for this UI effort. Suffice it to say, the article and this thread have had their impact on the people behind the software. We are aware we got a lot of things wrong. As the primary technical lead on the UI migration, a lot of the implementation details ultimately fall up to me. Two things I can tell you: the engineering team does care about Photoshop (I’ve been o…

With all due respect, the customer doesn’t care. You served a raw turkey on Thanksgiving and act like there is nothing that could be done to remedy this. Under no circumstances was leaving it in the oven longer an option for some reason. You knew it was raw, so why did you serve it? I keep seeing the same issue over and over again with other companies as well. “Sorry you are disappointed but our internal processes, o…

[flagged]

Re: Photoshop's challenges with focus, pt. 2

#56

Post by pkcoskfiwjfj »

MontagFTB wrote: post #52
tobr wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kudos for engaging! It’s been a while since I used Photoshop on a daily basis, but my impression was always that the UI felt a bit stuck in time. Like no one had thought about how to make little things in the UI better in a way that improves daily work. You’d see new ideas crammed in on top, but very little refinement of what was already there. (Is the ”Wind” filter still only possible to apply left or right, not up…

Thank you for the constructive feedback. I agree power users are a "keystone species" and improving their workflows will benefit everyone. Improving existing workflows without disrupting them is extremely hard to do, and often "improvement" is in the eye of the beholder. To be clear, I am not excusing issues within the application that we must fix. The team is working hard across multiple departments to gain consensu…

Clearly broken and unfinished modals such as those in the blog post don’t require much more than a couple of devs to fix, and yet this behaviour is still present in the latest version shipped to customers.

I find it hard to believe that the team is “working hard” to gain consensus on how best to move forward when such simple things make it to production.

Does anyone at Adobe ACTUALLY use Photoshop? Didn’t anyone stop for a moment to think that shipping in such a taste was a terrible idea?

Re: Photoshop's challenges with focus, pt. 2

#57

Post by xg15 »

bondarchuk wrote: post #11
xg15 wrote: post #5

Not a Photoshop user, so I may be misinterpreting that, but doesn't this outright remove some functionality from the hue/saturation panel? That "global colors" dropdown seems to be gone and the two "before/after" color bars were somehow merged into one. This looks like it would require deeper changes to a user's workflow. (Of course the missing focus/tab functionality does the same in breaking keyboard-driven workflo…

No it's just the contents of the dropdown menu (master red yellow green cyan blue magenta) split out into radio buttons.

Ah, that makes sense. I didn't realize from the screenshot that the colored circles are radio buttons.

If the change for the "before/after" color bars only removes the gray space between the bars, I think this is an improvement. Found it surprisingly hard to determine if the color bars are identical with that space inbetween. Maybe there is some unintended optical illusion at play.

Re: Photoshop's challenges with focus, pt. 2

#58

Post by somebehemoth »

freedomben wrote: post #39
MontagFTB wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a word: they were. We do use Photoshop (though not to the level or extent of most users) and noticed the regressions. Shipping software is in perennial tension between getting it perfect and getting it out the door. Going forward, we would like them fixed, too. Personally my hope is the message from user feedback like this is heard loud and clear, and we respond appropriately.

Disclosing my bias up front: I think Adobe is an evil company and I actively avoid them. This is not personal against Adobe employees however. I know there are a lot of people who want things to be better and work their asses off toward that goal. Indeed, I don't think most people can appreciate how hard the tension is between shipping and perfection. As a fellow perfectionist, it kills me to ship things that I know…

We are not talking about perfection. We are talking about breaking a stable piece of software and affecting people's muscle memory with minimal upside to users. People provide for their families with Photoshop. It is unacceptable to push a change that impacts millions of people and then throw your hands up in the air and claim that this is all inevitable because perfection is impossible.

If this was a startup or new software finding a market fit it would be different. This is industry standard, professional software that impacts livelihoods. More thought should go into each release because of this fact.

Re: Photoshop's challenges with focus, pt. 2

#59

Post by dkdokdoefjej »

egypturnash wrote: post #46
MontagFTB wrote: post #24

Hey all- I am Foster Brereton and Principal Scientist for this UI effort. Suffice it to say, the article and this thread have had their impact on the people behind the software. We are aware we got a lot of things wrong. As the primary technical lead on the UI migration, a lot of the implementation details ultimately fall up to me. Two things I can tell you: the engineering team does care about Photoshop (I’ve been o…

I’m an artist who spends most of her time in Illustrator. Should I be expecting a UI rework to this “Spectrum Design Language” too, or is that team’s obsession with AI garbage going to take precedent? I’m sure not looking forwards to it, there’s stuff that was “redesigned” the last time this happened a decade or so back that’s still the absolute shittiest thing that works and hasn’t changed at all from then.

> Should I be expecting a UI rework to this “Spectrum Design Language” too, or is that team’s obsession with AI garbage going to take precedent?

Take a guess…

Re: Photoshop's challenges with focus, pt. 2

#60

Post by InsideOutSanta »

pkcoskfiwjfj wrote: post #56
MontagFTB wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the constructive feedback. I agree power users are a "keystone species" and improving their workflows will benefit everyone. Improving existing workflows without disrupting them is extremely hard to do, and often "improvement" is in the eye of the beholder. To be clear, I am not excusing issues within the application that we must fix. The team is working hard across multiple departments to gain consensu…

Clearly broken and unfinished modals such as those in the blog post don’t require much more than a couple of devs to fix, and yet this behaviour is still present in the latest version shipped to customers. I find it hard to believe that the team is “working hard” to gain consensus on how best to move forward when such simple things make it to production. Does anyone at Adobe ACTUALLY use Photoshop? Didn’t anyone stop…

Yeah, I understand how difficult working at a company like Adobe can be. But it's still hard for me to sympathize when these dialogs that don't contain much more than a bunch of text fields and buttons are just halfway done and then shipped.

It's not like focusing on the first field when a dialog opens requires months of work. I'm genuinely confused by how this stuff happens; I feel like a regression like this should have been caught in the first PR review and fixed.

Are there OKRs for converting as many dialogs as possible to the new UI library? Or how does that happen?

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