Brace yourself for Adobe's Photoshop overhaul
Adobe Systems wants to transform its flagship Photoshop software with an interface customized to the task at hand, a potentially radical revamp for software whose power today is hidden behind hundreds of menu options.
A new user interface will help Photoshop become "everything you need, nothing you don't," said Photoshop product manager John Nack, describing aspirations for the Photoshop overhaul on his blog Monday.
"We must make Photoshop dramatically more configurable," Nack said. "Presenting the same user experience to a photographer as we do to a radiologist, as to a Web designer, as to a prepress guy, is kind of absurd...With the power of customizability, we can present solutions via task-oriented workspaces," Nack said.
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom offers a very task-specific interface, with editing modules changing according to broad categories of work.
(Credit: Adobe Systems)In comparison, Photoshop today is unwelcoming and unhelpful. "Today, if a user walks up to Photoshop and says, 'What do I do?' the app kind of shrugs, stubs out a cigarette, and says, 'I dunno--you tell me.' That's not real cool, and we can do better," Nack said.
A new Photoshop approach could let new users get started faster, help Adobe phase out old features, and energize Adobe programmers, he suggested. But such changes are fraught with peril, too: users can be confused or alienated, automated work processes can be broken, and some strong points can be weakened.
Photoshop's general-purpose value
One skeptic is Mark Rolston, chief creative officer for design consultancy Frog Design and a Photoshop user since before it was Photoshop 1.0. Photoshop fundamentally is an all-purpose tool, and tailoring it to be more task-specific could undermine that general usefulness, he said.
"Its generalized approach of being a toolset is the one thing that's made it popular...You can't be task-specific in a professional application like this," Rolston said.
But Nack said in an interview that Adobe sees the value of Photoshop as a general-purpose tool and won't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
"Can Photoshop be totally general and totally focused at the same time? I think it can, through modularity and extensibility," Nack said.
Modularity raises another risk: multiple versions of Photoshop with different features. With its CS3 versions released this year, Adobe has opened that door by reserving some high-end or specialized abilities for the more expensive Extended edition.
There, too, though, Adobe is aware of possible problems. "There's a great deal of value in Photoshop being an industry standard," Nack said. "We therefore have to be careful about taking steps that would balkanize Photoshop...We don't want to get into a state of where people can't readily exchange files because they're using a dozen splintered versions--Photoshop for Web, Photoshop for Medical, Photoshop for Basket Weaving, etc."
Don't expect faster performance along with a cleaner design, though, Nack said. "I think the benefit will be more in users' perception than in saved clock cycles," he said.
The Lightroom lesson
One interface model Adobe no doubt factors into its deliberations is its new Photoshop Lightroom software released earlier this year. Lightroom, which is tailored specifically for editing, cataloging, presenting and printing raw images from higher-end digital cameras, has a very task-specific interface.
For example, Lightroom presents four major panes for different broad categories of work, and optional panels surrounding a central image present different options according to which mode the user selects. But Lightroom is a much more focused tool.
"Lightroom has shown that presenting just the tools needed at any moment can help users manage a complex workflow," Nack said. "With Photoshop, we'll find a way to offer that approach without losing the generality that has let people push the application in so many unexpected ways."
Another major experiment in user interface has been Microsoft's Office 2007, which added a "ribbon" that presents different options to the user according to what tasks are possible. Microsoft Word and the Office packages suffer a similar plight as Photoshop: although most users probably only use a tiny fraction of the software's features, the collective user base needs all of them.
Laying the groundwork
Nack knows that coaxing users into alignment with Adobe's vision will be one hard part of the change. But he--along with Photoshop programmers--has been working for months to make the change palatable.
In May 2006 came some cajoling. "If you could take away the pain that comes with a large and growing feature set, yet keep its benefits, would it cool the critics out?" he asked in a May 2006 posting. "We need your permission to take Photoshop in new directions, to add features that will blow people's heads clean off."
Then, a year ago, Nack grew a bit sterner, saying Photoshop users bear some responsibility for the software's sprawling state.
"We can add things, but we can never take them away. When we decided to stop maintaining the archaic, seldom-used 3D Transform filter, we made it optional content (not disabled, just moved). The tech support boards lit up with all kinds of complaints," he said.
Making Photoshop better for users also could make it a better project within Adobe, he indicated. "No one wants to work with--or work on--some shambling, bloated monster of a program."
Adobe coders have been working to make Photoshop to enable the modular, adaptable vision with features such as customizable menus and shortcuts, or workspaces that let users save particular configurations of editing palettes.
Also behind the scenes, Adobe has been working to make Photoshop more modular. Several modules--among them the type engine, 3D tools, the Camera Raw system, and the "Save for Web" process--only load into memory when called upon, he said.
"We're already making the code modular so that people aren't running what they don't need," Nack said. "Now we need to follow up at the user experience level, so that people don't have to wade through anything not geared towards the task at hand."
Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank, or contact him through Google Buzz. 
It's putting blinders on people.
"Out of sight out of mind" thinking.
Part of the creativity that made PS great is that people would see other tools and decide to try them out - or remember they will use that one to accomplish a task later on - hiding them away makes it MUCH harder for any new people and you lose the 'mental triggers' of seeing them.
Would you take hide all the tools from view in our woodshop if you are building a cabinet when you are just cutting the wood first? No, you see the drill bits, the countersinks, the stain, the hardware to put into it, hinges etc and it is all there at once to help you create it.
Going MS by hiding menus you are just not using right now makes it harder for people to learn - they have no clue that it even exists when you do that.
Tom
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.taphilo.com/" target="_newWindow">http://www.taphilo.com/</a>
The real question is, what is the best way to put all the power of Photoshop behind the click of your index finger? No real way to answer that.
People certaintly don't use Photoshop because it's easy. They use it because it's powerful. As long as it stays that way people will find whatever option they need no matter how deeply it is hidden.
Regarding the comment about the 3D transform tool, well frankly it's underused because it's poorly implemented. The idea is sound and in principle very useful for certain tasks (i.e. correcting perspective) but actually using it is a pain in the fat one.
One of the reasons of Adobeīs success is the same interface in the whole line of products. This makes the things easier to learn, and im not interested in change my way just because Adobe is targetting new users (ok, ok, they say its to be more specific).
If you dont need whole photoshop, go buy Elements or go use the photoshop market share version on the web soon. Or try paintbrush.
I am making 3 backup disks of CS suite right now, I may need them for the rest of my life.
useful for mom and pop. That ain't ever gonna happen. He's
talking about letting those of us who use it (I have every day
since May of '92) customize it for our needs.
Photoshop Elements - for Mom and Pop - will no doubt benefit
in some ways by this shift in emphasis.
As he points out in his blog, they are long on the way to getting
here. And in fact the Workspaces change in CS3 shows is a bit
about where they are going. But don't panic. Photoshop is not
going to be dumbed down. It's going to be a massive download
that will take years to even begin to master.
And that's good. :-D
As for me, I prefer to see all of the options I have. This calls to mind Microsoft's horrible idea of taking the clutter out of menus in MS Office, when only a small portion of the menus you used most frequently would appear. That died. This will do the same.
Lightroom development .
No mention from CNET?
Photoshop is a totally different animal...leave it alone!
I'd propose that Adobe write a small app that would log a history of all the commands used by the user. If you run this for a about a month,
then you can see the trend of commands being used. Based on the trend, you can tailor your toolbox to fit your needs. This app can also make suggestions to hide unused tools or add new tools as time goes on.
Of course, this won't work if the command sets arn't modularized. From what I've read in this article, it looks like Adobe is working on modularizing the command sets, so this should be doable.
But, now they won't do this, they will waste time making Photoshop a dog with a dogs interface. Frankly I don't want to have to move from one mode to another to get work done.
They also shouldn't hold up Lightroom either. Lightroom is no prize pig either. Bugs, slow, can't handle images larger than 10,000 on a side (no panorama image cataloging unless you do really small ones), poor web gallery module, poor print module, really poor slide show module, did I mention is it buggy and slow. Poor noise reduction, so-so sharpening, no lens distortion correction and so on. All of this in a program that was done from the ground up for professional photographers that actually has fewer features than some freeware that I have used.
Adobe needs to stop playing with their interface (or at least go get a room) and fix the core of their programs, put in professional features instead of the joke features they do add. For a company that is supposedly for professional photographers they sure don't have a clue.
Robert
so for example you would professional used (all tools features available.), photo editing mode.
and custom mode which the user can manipulate and change the programme to how they want it set up and which menus they want to used.
But I think in many programmes, the user user interface have become over cluttered.
And the first company who finds a solution to this problem will make a lot of money, none have really done so yet. I suspect it will end up with range of ideas, two of them have been stated on sounds like sensible solutions to me, with some usability issues I can.
But adobe main challenge in as far as they are concenr is keeping it main professional audience happy why expanding the market for the product.
us customers can only wait and see what comes out from adobe
workspaces. It's right up there in the options menu. I don't see a
need at all for Photoshop to be re-engineered around "user
modularity"; of all of Adobe's biggest graphics apps, PS has been
the only one that hasn't required any serious fiddling with its
palettes for me to have a smooth workflow, and it's been that
way for years.
The last thing we need is for Adobe to start second guessing
which type of users will use which specific set of functions. I say
the best solution is the one that already exists, which is "put all
the functionality out there in the beginning, let the user decide
what he/she needs." I could see including an easier way to add/
remove functions, say if you want to remove the filter gallery, or
you won't ever use the analyze menu and want to hide it:
anything beyond that would be presumptuous on Adobe's part.
As for those who complain about Photoshop being bloatware:
sure, it's added a ton of features in the past decade, but I'm here
to tell you that CS3 is a massive overhaul from CS2. It loads
much faster than any of my other Adobe apps, and the total
install is LESS THAN HALF that of Illustrator or InDesign (around
500mb). I don't know how they did it, but Adobe made it pretty
darn lean without taking away the power.
Bob
I use Photoshop as a professional tool...that is why I shelled out the bucks for it and for it's subsequent upgrades. If I have to relearn how to use it or lose any functionality I will drop future Adobe releases like a rock, stick with my current version and start using my Corel more frequently if they are the ones upgrading properly with new tools...not total revamps.
I remember when Microsoft killed a really nice Photo editing program called Photodraw and replaced it with their unbelievably dumbed down Picture it. I saw what my dad got with picture it, nice for a non pro, yet it removed Microsoft from my wanting to look to them for photo software.
Give me new tools only...don't screw with how it works or remove stuff.
If you wish to streamline it do as some have said...just make the install or post install let the user themselves turn things on or off at loadup.
Now I say my prayers that Adobe doesn't mess up a good thing.
so, what's the matter?
have they forgotten how to implement it in Photoshop?
or have the programmers that did that in imageready left adobe so nobody can do it again?
or, maybe, the PS programming team doesn't know that their collegues at ImageReady programming team had succedeed in that task??? :-D
have anyone noticed that in photoshop you can drag a history state? but drag where?
why can I drag something that can't be dropped nowhere?
my opinion is that the started to implement the feature but the gave up for some reason...
www.nicoleeversonphotography.com
Nicole Everson Photography
- by dreamprints July 11, 2010 6:23 AM PDT
- thank you for geting me registered
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