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> There are many examples of complex professional systems that prove a decent UX is still possible ...and Adobe PS is not one of them! People tolerate its UX/
by nnq 10y ago
> There are many examples of complex professional systems that prove a decent UX is still possible
...and Adobe PS is not one of them!
People tolerate its UX/I because the functionality is unequaled and, after you commit to visual and muscle-memory all the shortcuts and locations of commands and options, you can be extremely productive despite the UX/I.
Also, people coming from the "physical arts" category are kind of used to horrible UX/I... I mean, the "UX/I" of a paint brush is pure horror story, even if you use acrylic paint... so the "suffering leads to great art" mantra when applied to tools too, carried into the digital world, makes artists pretty "masochistic" which pairs well with Adobe products' UI "sadism" :)
- WhitneyLand 10y agoTotally agree PS has its own UX issues. My personal favorite: different key combinations for the first time you undo and the second time you undo.
- PeCaN 10y ago…That's actually one of the things I like about Photoshop—you can just press Ctrl-Z repeatedly to look at before/after a change. Sure it's odd, but there's a reason it's the way it is.
- teaearlgraycold 10y ago>different key combinations for the first time you undo and the second time you undo. That's not what's going on. Ctrl+Z is an undo/redo toggle, Ctrl+Shift+Z steps back in the document history. You shouldn't do Ctrl+Z followed by a series of Ctrl+Shift+Zs. Just do Ctrl+Shift+Z.
- Retra 10y agoYou're just undoing the undo.
- monksy 10y agoThat makes a good point. A lot of software being pushed out is targeted to beginner users and is broken in terms of encouraging users to to continue using it. We've gotten rid of "Advanced" settings and giving a deeper way of using the tool. I'm not suggesting that we should leave all tools and products completely unusable unless you're a level 20 night elf. However, reward your frequent users.
- pmoriarty 10y ago"people coming from the "physical arts" category are kind of used to horrible UX/I... I mean, the "UX/I" of a paint brush is pure horror story" How would you improve on the UI of a physical paint brush?
- throwanem 10y agoUnsuccessfully, I'd wager.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- nnq 10y agoA self-washing brush with a paint-injection system coupled to a digital paints mixer? Add a system to only harden the paint when a special wavelength UV light is shined on it (maybe include the "hardening lamp" in brush's head?). Add away to switch between jet-mode (spray can paint) and brush mode, and you get a graffitty artist's wet dream. Joke aside, with paint and anything physical you got constraints of physics and chemistry. And anything too sophisticated will be expensive and prone to breaking so nobody will use it. Try to make it reliable and it will have the cost of a piece from an F-35. None of these constraints exist for software, so you don't really have any excuse to not do UX/I right.
- CuriouslyC 10y agoI would argue that while the photoshop user interface is unintuitive and inconsistent, it does have the saving grace that once you learn it, you can actually do things very quickly. It definitely caters to its entrenched, professional userbase rather than neophytes.
- jandrese 10y agoThe same is mostly true of Gimp as well. In fact I find Gimp has more intuitive ways to do a good number of tasks than Photoshop, but if you already know Photoshop the Gimp way will seem foreign. As someone who figured out Gimp and was then asked to work on Photoshop some, I found Photoshop's methods to be awkward and needlessly complicated in places. I am still an amateur however. I might break out the Gimp once a month or so.