Adobe UI Gripes

Petition Adobe to Open Source Fireworks

Tue, 07 May 2013 11:58:00 +0100

Petition Adobe to Open Source Fireworks:

Very disappointed in todays news, anyone feeling the same should go and sign this petition so thousands of signatures can be completely ignored by Adobe just like they were with Freehand, just like they will be the next time the monopoly kills part of your workflow.

Vote with your wallets next time:

Adobe HiDPI Plans

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 18:01:00 +0100

Adobe HiDPI Plans:

Adobe details plans for updating the following to HiDPI

Dreamweaver
Edge Animate
Illustrator
Lightroom
Photoshop
Photoshop Touch
Prelude
Adobe Premiere Pro
SpeedGrade

Bad news for Fireworks users even though it’s page and state support would be ideal for working in multiple DPIs. So yeah I guess you can wait for Adobe to provide this “over the next few months” or you could just buy the excellent Sketch today for a fraction of the price.

Actually just noticed that Flash isn’t mentioned either… no one in the comments seems to care though.

Pixel Bender discontinued in PS, AE CS6

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 11:05:00 +0100

Pixel Bender discontinued in PS, AE CS6:

Release interesting and genuinely useful technology preview
Fail to promote it correctly
Fail to implement it into Photoshop correctly
Never bother to push it beyond a preview release
Kill it and blame your users when it doesn’t get enough adoption

Pixel Bender was one of the cooler things Adobe has done in recent years. I’ve used it on many many occasions in After Effects projects. Never in Photoshop because the implementation was clunky and lets be honest After Effects makes Photoshop look like a joke for any filter or processing work anyway.

Maybe you would have had more success with Pixel Bender if you had finally tore out the entirety of the Photoshop filters menu and replaced it with a more modern and extendable implementation.

Instead we’re stuck with the legacy filters that practically creak when you run them, the Filter Gallery set of filters, the woefully underpowered layer effects and now the GPU enabled blur filters in their own interface. It’s a fucking shambles compared to the power and speed of After Effects and that’s probably being polite about it.

Really disappointed After Effects has to give up easily programmable and sharable filters just because the Photoshop team couldn’t get to grips with it or sort out their jumbled mess of an application.

Actually the thing that annoyed me most was this comment

The popular Oil Paint effect has been brought into Photoshop CS6

I can picture the meeting where this was discussed and the short sightedness of it irritates me.

New Flash Player update pops up, one of the features is less...

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 11:19:15 +0100

New Flash Player update pops up, one of the features is less update popups.

Fireworks CS6 new feature list

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 10:55:29 +0100

Fireworks CS6 new feature list:

Pages can be dragged to the top of the pages panel.

Yesssssss!!!!!

Photoshop: Vector masks becoming completely detached from their...

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 11:36:00 +0100

Photoshop: Vector masks becoming completely detached from their actual rendering.

Anyone else experiencing this? Getting it on two different machines, both CS5 + 6, and OpenGL doesn’t make a different I get it either way.

Flash: Could Save All (which doesn’t have an sort of...

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 17:35:05 +0100

Flash: Could Save All (which doesn’t have an sort of prompt FYI) and Revert be in any worse position.

Being polar opposites and one of them potentially catastrophic if you wanted to click the other one.

Buying Adobe Photoshop CS6 - Pat Dryburgh

Mon, 28 May 2012 15:23:28 +0100

Buying Adobe Photoshop CS6 - Pat Dryburgh:

reconfine:

adobegripes:

I haven’t got round to updating yet but I’m not surprised by this experience at all.

He compares it to upgrading Coda, which of course is a speedy and pleasant experience as everyone knows Panic are top of their game. Now Adobe management would probably argue that Panic is a fraction of the size of Adobe so things should be simpler for them.

However Apple is large organisation, how did the upgrade for Lion go? Surely upgrading an OS is a much more complicated procedure than just a few pieces of image/video editing software. You can estimate at how many copies of Coda 2 were sold since launch and it’s a wonder a small company wouldn’t crumble under that amount of transactions.

So we have a smaller company and a larger company than Adobe, both shipping very popular digital products without any ridiculous 2 day wait.

As many times as i’ve griped about Adobe in the past, i’m going to say they’ve done a stellar job on CS6 this time around - the experience detailed in this post is simply from the mis-understanding that the ‘creative cloud’ membership requires a serial number (as per previous releases) however simply logging in with your purchasing adobe id in the application will make it ‘just work’. Kinda sounds like a certain company Adobe is being compared to.

For once i’m glad Adobe has reached down with their leasing program to make their product affordable and a whole bunch more usable - I’m actually using a version i’m paying a reasonable price for, for the first time in my 10+ year design career, and i’m happy to be supporting the team for their hard efforts over the years. Here’s to you Adobe / macromedia, for sticking with it and giving me the tools to live my dream career, year after year.

Now go put inner shadow in illustrator goddamit

Buying Adobe Photoshop CS6 - Pat Dryburgh

Mon, 28 May 2012 10:47:00 +0100

Buying Adobe Photoshop CS6 - Pat Dryburgh:

I haven’t got round to updating yet but I’m not surprised by this experience at all.

He compares it to upgrading Coda, which of course is a speedy and pleasant experience as everyone knows Panic are top of their game. Now Adobe management would probably argue that Panic is a fraction of the size of Adobe so things should be simpler for them.

However Apple is large organisation, how did the upgrade for Lion go? Surely upgrading an OS is a much more complicated procedure than just a few pieces of image/video editing software. You can estimate at how many copies of Coda 2 were sold since launch and it’s a wonder a small company wouldn’t crumble under that amount of transactions.

So we have a smaller company and a larger company than Adobe, both shipping very popular digital products without any ridiculous 2 day wait.

Freehand: the software that wouldn't die

Wed, 16 May 2012 13:07:05 +0100

Freehand: the software that wouldn't die

Illustrator: Remember… this product costs $600.

Tue, 15 May 2012 10:56:09 +0100

Illustrator: Remember… this product costs $600.

Adobe patches CS5 security hole for free…

Mon, 14 May 2012 16:06:00 +0100

Adobe patches CS5 security hole for free…:

But only after the public shitstorm

OH THANK YOU SO MUCH ADOBE FOR PATCHING CRITICAL BUGS IN YOUR SOFTWARE FOR FREE and not expecting everyone to cough up $200 just for the privilege of secure software.

The main point to take away from this was they fully intended not to fix this at all in CS5 until they got so much bad press over it. Shows how much they value their customers, I think I will “exercise caution” next time I open my wallet for Adobe.

Sketch 2.0 Excellent new version of the UI/Web design tool from...

Tue, 01 May 2012 13:22:11 +0100

Sketch 2.0

Excellent new version of the UI/Web design tool from Bohemian Coding. Something for UI designers to check out while they wait for the CS6 release.

Zero respect for any company that does things like this. Utterly...

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 14:47:29 +0100

Zero respect for any company that does things like this. Utterly pathetic selling your users out in such a sleazy way.

The Flash plugin isn’t something just used by experienced users smart enough to see through this trash.

“Adobe’s latest critical security update pushes scareware” on ZDNet

This with the new Flash Player “Premium Features” you’d think Adobe is trying to kill Flash.

Flash: Amazing how broken a badly coded UI can become. Note how...

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 10:43:00 +0000

Flash: Amazing how broken a badly coded UI can become.

Note how the document state (The * which appears next to the file name when it’s edited) never becomes dirty while making all these changes and the undo stack isn’t updated either.

Flash: Fuck you Adobe. and you wonder why so many people took...

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 11:54:00 +0000

Flash: Fuck you Adobe.

and you wonder why so many people took Apple’s side during the iOS fiasco.

Flash: Sometimes the Instance Name textbox just stops working...

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 13:11:59 +0000

Flash: Sometimes the Instance Name textbox just stops working and you can no longer add/change instance names.

36 Post forum thread on the Adobe forums with seemingly no response.

Had to close and reopen Flash several times to fix this. How hard is it to just make a textbox that works… everyone else seems to manage it.

Flash deleting files when it encounters a save error. Pretty...

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 11:41:24 +0000

Flash deleting files when it encounters a save error.

Pretty much the one thing you don’t want to happen when you activate the save command in an app.

Everyday life of the Photoshop team.

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:13:58 +0000

“Shall we add some useful new features in this version? Perhaps Lazy Mouse or incremental undo for brush strokes?”

“Nah lets add 3D, that’ll be REALLY useful.”

Every time I use the brush tool in Photoshop I wish for both lazy mouse and incremental undo… and every time I’m reminded they squandered time and money on the useless 3D feature.

And this is coming from someone who has tried to use the 3D feature and even suggested it as a solution to problems for colleges. Every time we’ve given up after an hour or so because it just plain doesn’t work.

Installing a Firefox extension can break panels in a different app

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 11:03:18 +0000

Installing a Firefox extension can break panels in a different app:

The magic of using Flash to get out of doing interface coding properly.