Comments on: Dr. Woohoo & the future of the Suite platform

By: Pat McKluskey

Pat McKluskey — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 23:03:11 +0000

God I hate Adobe. Get your Flash player off my MAC!!!!! It’s no wonder they don’t want your junk on their iphones!

By: Hale

Hale — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 23:55:28 +0000

On one side one of the more simple examples that Dr. Woohoo demoed at FITC is browsing Flickr images inside of the SWF pallet inside of Illustrator and then when the user selects an image the main colours from that image are then used to popular a Swatch pallet.

Are you kidding me? Are we on candid camera or something? Please tell me you aren’t serious.

By: Hale

Hale — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 23:00:19 +0000

Dear Kenmore, you do a nice job of making a range that I’m able to reliably cook my food with every day. I’m very happy that you have come in to my home, found your place in the kitchen and have focused in on doing what you do best. Thank you so much for leaving the rest of the kitchen (and the house for that matter) alone and trusting the look, flow, feel and overall functionality of the place to those that know best, i.e., not you Kenmore, because as we established, you are the cooking expert! Thank you Kenmore for understanding that it would not make people very happy if your ranges were invited into our homes only to start trying to tell us that the structure and layout of the entire house wasn’t right for cooking tasks. Some ranges might think that the counters were in the wrong place, the sink by the wrong wall, the fridge in the wrong corner, the lights too dim, and the windows on the wrong side. The great news is that you don’t have to worry about any of this because we found the best minds in the world for figuring out all of that other stuff, so you can stick to doing what it is you’re good at! Thanks again Kenmore for not overstepping your welcome and trying to “fix” something that you have never been good at in the first place!
Dear Adobe, you do a decent job of offering image processing technology (once upon a time you did a great job, but that’s another story for another day). I’m very happy that you have been installed on my system and that you have found your place in the pipeline and have focused in on doing what you do best. Thank you so much for leaving the rest of the system alone and trusting the look, flow, feel and overall functionality of the system to those that know best, i.e., not you Adobe, because as we established, you are the image processing expert! Thank you Adobe for understanding that it would not make people very happy if your software were installed onto our systems only to start trying to reinvent the look, feel, flow, and overall usability of our system, a system that has been honed by absolute experts to be consistent and reliable across a multitude of applications and not just your image processing capablities. So thanks again Adobe for not barging onto our systems and trying to disrupt and undo the refined user experience so carefully designed and crafted by our Operating System gurus, something that you have never been good at anyways, hence clearing the path for you to focus on what you do best, help users to process images!

By: Tim Kindberg

Tim Kindberg — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 06:34:11 +0000

Wow I can’t read any more negative comments! What the heck is the matter with these people?! Complaining about how the tool gets harder and harder to use?!! Are you kidding me? Maybe its because you are getting more and more carpel tunnel in your wrist? Because CS2 was by far one of the biggest enhancements in usability with the new layers palette alone. Look at CS4 and truly tell me its totally backwards… seriously? The rotating and zooming is going to feel so naturally now, and the masks panel and adjustment panel, its all better. Why do you distrust Adobe so much? The company who gave you the tools you needed to eat that food on that plate that you are whining about so much? Everytime you open Photoshop it must be such a drag… “Oh no I have to use Photoshop again, I’m so unfamiliar with it and its so hard to use”. I don’t think so. Something tells me that if your anything like the thousands of other users out there, you open it up and zip around like a crazy person, with the efficiency of an ant army. Get it straight. I’m not sure where you whiners come from but around here I never hear “Well I think I am just gonna make this in GIMP/CorelDraw/etc because I just work better in that program.”

By: Larissa Callahan

Larissa Callahan — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:24:20 +0000

So help us all if Adobe starts throwing Flash UI crap all over Photoshop. The Flash Player for Mac is absolutely despicable, so if you put that junk in front of professionals prepare to reap the whirlwind Adobe! [You aren't familiar with what I have in mind. Of course, that's never stopped people from commenting here. --J.]

By: Markus Selbach

Markus Selbach — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 11:19:54 +0000

I’m looking forward to the integration of SWF. As developer for productive workflows in our lab, I do a lot of ExtendScript programming. But I hate to code ScriptUI. So if the integration works properly I will be happy to give the gui-part of my work to a flash developer :), and put my focus to the funtionallity.
The vision of communication with our (photographer)-customers in their professional environment (photoshop, bridge) is very promising.
Regards,
Markus Selbach
Germany

By: mofle

mofle — Fri, 30 May 2008 15:49:42 +0000

Thank you, couldn’t had said it better myself!
By the way, i just found Adobe on getsatisfaction.com/adobe
It’s very good platform to communicate with users.

By: Rob

Rob — Sun, 25 May 2008 08:41:01 +0000

“What if Adobe or any other developer…”
This is not the time to start opening up the app again to 3rd party development, which gets dropped 3-4 versions down the line. We’ve been through that with filters etc…often frivilous.
You need to add the work, not just leave the door open for developers to come and go as they please.
A much better use of resources would be to look at the UI complaints, and the workflow complaints, even those raised on your very own forums. Develop a proper feedback interface with your customer base, not a one person blog, an ignored feature request archive, a support forum without official Adobe presence, a beta test with feedback actually dismissed.
Actually issue point releases.
Of course, it might not make pretty PR, but then someone might have to think about market saturation…and to be honest the profile of Adobe in the UK looks after itself.
So, there is no answer as to why the display modes for 2 docs cant be held in different states in 2 docs?
Why is it when i create a layer with a selection active, it creates a layer mask, but when i create a group of layers it doesn’t?
Why are the filters 13 years old? You can fill pages with the problems these have. Why can’t we turn off the abonimable filter gallery?
Why cant i position the centre for a radial blur on the image, perhaps using guides? (so i can retain the point in the workflow…live filters dont cut it)
Why does lens flare still have a preview bug?
Why does export for paths randomly drop .ai extension for the past 5 versions?
Why does the crop tool try to autofill a nearest number when the dimensions are left blank?
Why does the warp tool lack all the features that its sister application AI have?
Why cant we make paths into guides and vice versa?
Why is there no scissors or boolean tools on paths?
Why does CM setting default to strip profiles?( as far as i remember)
Why on earth did Adobe make the airbrush a subset feature of the brush tool requiring more brush shapes to be saved?
Why can you select a brush on the flyout menu, but not the opacity? Why can you invoke and use it without the keyboard, but not close it without it?
Why did the link icon column on the palette have to go, what exactly did it interfere with on the new group feature?
Why does the new 3d lack the ability to alter lighting, and why was it even added?
Why does exposure in HDR work differently when open as compared to when saving?
Why do you think people are not hooping and hollaring with the general UI/capability thinking so far published?
As someone has said, it seems the original development ethos of old at Adobe on PS has gone or dropped behind the line. If you had some competition, this blog would be totally different.

By: Markus

Markus — Sun, 25 May 2008 01:34:31 +0000

>”We didn’t just shovel in a bunch of blinky new stuff in CS3: we went back and made a bunch of tweaks to things like Brightness/Contrast (now using a better algorithm without removing the old one), the way cloning and healing interact with adjustment layers (much more control), the way selections are feathered and modified (now in a 1-stop interactive dialog), the way you can select parts of the image (Quick Select), the way filters work (now optionally staying re-editable), the way raw files are processed (more control, Smart Object conversion) and more. Some of these things make it into a feature list; most don’t. You will always be able to find examples of things that we haven’t yet done, but saying that we’re “just ignoring the user requests” is inaccurate. –J.”

By: Phil Brown

Phil Brown — Sat, 24 May 2008 00:19:00 +0000

Honestly, Anne, you’re one of very few “professionals” I know who has constant trouble with printing. I’ve tried to help you before here on John’s blog but you pretty much refuse to take any advice.
In the last twelve months I’ve printed hundreds of images for major exhibitions and awards for many of the country’s top photographers and a number from overseas as well. No problems.
There’s no doubt there were and are things that needed attention, but 10.0.1 addressed most of those and Dave P. has posted some time back to indicate that work continues to improve printing.
So, in what way is Adobe ignoring printing given that it is already quite functional and effective and they are continue to work on it having already provided a dot release to address some known issues?
The fact that you are having problems when most users are not says clearly to me that you have an issue with either your workflow or your setup. Fix that and you’ll fix your problems, but until you’re prepared to listen to what others have to say and suggest I doubt you’ll get anywhere which is unfortuante.

By: Ann Shelbourne

Ann Shelbourne — Fri, 23 May 2008 19:16:17 +0000

>Why is it that people take the attitude of “well, I don’t want it, no one should want it”?
You are missing the point:
Some of us would just like to be assured that our repeated Requests for the much needed improvement of EXISTING Features (and these same requests have repeatedly been made over numerous Photoshop “cycles” by many different users) will actually be addressed this time — BEFORE you allow yourselves the luxury of adding frivolous flashy frilly bits which may make you whoop with joy at your own cleverness but probably won’t be particularly useful to too many of your customers on a day to day basis.
[My colleagues frequently bemoan the constant whooping. --J.]
In other words, please get the Basics right first this time; and concentrate on maintaining stability (with no snafus like the Print debacle of CS3!) — before you entertain yourselves playing with bells and whistles.
Seems a simple-enough request?

By: mofle

mofle — Fri, 23 May 2008 14:42:23 +0000

Here is some tips i think a lot of user will agree on: - More UI consistency and OS integration. - Refresh all the old filters, dialogs, and panels. [Sorry, but those are unhelpfully broad (and thus unactionable) suggestions. Do you really care about us improving Plastic Wrap or Sumi-e or Solarize? No? Then please tell me what you actually care about instead of saying "boil the ocean." --J.] - Mac only: Please take a look at these apps for UI inspiration. Pixelmator (Photoshop) Apple Aperture (Photoshop) VectorDesigner (Illustrator) Coda (Dreamweaver) CSSEdit (Dreamweaver) - Why not read the request forum once a while, and actually listening to the users. In the recent CS versions it feels you're just ignoring the user requests. [I don't know what to tell you. Photoshop isn't perfect; Adobe isn't perfect; I'm not perfect. But on the whole, as I've mentioned elsewhere in this thread, customers are telling us they're pretty happy--more so than they were in CS2. We're not putting words in anyone's mouth. We didn't just shovel in a bunch of blinky new stuff in CS3: we went back and made a bunch of tweaks to things like Brightness/Contrast (now using a better algorithm without removing the old one), the way cloning and healing interact with adjustment layers (much more control), the way selections are feathered and modified (now in a 1-stop interactive dialog), the way you can select parts of the image (Quick Select), the way filters work (now optionally staying re-editable), the way raw files are processed (more control, Smart Object conversion) and more. Some of these things make it into a feature list; most don't. You will always be able to find examples of things that we haven't yet done, but saying that we're "just ignoring the user requests" is inaccurate. --J.] - Maybe a little bit more creative app icons the next time? - Mac only: It's 2008 and Adobe apps is still not using Cocoa, 64-bit on any app, or even planning on doing it in CS4. [Two questions: 1. Which company is shipping the first mainstream 64-bit Mac app? Five letters, starts with "A", isn't Apple... 2. Besides the recently imposed 64-bit differentiator, what functional benefits does converting from Carbon to Cocoa provide? Please inform the Final Cut, Finder, and iTunes teams of your findings. --J.] - You should have an official request voting system, like this one: http://suggestions.yahoo.com/?prop=Pipes - I'm no expert, but using the graphics card to take some of the load off the processor seems like a really good idea. Core Image, OpenGL... [Have you been reading anything on this blog besides this one post? And by the way, saying "use Core Image" isn't helpful, as that's a particular implementation possibility that has pros and cons (as they all do). It's much more helpful to speak in terms of problems you want solved (e.g. make image display, filters, etc. faster and smoother in Photoshop) and let us figure out the best way to get there. --J.] - Fireworks should really have it's own file formats, it annoying that it's using .png. [I don't know why you say so, but it doesn't really matter to me as that's far off topic from Photoshop. --J.] - Adobe could learn a lot from Indie developers, especially the ones developing for Mac. - I must say that after working a lot in Coda, starting Dreamweaver just feels like bloatware deluxe. Keywords: OS integration, startup time, UI. On the SWF panels discussion: I think it's a great idea, but it has to be executed well. Before CS4 gets out we'll get the final version of Flash 10 that will help alot on UI and speed. But it's still up to you to do it right, don't do to the world what Microsoft did with Windows Vista. Please! All this doesn't mean we don't appreciate all the hard work you guys are doing, it just feels like your heading in a slightly wrong direction.

By: T. Schmidt

T. Schmidt — Fri, 23 May 2008 09:16:16 +0000

"What percentage do you think rated Photoshop a 6 or a 7?" How about asking us how we rate the CS3 Gui compared to 7 and CS2? Go to the feature requests and solve the main problems, THEN think about "interesting color pickers". [I'll share more details about interface plans soon. In the meantime, thanks again for presuming that we're doing nothing (nothing, I tell you!) to address the fundamentals of Photoshop. It's such a drag to have my villainous mustache-twirling interrupted... --J.]

By: Rich

Rich — Thu, 22 May 2008 23:10:00 +0000

Although I am not a huge fan of Flash, the non-modal panel extensibilty sounds promising. Combined with further improvements to scripting this could be quite useful. Scripting seems to have not kept up with the improvements in Photoshop (e.g. how do you figure out if there are multiple layers selected as allowed in CS2 and higher)?
I think little details like scroll wheel functionality will play a large role in how this Flash idea will be accepted.

By: Phil Brown

Phil Brown — Thu, 22 May 2008 20:42:48 +0000

Right, Anne, and because YOU don’t see the need for an improved colour picker that’s the end of the discussion?
I keep forgetting that you’re the only professional out there using Photoshop – the rest of us are hacks and part timers who contribute nothing.
Still double profiling your prints in order to “fix” your colour managed workflow?
Why is it that people take the attitude of “well, I don’t want it, no one should want it”?