I’ve been doing a lot of Photoshop work lately, using CS5. Adobe adds nice features to Photoshop every so often, but I think they have been lagging with respect to some simple user interface enhancements to speed things along. Here is my wish list. (If you don’t use Photoshop, you may as well click away now.)
1. I often copy a layer mask from one adjustment layer to another, by holding ALT and dragging the mask icon. When I do this, the “Replace Layer Mask?” dialog box pops up, which I must dismiss with another keystroke before doing anything else. My program fix: for every dialog box of this type, provide a small check box, “Don’t show me this again.” And in Preferences, provide a master list of reminders we can choose to see or not see.
Photoshop is inconsistent in asking you to confirm actions. There are many actions more “dangerous” than replacing a layer mask which need no confirmation. So let users choose our own reminders. There is always Undo.
2. While we are on the topic of Layer Masks, how about adding “Invert Layer Mask” to the menu that pops up when you right-click on the mask icon? Right now, the only way to do this is the keyboard command CTRL-I. I’m not a big fan of software that forces you to use a keyboard shortcut, with no other visible means (such as toolbar button or menu item) of doing the same thing. It is bad design to force users to store commands in their heads.
3. Corel PhotoPaint (in the 1990s!) allowed users to fully customize the menu bar. I took advantage of this and created a “User” menu heading, to which I copied frequently-used commands. I arranged them top to bottom in order of my typical workflow. The other commands were always available, in their standard menu locations. If you have worked this way, the ability to color and/or hide menu commands (the only menu customization Photoshop offers) doesn’t seem very impressive.
4. I am tired of pressing ENTER twice to dismiss the brush-size popup window. If I can make the popup appear with a single right-click on the image, I should be able to dismiss the popup with a single click as well. Don’t keep sending me back to the keyboard!
5. I love the quick-selection tool but why can’t I select its “brush” size with a right-click of the mouse, like I do with other brushes?
6. To clear guidelines, the user has to select a command in the View menu. This could be done faster with a clickable button where the two rulers intersect.
These are my off-the-top suggestions. I am sure to add others! (You can tell Adobe what features you would like to see here.)
Ah, CS5, I have yet to use it, but I have been taking advantage of the tutorials and reading up on it quite a bit. I can’t wait to try it out. Did you go to CS5 from CS4? Do you use Lightroom?
Sadly, my computer fusses too much to make using photoshop time well spent. I can’t wait to get my new computer. I miss photoshop so much.
Hey Sondra, thanks for visiting! To answer you, I went from CS2 to 3 to 5. For my budget and amount of use, it doesn’t make sense to do every update. I don’t have the full suite, just use PS, but have been curious about Lightroom and InDesign — when I get some time I’d like to download the trial versions and check out what they do.
Having a computer with a better-than-average processor, 6 GB RAM, and 64-bits made all the difference in the world with PS. PS2 and PS3 on my 5-year old standard-issue Dell would try my patience. PS5 on this machine is a treat. I can also recommend an affordable (well, everyone has their own definition of that, don’t they) monitor, if you’re ever interested.