1. Thanks for checking out the article, David, and for the kind words. I think we've got some incredible stuff on the Photoshop roadmap, and that makes it all the more essential that we nail the fundamentals. Otherwise more power and flexibility could alienate instead of delight users.

J.

Posted at 1:54PM on May 20th 2006 by John Nack

2. There's a link to Backpack, but is there a link to the article?

Posted at 10:17PM on May 20th 2006 by Jennifer Apple

3. I just edited the article to add links to John's post; sorry about the mixup. Here is another:

http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2006/05/get_lean_stay_hungry.html

Posted at 10:57AM on May 21st 2006 by David Chartier

4. Go for it! At some point, Adobe should bite the bullet and clean up an interface that grows more confusing and inconsistent with each new version.

I'm driven nuts by InDesign's inconsistent menu on/off items--some add check marks when something is enabled (good) and some change what they say (bad). Make it one way.

And don't get me on that Story palette with just one item. That's at least an easy fix. Optical Margin Alignment should be a paragraph attribute rather than a story attribute. Then it'd be on the paragraph palette where it belongs.

Posted at 3:57AM on May 24th 2006 by Fish

5. Photoshop itself is built in a modular manner, such that the app itself is essentially an API that can be added to using extra filters and plugins.

One thing in CS2 they introduced was workspace management. I am a web designer - not a retoucher, nor do I do much print stuff. But I do use some features across all the verticals that aren't really 'web-oriented', so I need to pick'n'mix my features.

For example, I can make do without any CMYK or Lab colours 99% of the time. Generally, I only need to work in RGB and that's it. But I can't switch it off. I don't need any of the healing tools either, but I can't switch them off. I do need to use things like histograms though, and although this isn't a 'web feature', I use them a lot to optimise images for the web, making them more vibrant with a smaller colour range. I obviously need colours, but the whole PANTONE and Spot colours stuff is utterly useless to me, 99% of the time. Then again, I also need to use some of ImageReady's controls, such the animation bar, which in CS2 (finally) I could load without loading ImageReady. I really hated having to load a whole new app to do essentially one thing that should already be in PS itself and flip back.

So I've configured my workspace so my menus are only relevant to me. However, Photoshop still loads all the gubbins I don't use. If Adobe could make the workspace more integral to the core of the application, so that the workspace is actually a complete profile that Photoshop uses to load just the stuff I need.

One thing Adobe will need to do is load and unload functionality on the fly. This will essentially be quite a core upgrade, because if you want to load a new plugin now, you have to restart photoshop. In this way, Photoshop's a bit thick, but this kind of 'hot swap' functionality came along after Adobe made the original underlying architecture, which is essentially the same since version 4.0. It was an elegant architecture in its time, but as new features came along, it pretty much been forgotten. Time to give it a new lease of life, don't you think Adobe?

So should I change my workspace mid-session, Photoshop should then load the extra functionality there and then. This way should I need to remaster a PSD for CMYK and printing a proof to show to the client, I don't have to reconfigure everything.

I believe this would make Photoshop on the whole a lot smaller and snappier and far more relevant to me.

And speed is of the essence. I spend more time in Photoshop than Entourage reading my mail. CS2 lost a lot of speed in comparison to CS, but on the whole it's interface usability improvements are good enough to merit its use, but I am using it kicking and screaming... because it's just SO SLOW! Not good for an app I have to use SO MUCH!

Posted at 9:10AM on Jul 2nd 2006 by MrHorizontal