First After Effects, then InDesign and now Photoshop, perhaps the best known Adobe product ever. Zorana Gee, Photoshop Product Manager has assembled some good responses to the top Photoshop gripes here on Dear Adobe. Gee also took some time to respond to some general gripes so you might want to get a sandwich, there’s a whole lotta response coming up. 
Photoshop Responses
1.) Better font browser in Photoshop, please? #224
Adobe: Good idea – will look into ways of how we can better manage and display fonts. The challenge here is with performance as the more information we give, the more time it takes to initialize.
2.) please either make the vector tools in Photoshop work like completely like Illustrator, or just leave them out. Their half-assedness is aggravating. #511
Adobe: PS is a pixel-based application so inherently it will do things different and face different challenges than a vector-based application like Illustrator.
3.) Enable auto-recover for Photoshop, so when it inevitably crashes for the 9th time today I can get back to the corporate schlock I was working on. #28
Adobe: Good idea.
4.) Please make photoshop give my ram back when I quit #354
Adobe: PS does give all RAM back upon quitting; however, some Adobe processes do keep some of the resources running. I agree that this shouldn’t be happening.
5.) Let me change the opacity on multiple layers at once! #51
Adobe: The way you can do this is to create a layer group and then adjust Opacity on that group.
6.) Can you please save the history in my PSD files so I can come back to a project later and use the history brush? #627
Adobe: Currently the history log can be saved in the file as metadata and/or as a text file (general preferences). This is a text representation of what you did – as it appears in history/actions panel. I imagine this request is to record individual brush strokes which would result in a very huge file – hundreds of numbers representing the location of each tool at that time. The history brush paints in pixels from a previous history state – for that particular document. If you wanted to paint in exact pixels from that state – there are certainly easy ways to do this in PS (clone, save composite as a pattern). To save the history snapshot in the file is a great idea.
7.) “Photoshop cannot save this file because it is open.” Thank you, thank you, thank you. #350
Adobe: I’m not sure what this means.
8.) I want the Photoshop launch time to be faster #850, 136
Adobe: I agree. This should be our priority in moving forward. Performance is always a focus for us – not just in launch times. We continually evaluate the product and weigh the benefits of improvements and new features with respect to launch time and general performance enhancements to offer an improved overall experience in Photoshop.
9.) You are the ones who invented OpenType – so why doesn’t your application Photoshop support OpenType glyphs??? #948
Adobe: PS does support OT glyphs and OT features. Are there specific glyphs that are problematic?
10.) Dotted lines in Photoshop would be swell. #430. 316, 405
Adobe: I agree! The only way to do so is through styles for shapes (dotted lines) and also by creating a pattern for brushes.
11.) let me open up animated gifs. why did you REMOVE a feature?! #120, #959, #674
Adobe: We never had this in PS; however, we did lose this when we stopped shipping IR with PS. You can still use IR build with your current PS version. The ability to do this directly in PS would be a big win.
12.) Do you ever listen to your tech support team? How about gathering the top problems that people call in about and FIXING them? Or even posting FAQs based on the help calls. #947
Adobe: We work very closely with our tech support team and all issues get recorded and high-volume issues definitely get through to the team. For high volume problems or areas that need specific customer attention, we create tech notes for on adobe.com/support where technical workarounds and details are provided. We always address top concerns and bugs but don’t always get to resolve them in the next release. As Kevin Connor mentioned in a prior blog, we take these top requests our customers give us very seriously and always leave time in our development schedule to address the ones that we can (see JDI days). Certainly public sites and forums such as this one helps us shape and prioritize this list.
13.) In Photoshop, after using the text tool (and hitting enter) I hit ‘v’ to choose my cursor, but no, instead you change the typeface of the active layer to Verdana. Thanks, that’s exactly what I wanted. #188
Adobe: This should be fixed in CS4.
14.) Please let me customize the Photoshop tools palette. As a photographer, I will never ever use the Pen tool, but I want Healing Brush and Patch Tool on top. #949
Adobe: For PS CS4 we have added a new utility that allows you to create your own customizable panel containing tools, menu items, notes, scripts and widgets. This is available on adobelabs.com. More information can be found on John Nack’s blog: http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/10/introducing_ado_1.html
Of course this isn’t the end all and we will continue to make PS more customizable where it makes sense and allow users to only expose areas of the application that they want.
Adobe: This is a good idea and it’s true, our ability to place grids/guides needs much improvement in addition to making them layer-based.
Adobe: In CS4 we’ve enabled Open GL drawing which allows us to have smoother renders of type, curves and lines – this can be seen at all zoom levels.
General Bitching / Multiple Products Responses
1.) You know what would be nice? Finally standardizing the interface between ALL of your applications. #19, #101
Adobe: With every release we make huge efforts to streamline our apps and offer consistent UI and workflows (i.e. CS4 and the application frame bar with all shared tools amongst suite apps). Suite applications started as individual products and were created at different times; therefore can’t be accomplished in one release.
2.) can Photoshop and Illustrator (and InDesign, etc.) please just work the same? Same guides, same text tools, etc. #36
Adobe: We continue to integrate our applications and improve to make workflows, tools, etc. more consistent where it makes sense. Each application serves a different set of customers and defining the right one to mimic wouldn’t work for everyone.
3.) give the same keyboard shortcuts to the same functions no matter what app. if you say you’re going for consistency, then be fucking consistent. #294, #93
Adobe: Again, would be great but which application would we mimic? We do allow all our keyboard shortcuts to be customizable; however, we could probably make presets that allow users to set a suite-wide change as they feel is appropriate.
4.) Please stop keeping the PC and Mac versions separate. One combined version, one license. How hard is that? #950
Adobe: For an 18+ year old product, merging 2 separate binaries is extremely “hard”. We do recognize that more customers are working cross-platform now and with our newer applications (i.e. Lightroom) we do create a single binary. However, in terms of licensing and serialization, Adobe is working on a plan to improve this process for our customers.
5.) Why the hell do I need both “Adobe Help Viewer 1.0″ and “Adobe Help Viewer 1.1″? This is the laziest excuse for terrible programming imaginable. At least make an effort to hide your incompetence. #637
Adobe: You don’t need both. In CS4, we don’t use Adobe Help Viewer at all and all Help can be found online. If you still have this viewer on your system you may need it for other apps (i.e. Elements).
Tags: Adobe Official, Corrections, News, Photoshop
You should somehow incorporate these into the program, so that if one of these gripes comes up, a user has an option to see and ‘official’ response.
Thanks for the responses Adobe, very much appreciated.
Answer no. 5 isn’t very satisfactory, though. I think people are aware of layer groups, and I use this “trick” myself from time to time. Most of the time, however, if I haven’t already grouped things up, then it’s because it would be impractical to do so (layer structure, e.g.). I can already select multiple layers, so the ability to type in a number or to drag the opacity bar and have that affect the selected layers would be very useful. I frequently miss this. The suggested workaround is about as elegant as the pre-CS4 trick of putting a smart object in its own group just so that you could move a layer mask along with the smart object.
@Jerry agreed, and good analogy to the smart object trick.
@sirkitree what do you think this is, drupal?
@adam Good thing it’s not. That bloated software is so complicated that you have to teach a client how to use it.
As soon as I saw this page, I guessed that there would be NO mention of your plans for pricing.
No surprise there. After all, you want to continue price gouging us Europeans just because you can!
You have deemed Photoshop CS4 worth 699 dollars, and guess what? – That’s 499 euros today – not 1,035.78! Why the hell should overseas customers have to pay DOUBLE? VAT doesn’t “quite” cover the difference.
Seriously.. If I could buy PS CS4 at its real goddamn price, I would. It’s a great product.
But if you don’t lower your overseas prices, I’ll try to get by with something like Pixelmator, which I can buy without getting brutally molested for living in Europe.
In agreement with Jukka, why should I pay more for my graphics software than I did for my car? I could take my family of 4 to Turkey for 2 weeks for the price of CS4. Utterly ridiculous.
@ #15 (”Do you ever listen to your tech support team?”)
I love this DearAdobe blog – such an amazing concept.
We are not just bug reporting; this is not just a beta test. Here, the customer is in control. We not only have a voice, we have clout. This website is gaining popularity and Adobe has no choice but to listen. (We even got a bunch of responses — no amount of phone calling ever generated that!)
I’m so excited because I think we’re getting a glimpse of the future: of nearly-flawless software made possible by major companies who do not dread user-testing… but eagerly anticipate it.
Dear Adobe:
The information you find on this website is worth its weight in gold. I hope that you folks are openminded enough to embrace the DearAdobe concept, and build off it before another company does it first. I have a dream….. of a retail software for the masses that looks like an open source project.
Here, dearadobe has forced your hand; you should bite the bullet and go with it. Devote a lot more resources to designing exactly what your specialized customers want. Yes, I know how much work goes into creation of a software. I know I’m asking for a lot.
But this is the future, whether you like it or not. Dearadobe is just a glimpse….
Teach a client how to use it. nice job
Designer walks into a psychiatrists office….
Designer
“I want to break up with my Adobe Suite”
Psychiatrist
“Ha, ha, ha… last week it was your arm and the week before it was your leg” This is not something you can just “break up” with, Let me prescribe you some Adobetin to help you deal with the problem”
Designer
“Isn’t there bad side effects with that?”
Psychiatrist
“Well, at least you won’t lose any appendages”
Designer
“You mean I have no other choice but to live with my Adobe suite?”
Psychiatrist
“Yep”
Designer
“Okay… give me the drugs!”
Tabbed files in Photoshop CS4!? I can’t stand this and don’t think it should have been part of the default… probably because I’ve been using Photoshop since it was PS4 not CS4.
I don’t think it’ needs to be consistent with the other programs and offer tabs. How about consistency over time? Keep it like it was and let people set tabs up as their own preferences… don’t sock it to me as part of the default.
I like tabs in other programs but not Photoshop because I’m always dragging elements between files and don’t want to mess with tabs. Bahhhh…. A thumbs down from me on Photoshop Tabs in CS4.
“We do allow all our keyboard shortcuts to be customizable;”
TRUE! good point!
“…however, we could probably make presets that allow users to set a suite-wide change as they feel is appropriate.”
Yeah, but that would take you like, what, a day, maybe two?
Thank you nice (:
Please start tapping into the Mac OS’s powerful features. I know cross-platform development really cripples the products potential, but there has to be some things Adobe can leverage. e.g. “Better font browser in Photoshop, please? #224″ why Adobe can’t leverage the Mac OS font browser is beyond me. I can’t stand any of the Adobe CS font management and access tools. Adobe applications are some of the worst Mac OS citizens on the market today. The apps feel fat and slow and it’s only a matter of time before a sleek software development outfit creates a professional level image editor that truly leverages Mac OS technologies and really demonstrates Photoshop’s senility.
Instead of doing nothing because you can’t figure out which application to mimic to standardize your functionality, just standardize your functionality and be done with it rather than bloating the software with more and more features. You software companies just don’t get it. People want fast loading, efficient, software suites that work consistently from product to product.
Idiotic – Open a new document with Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign CS3. Select the Rectangle tool and draw a rectangle. Each product gives a different result! One is filled in with foreground color, the next one uses only the stroke color with an outline, and the third one doesn’t do anything until you select a color first. It’s not rocket science. Your programmers can figure out how to do it, just make a decision to get it done.
5.) Let me change the opacity on multiple layers at once! #51
Adobe: The way you can do this is to create a layer group and then adjust Opacity on that group.
REALLY?! thats the answer.. why the workaround!? rather, why the lame workaround?
[...] Adobe responds to Photoshop gripes
“Adobe: With every release we make huge efforts to streamline our apps and offer consistent UI and workflows.”
The fact that the Navigator was removed from InDesign in CS4 seems to contradict this. And, yes, it’s “easy” to achieve the same kind of navigation that you could with the Navigator, but when you’re working in Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign, it’s hard to get used to not having the Navigator in one of the applications when you’re using it in the other two. (This is not a suggestion that you get rid of it in Illustrator and Photoshop, as well.)
2) that’s a non-response. f*** you!
5). Ok. I can group layers into a group and change the opacity like that.. BUT THAT’S STUPID!!! did you think of the layer structure before you answered the question posed??? obviously not.. if you group the layers into a group then the layers become stacked one on top of another, right after another. well NEWSFLASH! usually a lot of layers that i want to change the opacity to are NOT stacked one after another and if i group them together it will mess up the layer order and make the whole project into shit which i don’t need. so please, do something about it. i mean seriously do something about. it can’t be that hard.
guys. just done buy adobe products. download some cracks. why giving them for this crap this amount of money. we are getting since cs2 just beta versions from adobe.
this monopoly has to be breaked apart. f.y. adobe.
Thanks Adobe for taking time out of your busy schedule of overcharging starving artists for monopolist garbage to address 21 of the thousands of gripes on this website with some corporate non-answers. We really appreciate it.
Also thanks for going back and fixing all the bugs and non-features in CS3, rather than addressing them in future versions and charging us another $1000 for releases that introduce different bugs and have even more backwards user interfaces like CS4. Oh wait you’re not doing that my mistake.
re #8
SLOWED load time is caused by the “licensing service” software that is wholly unessary to operation It probably reduces “casual piracy” but has in no way stopped the piracy that concerns adobe. It merely serves to annoy paying customers… sometimes into finding other software. DRMfascism is ALWAYS counter productive. Hopefully those who believe it to be a good plan despite ever growing evidence to the contrary will soon abandon torturing clients.
A savvy user can prevent the DRM bloatware from being installed.
CS4 applications load MUCH FASTER when installed without DRM bloatware.
I would offer instructions but adobe would change tactics and I am happy being able to improve my own load time.
Sure it violates the license, but I paid for it, and MY time is valuable, I do not have patience to spare, and I am the sole arbiter of what is allowed to run on MY hardware.
4). I would like to use my two CS4 suite activations on my Mac and my Windows laptop. I dont care if they are slightly different between the platforms that others are pointing out i just dont want to fork out more money for a windows version of something i already have on the mac. Jesus. I dont buy different cars for different bloody weather every time i want to drive so why should i have to fork out twice because of a limited and pathetic licence system.
13.) In Photoshop, after using the text tool (and hitting enter) I hit ‘v’ to choose my cursor, but no, instead you change the typeface of the active layer to Verdana. Thanks, that’s exactly what I wanted. #188
Adobe: This should be fixed in CS4.
Lie. This happened to me every day when I used CS2, and now that I’ve upgraded to CS4, it still does.
fuck adobe