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).
