Photoshop's challenges with focus, pt. 2
Marcin Wichary delivers a scathing critique of Photoshop 2026's 'modern user interface,' meticulously detailing numerous regressions in basic interaction design, particularly around input focus and keyboard navigation. The article argues these issues are a profound failure of UI engineering, institutional memory, and imagination, rather than complex technical challenges. This deep dive into a major software's deteriorating user experience strongly resonates with Hacker News's appreciation for software craftsmanship and disdain for shoddy execution.
The Lowdown
In a follow-up to his previous post, Marcin Wichary expresses severe disappointment with Adobe Photoshop 2026's new "modern user interface," which he finds neither attractive nor truly modern. He outlines a series of fundamental interaction design flaws, primarily concerning how the interface handles user focus and basic keyboard input, arguing that these changes significantly hinder professional users' workflow.
- Initial Focus Failure: Upon opening a dialog, the first input field is not automatically focused, requiring mouse intervention before typing.
- No Pre-selection on Click: Clicking an input field does not pre-select its value, forcing users to manually clear existing data before entering new information.
- Inconsistent Focus Behavior: Parts of input fields that visually suggest focus on hover do not actually gain focus when clicked.
- Broken Backspacing: Attempting to backspace through a field triggers a crude error modal and removes focus from the field.
- Disrupted Tabbing Order: Tabbing through fields now includes non-editable elements like unit menus, breaking efficient keyboard-only workflows and ignoring macOS accessibility settings.
- Lost Focus Restoration: Clicking related UI elements (e.g., checkboxes) no longer restores focus to the previously active control.
- Broader Regressions: Other issues include broken undo functionality after slider adjustments, slower pull-down menus, and poorly designed tooltips.
Wichary lambasts these issues as "awful work," attributing them to carelessness, laziness, and a "failure of imagination" on Adobe's part. He argues these are solved problems, not complex design dilemmas, and criticizes the UI refresh for alienating a power user base without offering any tangible improvements. The article concludes by noting that while there's an option to disable the "modern user interface," it's not a real solution, leaving users to dread future forced updates that might eliminate familiar, efficient workflows.