Adobe seeking feedback about panels, palettes, workspaces, and other UI elements

Question

Several folks within Adobe are discussing the user interfaces for our various applications, and we'd like your feedback.
Do you use After Effects, Premiere Pro, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Lightroom? Other Adobe applications?
If so, please post your comments on this forum thread comparing your experiences with the user interfaces of these applications.
Regarding the panels, palettes, workspaces, and overall UI paradigms in these applications: What do you like? What do you hate? Do you care that the applications are different in this regard? What differences do you even notice?

Answer 1

Primarily using AE/PP with often PS as well, some illustrator.
I don't think the UI itself -- panels palettes workspaces etc -- need much work, they are overall greatly improved in the last 5+ years & for the most part much ahead of competition. More attention should probably be put into other items that need improved, many of which already came up listed here.
One thing, I wish text brightness was added as customizable as well as the UI slider; I don't like the text brightness on the lower and higher end of the slider, wish I could customize it.
BUG since as far as I can remember, maybe CS3 or earlier: workspaces need to remember multiple monitor setups!
The problem is, I snap off my timeline into a separate window, and make it full screen.
Now, if have an explorer/finder window open on the screen where the project & monitors panels where, everything opens fine & my full, double screen layout opens just as I left it.
However, if I open the project from the monitor that say, my full screen timeline is in, the project/monitor panels etc come up in that same screen, undernearth the timeline.  So I have to nudge the timeline window down, and double click the primary premiere pro window, and for some reason that maximizes it to the other screen).  Then bring my timeline window back into place.
For this reason alone I kind of like making a single window layout that's just 2-screens wide (Avid-esk), however, I run different resolutions on the monitor and this really complicates things if I'm trying to use all of my screenspace, when two or more monitors have different heights for resolution.  Also, in this setup, all progress windows appear right in the middle, so it's split between the two monitors.  This could be improved.
Another request would definitely be to make hotkeys and things like timeline navigation more universal among your apps.  I run Avid+custom setup on my hotkeys in PP--I jump into AE, and every last button is different, and in AE it's not nearly as easily customizable. Same for Encore's, etc.  I'd LOVE for a change in PP's hotkey to reflect how it works in AE, Encore, and even PS in video mode, etc.
Simarly, as mentioned on this forum, I hate how blending mode changes in PS is arrows keys, on AE is shift + or -, and totally manual (mouse--annoying) in PP.  If there's one thing I wished was improved, it would be to make this particular task universal among Adobe apps.
I also really miss the hotkey property drop downs from AE when in any other program (c for opacity, a for anchor, etc).  I'd love to see them make it into other apps.
Try not to hide things in the panel's window, coming from "hamburger menu's", I like that CS5 has kept things well enough organized to not have a bunch of important options there that are easy to miss.
Speaking of buttons, I think you'd find it rewarding to add 'fit to fill' and other fit clip options into buttons. They are extremely hidden right now, because you only see the options if you set 4 in/out points and don't drag/drop, which most users will never do.  Additionally, "solo" & "mute" buttons for audio tracks, which are right there on the audio mixer, just makes sense, add them.
Another important one is you need to make everything keyboard mappable.  Like in MC, all buttons and actions need to be mappable--just the drop down menus and the few extras you have listed doesn't cut it.  I agree with others here, the keyboard visual layout would be dandy here.
Definitely a +1 to improving thumbnail views.  Really quite bad right now.  Need much more customization in sizes thatn just 3 sizes, and a thumbnail + info view (like script view in MC) makes it so you can both see and sort the info, and see the clip at the same time, which is ideal for me.  Be able to customize the thumbnail, maybe a special type of marker that's put in from the preview window?
Hope this helps.  For the most part the UI's are really great; it's the thing that most other NLE users are complaining about in their software, not Adobe users.  Often in their forums I'll see posts comparing things to PPro's UI and pointing out how much better developed it is & that particular app should do something similar to what Adobe did.  In my experience, anyway
- wb