Good question OP!

It is extremely frustrating that the most linked response to the very common retina support question is a short, single paragraph, vague "we'll soon provide" post from nearly a month ago.

Adobe is trying to sell people on creative cloud. That is a big commitment. Adobe should consider giving people a date for a retina update to their products. What will support it? What won't? When?

It sucks to be a photographer and have to choose between using either the best display ever put on a Mac or using photoshop. Because believe me, you can't use both right now.

It would seem to me that adobe would want to keep people from switching to Aperture. Maybe communicating with their customers, who want to pay them money, would be a start.

Occasionally I'm forced to work on my Macbook, which is a nightmare, as the glossy screen reflects like a mirror. A billion pixel display won't change this . If you're a serious photographer use something else.

You folks talk as though Photoshop won't run at all.  I suspect Photoshop CS6 as it is today will run just fine on a Macbook with Retina Display - it will just have very small UI elements.  Am I wrong?

Many (but not all) of the UI elements can be increased in size using the preference settings.  With that done, for someone familiar with the product from prior use on a bigger screen, I suspect that would be usable in a pinch.  I just did a screen grab of Photoshop myself, and downsized it to half.  Even on my 100 ppi display I could find a way to use it at that size.

Perhaps a magnifier on a stand in front of the screen, such as those shown in the (rather strange) movie "Brazil" would be in order. 

What's a real shame is that Adobe has had folks calling for the ability to increase the size of ALL the UI elements for years, even for non-retina displays - for folks with impairments.  Now they're suddenly scrambling to make it work because a manufacturer has come out with a high-density display.  I have little sympathy for the project planners who failed to give this work priority.

-Noel

Chris Cox wrote:

 

 

If the user hasn't changed the OS scaling preferences, then Photoshop on a retina display will look just like Photoshop on a non-retina display.

It just won't have smooth text and UI edges that the increased resolution offers, and the image won't be using the full resolution of the display because the OS will be doubling all the pixels automatically.

MacOS on the new machines offers several choices for how to scale applications, including several choices for dealing with apps that don't know about high resolution displays.

 

So what your writing is Apple realizes there is a problem running programs written for older low resolution displays. So they have programmed into their OSX system options to scale up application windows to simulate running on a lower resolution device.   Things will appear larger and less sharp then they actually are.  Whoop de do. Why pay for a retina display and not use its resolution. Scaling windows up in size is like using 1/4 the retina pixel for every pixel you display Apple scales it to use 4 of the retina display pixels so the pixels is as large as it would be on a 100dpi display.   Just buy a normal lower resolution and don't have the overhead required to scale windows up to simulate 100dpi to use a 226dpi display as a 100dpi device. Waste of money and resources. Applications like Photoshop need to be changed or run on a 100dpi display.

Photoshop has no problem with images and high resolution displays.  Photoshop scales image windows content all the time. Its second nature for us to zoom images and pan about them and also change the window size on screen. The only problem there is is that Photoshop can not zoom its Dialogs and Paletts and bars  Photoshop at best offeres one, two or three size options for these and they were designed for displays that have a resolution around 100DPI.  On a 226 or 326 DPI display these areas will be so physically small you will have difficulty reading the small text and making out which small icon your seeing within these areas.

I find all versions of Photoshop with the exception of CS6 quite useable on my 133DPI displays. The GUI is on the small side. With a magnifying glass or software magnifying glass to see the GUI I would think Photoshop would be useable on a retina display using its native 226Dpi resolution. Its the GUI physical pixel size that is a problem not the 226DPI resolution. If you double the resolution of a display the size of an object becomes 1/4 the size it was on the lower resolution display. If the displays pixel count is not increased the display will be 1/4 the size of the lower resolution display. let get Physical

Chris Cox wrote:

 

 

Yes, and when we looked into it we found more than a few bugs in the available APIs, and we had no practical displays to test with beyond scaling a few things on 30 inch displays. 

I suppose it depends on  one's definition of  Practical Display.

IBM developed, manufactured and sold  high resolution  (3840 x 2400 pixels) TFT/LC monitors over a decade ago. The T220 and T221 monitors were  22" diagonal displays with 204 pixels/inch.  You can even purchase a used one today.   The monitor was a tour de force,  but functioned very well and was purchased and used by government labs and the medical imaging community. At a functioning level it was practical, impressive and certainly could be used to evaluate high res font designs. Its price may have classified it as not practical to some, dropping over its life from about 18K$ to 8K$. Also, its display subsystem would not be something the Adobe product team would have wanted to start writing code for, but it would have been perfect for the Adobe Labs folks to use in evaluating the impact of high resolution on future adobe products. Maybe they did, but I see no evidence of that.

People seem to be advocating high resolution as an unqualified good thing.  Except for the costs, high res is great for movable displays such as smart phones, tablets and other devices, whose use might be classified as temporary.  For large displays and extended use without eye fatigue, however, there are preferred viewing distances that are related to the user's resting point vergence (RPV) .

Since viewing distance controls what resolution can be resolved, the design of a suitable display for mass use is complicated.  Unless you want to frequently move your head back & forth toward  the display to take advantage of very small pixels there is some practical range of high resolution for the kind of work in which many Photoshop users engage.  My personal opinion is that resolution is closer to 200 ppi than 300ppi.

Paulo

Hello,

I am planning to buy the new MBP with Retina display, actually switching from Windows. Now I became aware that Photoshop isn't compatible with it yet, however, I wonder if I connect an external display, will Photoshop function properly then?

Just have no idea wether the retina display also affects the resolution on an external display one way or another...

I haven't read enough reviews yet to be honest, but I read that you could switch modes, whether to use the Retina function or to have a larger desktop. Or did I misunderstood it?

It's from this site: http://www.cultofmac.com/174582/review-the-2012-retina-macbook-pro/5/

"You can make a compromise, and it’s a nice one. The new Retina MacBook Pros default to a HiDPI 1,440 x 900 pixel desktop, meaning that each pixel of a normal 1,440 x 900 display is essentially comprised of four smaller ones, giving unprecedented visual clarity. You can, however, adjust the settings of a Retina MacBook Pro so that it sacrifices clarity for desktop space, “shrinking” the size of apps and UI elements in relation to the desktop, up to a maximum of an equivalent 1,920 x 1200 resolution. We love this mode: it not only makes non-Retina apps look significantly better, it also gives notebook users a lot more desktop space… a huge perk if you work in multiple windows side-by-side fairly often."

Thanks!

JJ, how many people buy a new computer for just what's available now?  Think about how much better the Retina Display will look for apps that do know how to use it fully - and you can be sure Apple has some of them now (think iPhoto, etc.).  And we already know Photoshop is going to have an update soon to use it.

-Noel

JJMack wrote:

 

Noel do you mean that iPhoto will be able to display image on screen with 4 times as many pixels as Photoshop and iPhoto image displayed will be sharper then Photoshops  images display and close to print resolution Oh my.

I assume so, though I can't prove it as I have yet to play with one of these animals myself.  It would be downright ridiculous if Apple's own software didn't take full advantage of Apple's own hardware, wouldn't it?

-Noel

Here is an example for you guys.

Lightroom has not been optimized for the retina display - so whatever it displayes is upscaled to 1440x900. Preview is retina optimized, so everything it displays is at the native (full) resolution of the retina display.

Look at the difference! (Lightroom 4 on left, preview on right) Lightroom is virtually unusable...

(Huge image, so I did not embed)

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/6533919/Screen%20Shot%202012-07-14%20at%209.2 3.27%20PM.png

Right click, click coppy link location, open new tab, and paste link into address bar.

>That seems a bit extreme.  Are you saying it is worse there than on a computer mere mortals might have?

Yes - it looks much worse. When I say virtually unusable, I mean it is unusable.

I was under the conception that non retina apps would look the same as they did on my old computer. This is not the case at all - non retina apps look terrible - much worse than when viewed on a non retina display.

However, I do not understand the logic behind why these applications become visably blurry. Common sense would say that they should look the same as on a non retina display...

I'm really hoping Adobe updates these programs quickly...

EDIT: OK, I just brought up the same photo in LR on my old macbook pro and new macbook pro. I noticed something very strange. On my new macbook pro (retina), in Library mode, the image actually doesn't look that bad. I would say it is on par with the image on my old macbook pro and maybe even a little better. However, when I switch to develop mode on my new macbook pro, the image become noticeabley pixelated and definitely unusable. I am really confused now...

I think the retina display is so high quality that it exaggerates the low pixel density of images displayed natively on a 15" screen running at 1440x900. This is really hard to expalin... The display on my old macbook pro looks so bad in comparison to my new one, that it kinda masks the low quality of the images that it is displaying. However, the new retina display is such a beautiful display that it shows how pixelated images shown at 1440x900 on a 15" display really are. I hope you understand what I am trying to expalin...

1440x900 is one of the scaled options - you have that missing from the "Supported resolutions" list...

I am currently running the display at "Best for retina" which is the 1440x900 scaling option. Theoretically, the images displayed on non retina apps running at that resolution should look the same as when displayed on my old macbook pro (whose native resolution is 1440x900). However, placing them side-by-side, the retina display looks much worse. Images are not distoted. Rather, pixelation is very noticeable...

I think this has to do with the quality of the retina screen. The retina screen is so sharp, and such a bettern panel, that pixelation (visible pixels do to the low DPI of 1440x900 running on a 15" screen) is visible. On my old macbook pro, this pixelation is masked by the poor quality of the display. On the old macbook pro, you can see black lines between each pixel - this is not true on the new macbook pro. So this blurres the display elements of the old macbook pro and makes the pixelation less noticeable. The new macbook pro does not distort the images at all - so the pixelation is there to see without obstruction.

This is very hard to explain...

Yes, 1440x900 is definitely an option.

Any progress on the Lightroom/Retina Display issue?

I use Photoshop for web and mobile app design. I gave it a try on my MBP w/retina display, but had to revert to my 2 year old MBP because fonts, shapes, or any other graphical elements appear as though the pixels were doubled. And I am not talking about the application windows, I am referring to the PSD itself.

I have tried all the available display settings and non show crisp text or rounded edges. As a designer, it is impossible to work under these conditions. Believe me, I don't want to, but I am just about ready to return my new MBP.

Now this may not be the same issue for Photo editors, but it is a deal breaker UI designers.

I am no photoshop pro (mostly use lightroom, but I do play around with photoshop), but doesn't DPI have nothing to do with how the image is displayed on the computer screen? I thought DPI was only for print. On a computer screen, at 100% zoom, the photoshop image displays at native res - 1 computer pixel per 1 pixel of the document. So documents will only look smaller on the retina macbook pro.'

Please correct me if I'm wrong...

I've also got a retina MBP, and PS/Lightroom. A quick summary:

Photoshop is *not* retina-enabled. If you have your retina display set to the "retina" option then everything in Photoshop -- the UI elements, menus, custom mouse cursors *and* the image display is scaled up 2x by the OS. It's apparently a bilinear scale, which seems about right. Because this scaling is carried out by the OS and Photoshop is unaware of it, changing the zoom level within Photoshop has no effect on visual quality.

This also means that pixel-accurate work will be difficult, and may be impossible -- I've not needed to do any on the retina screen yet.

Lightroom's UI is partially retina-ready. Seemingly it uses standard system text for most (if not all) of it's text labels within the app, so they all appear at retina quality. Graphical parts of the UI (button borders, icons etc) display upscaled as in Photoshop, although with retina text on top if they have it.

Photographs shown in the Library view at 1:2 scale appear indistinguishable from Apple Preview showing "Actual Pixels" view but all other image views (including 1:2 scale in Develop view and the grid view) are seemingly being scaled by the OS again, so exhibit the same scaling issues.