As with many others within this discussion and other threads I have found, the new "blue" interface colour is a step backward. I have never had any problems working all day on AE in the past, but

yesterday after about 2 hours on the "new blue" AE… it became harder to see and more annoying. I found I had to squint to see the property values, keyframes etc.

Ok I'm getting older and my eye sight is not as good as it was when I first used AE (It was called CoAa After Effects 1.0 back then!…who remembers that?)  however as mentioned I never had this problem with the "yellow".

Blue on dark grey may be "Cool" or "In" or "Smoke like"… but legibility / usability should be paramount… no?

To the Adobe engineers, please give your loyal users the option to change it … and again we can enjoy creating wonderful work.

Cheers

Not sure I'm putting this is the right place - but here goes;

the new After Effects UI is terrible!  There's a reason that when you approach a stop light that it's red YELLOW and green - its not red BLUE and green. Because blue is difficult to see and yellow is a very easy color to make out.

Yes, the old interface was much better. And yes, After Effects needs a face lift but not this one. And after all these years, its hard to believe that we can't "scale into" keyframes. Enlarge them, make them bigger. Whatever term works for you.

Adobe should check out how Apple designs their interfaces and do some creative stealing. Though may I add that the new interface for Premiere Pro is just fine.

IIt's really good that you used screen shot examples. My how the old version looks good, readable and just right!

I'm probably one of the few who likes the blue highlights, please don't throw rocks at me, but I would like it in Photoshop as well. But like mentioned before, just give users a choice.

And although Dave LaRonde has a point that a white background might be more readable, I still rather have a dark UI where my work stands out, it makes it much calmer for the eye.

And you're probably 22 years old with perfect 20/15 eye sight.

I work on a 30 inch cinema display so you can imagine how small the keyframes are. Yikes!

I'm actually 39, but I think my eyesight is still pretty good, working on a 30 inch NEC and a 27 inch DELL. Like I said, it's probably personal, so I think you should be able to customize it.

I'm certainly not a fan of light backgrounds. Coming from a rostrum camera training all those years ago, we used lighter colour for emphasis and darker colours as the base. Less light transmitting through a colour (hence reaching the eye), the less legible it becomes.  Therefore text always, always was in a lighter colour and tonally different - unless intended for special emphasis..

it's not necessarily the background that's wrong in this iteration of AE 2014, but the choice of text / detail colours combined with unnecessary design modifications that actually make "scanning" the timeline attributes much more difficult.

I don't want to hear any Adobe person saying that I'll get used to it.  I won't. You broke it.  Please fix it.

When I first saw the new interface, I thought it looked really cool and that all the negative reaction was from the usual suspects who don't like change or aren't fortunate enough to work in properly controlled environments, but after having spent 3 days with it and gone through 2 projects using it, I can say without a doubt that I am NOT happy with the blue highlight color.  It's much too straining on the eyes - especially in the Transform and Effects values fields.  Someone at Adobe probably spent countless months doing Google-esque studies to see what color was most pleasing to the average human eye but failed to test it against a very dark gray background.  Please give us the option to pick our own highlight color or to simply revert to the previous orange/yellow color.

Thanks!

I thought I should make a mock up of a more modern UI and visually explain what I meant in my earlier post. This took a bit more time than I expected and I ran out of time to finish this. First I thought not to post it, but I changed my mind. This is still very unfinished and much work to be done. But it gives it a basic direction of what I would like the UI to be heading.

My ideas are:

Do away with as much clutter as possible.

Keep it subtle and easy on the eyes.

Change the font.

Keep the basics as this is what people are used to.

A big change is the RAM preview that I thinks should be more like Premiere and other editing programs and not be in a frame somewhere. It should reside under the comp.

This is based on my workspace that I use.

There are things that I haven't thought of, it's still unfinished.

+1 unhappy.

I am another unhappy user with the new interface.

And this is why:

• Blue color
• Larger tabs wasting UI space
• Timeline style

Let me first say that I am NOT resistant to change at all and love almost everything you Adobe guys do. I have always welcomed drastic UI changes from Apple and more subtle changes between AE versions, because they usually make things better. This UI just got everything wrong.

Blue color: Yes it true that blue has been universally accepted as a color of interaction on websites. But this is 2014, and blue links are not the only way to convey interaction anymore. When I was learning web design basics a decade ago, one of the first things I learned was that you don’t place blue text on a dark background. We are professionals; we don’t need improperly used web design cues to navigate the software. Neither do beginners.

The blue highlight color also makes the selection of the composition window too distracting, as it’s hard to focus on what is actually in your composition with a huge blue box around it.

Larger tabs: Too much wasted UI space as expressed by others. A hamburger icon may not be the best choice, this isn’t a mobile app or website. Sure consolidating more functionality into one icon is fine, but don’t take a step back in the process.

Timeline style: The lighter gray color of layers in the timeline panel looks too similar to the previous UIs color when the layers were actually selected. Very distracting. And as others have stated, the contrast of the surrounding timeline color to the color of the switch boxes is too great.

I am back on 13.0 and will not update until some changes have been made. I sincerely hope that you guys can give us at least one or two more UI customization options. Don’t go the route of forced simplicity and watering down of options and customization.

Don’t poop on the loyal customers just because some subset of new users may potentially find it easy to locate an item in the interface.

All we need are a few checkbox options and a color picker, and we’ll be good to go. No one even has to know those new preferences are there.

I enjoy interface changes and updates. As a designer, I like to see forward progress in the way my software looks and works. As a creative worker, I like to have my patterns and habits disrupted a bit. So I'm not switching back to the old version or finding AE unusable or anything like that.

Still, the blue is a decision you should reconsider. It really is difficult to read if you don't have perfect vision. I'd encourage you to experiment with other shades or colors, rather than reverting to the old color. Change is good. Since it's such a fundamental part of AE's interface, making it user-adjustable is a reasonable compromise.

I think the larger tabs and darker backgrounds are an improvement, and I love the flatter UI. One interface nitpick: the tiny hamburger menus on each palette read as a drag control, not a menu. The down arrow is a better icon for this.

Thanks for pushing forward!

I would like to know why you like the larger tabs?  What are the advantages?  I may be missing something...  For a program that works vertically, it seems like padding the UI vertically isn't much of an improvement.  Were the tabs too small to click in the previous versions?  I do like the flat look, but padding UI elements vertically seems counter intuitive to me.

It better differentiates header from content, for a minimal cost (8 pixels, by my count). I find it easier to scan the screen for a particular palette, and easier to read the name of the palette. I also personally like the extra visual breathing room in a naturally crowded interface.

I can see your point. I guess the tabs seemed larger than 8 pixels.  I think I may really appreciate it when I move to a higher resolution monitor.

i agree too.

you have to let user change color.

And very very too much contrast.

more on the matter:

http://www.creativeimpatience.com/simplicity-overdone/

Spot on.  Adobe take note.  This is one hell of a c**k up.

I won't be continuing my CC subscription after the current term has expired:  not because I'm having a hissy fit, but because I'm now unable to use it to earn a living.

Agree with the "simplicity overdone" assessment, though actually the UI isn't really simplified, just pretentiously aping a few current trends in designing web-based interfaces (see my random rantings here in teh end section: Toddster Alert! | Mylenium's Blog). The annoyingness of the blue is mostly because it is used everywhere and not just for important UI elements. There would e.g. be no harm in making the stopwatch icons grey again as would several other things. And overall the blue is too aggressive. Simply toning it down/ darkening it/ muddying it with about 20% would go much easier on the eyes.

Mylenium

Yeah I agree too although from the comments by Adobe people here and elsewhere, their arrogance doesn't lead me to think they'll radically rethink the colour scheme very much.

Adobe is retweeting favorable reactions to the new UI. It would be interesting to know whether any of this negative feedback is having any effect on their plans. I know it is early, but a "We hear you" would be appreciated - whether it is "We hear you and are thinking about how to resolve it;" "We hear you and will announce something soon;" "We hear but f you."  At least we would know where we stand.

Seems we all need to twitter bomb their hastags so they get the actual feedback out there.     

We are paying close attention to the feedback here, and we are looking at ways to make improvements based on that feedback.

Regarding the statement that "Adobe is retweeting favorable reactions to the new UI": What our marketing and social media people do is rather removed from what we, the people who actually make the software, do. We recognize that we didn't get this UI reskin perfect on the first try, and we want the feedback. If you see someone who is actually on one of the software development teams ignoring feedback and saying that everything is fine, let me know so that I can talk with them.

Thank you, sir.  I appreciate it.

Thanks Todd, you always give good feedback and are certainly one of the stars at Adobe who can be trusted

Yooofi, thanks for that very clear post with the screenshots. It illustrates perfectly the problem areas in the new UI. If it was Adobe's intention to make the interface less cluttered and easier to read, IMO they failed completely. If their intention was to make it more "fresh" and "modern" then I guess it's a matter of personal preference, but in any case usability should always come first.

I'm used to having my AE interface slightly brighter than the default value and with the old interface this to me provided a nice, not too contrasty, even look. The first thing I noticed when I brightened up the new interface from the default (very) dark setting was how cluttered and contrasty the area with the switches and layer modes/parenting drop downs now looks. It's very clear also in Jeff-7117's post just above. All the dark switches and dropdowns are screaming for attention and to me it looks really ugly and unprofessional. Personally I also prefer the slight beveled look of the old interface, because it makes it easy to discern if something is clickable but I guess these days flat interfaces are the hot thing. I can live with that. But definitely the background for the switches and dropdown menu's should be brighter. It seems that the brightness slider used to affect the whole interface quite evenly, but now it brightens some areas more than others. The background grey for the switches and dropdowns doesn't brighten enough (or at all), which means that turning up the brightness increased the contrast as well.

I also agree that removing the color of the comp icons in the project panel and timeline layer is just silly. This should really be reverted back.

I can probably live with the blue color if they make sure it's more readable on the dark grey, but I'd much prefer to have the original yellow back, or a user preference. It's typical that now Adobe is saying "well it's not as easy as changing just a few lines of code to change that color". Well that just seems bad programming then. If I had to program an interface with a specific highlight color, I'd make it so that all elements that are affected by this color refer to a single location where this color value could be set relatively easily. It's like they intentionally make it hard to change so they can tell users it's too difficult to change back now that they've changed it (even though no user has asked for it to be changed in the first place!). They keep saying "we can't please all users all the time" and while this may be true in some cases, a simple user-configurable color setting WOULD please all users because everyone can decide for themselves what they like.

Would there be any discussion on this forum if the new feature of this version, instead of "we changed the highlight color to an unchangeable blue" would be "we added a user configurable option for the highlight color"? Of course not!

Would there be any discussion on this forum if the new feature of this version, instead of "we changed the highlight color to an unchangeable blue" would be "we added a user configurable option for the highlight color"? Of course not!

Yupp, that is exactly at the core of it all. Though, in fairness, it may not be at all that simple. AE is pretty fragmented as a whole and a lot of cleaning up under the hood still has to happen for things to be accessible globally. The inability to assign/ reconfigure shortcuts on a lot of stuff is another one of those things and clearly owes to the legacy infrastructure...

Mylenium

I initially thought the blue was kind of snappy, until I worked with it for a few hours.  It is fatiguing on the eyes, and the lack of contrast means navigating the interface takes longer as you do a double-take before clicking something.  Overall, I don't mind the flatter look, I just think the contrast issues need to be worked out and there needs to be a customize option for the highlight colour, or at least a choice of preset colours (the new blue and the old amber would be a start). 

Also not digging the lack of colouring in the comp icons, etc.  Makes it harder to see at a glance where your comps/precomps are in the timeline/project window.  Any UI change that actually slows you down as you work can't be a good thing, right?

I've never been compelled to comment on the Adobe Forums before, but the blue interface is a major lapse. It is quite difficult to read. Options to change the UI text color, & to change the background color even more would be appreciated.

I 'm not really for or against the blue, but it would be better if we could change it.

the real problem for me is that there is too much blue everywhere, and really too much contrast .

My thought is that when you look at the UI from a distance, different elements should not be screaming for attention.  Let me choose what to look at.  I don't want so much noise in the UI.  When I see screenshots of the new UI, I always get distracted with all the visual differences in the UI.  Look at the pre-2014 update.  None of the elements in the UI are demanding more attention than others.  It's a professional program.  If I want to see if something is switched on I'll look at the button.  I don't need it constantly nagging at me visually.

Has Adobe responded to our concerns? I am just curious, we're two weeks out and haven't heard anything. This is a very big issue for many its users.

Yes Todd has a few times - look up a few posts in this thread. Nothing more than we're keen to hear your views though. No commitment to change apart from making highlighted key frames more prominent (as far as I know).

THe other Adobe guy that made an appearance seemed to have a much less interested view and seemed to be saying that they've had loads of good feedback. I got the feelImf from him that they've done what they'be done and weren't interested in what a few forum posts said. At least a that's how I read it.

Todd Kopriva, October 17th:

"We are paying close attention to the feedback here, and we are looking at ways to make improvements based on that feedback.

Regarding the statement that "Adobe is retweeting favorable reactions to the new UI": What our marketing and social media people do is rather removed from what we, the people who actually make the software, do. We recognize that we didn't get this UI reskin perfect on the first try, and we want the feedback. If you see someone who is actually on one of the software development teams ignoring feedback and saying that everything is fine, let me know so that I can talk with them."

The initial reaction to the new interface was generally positive at my studio right after the initial install; it was new, and new is exciting. It reminded us of the base Android OS, no doubt part of the inspiration behind the change.

Now that we've been using it non-stop for awhile though, everyone is in agreement that the blue is just too difficult to work with, especially on the 30" screens (no matter what the UI brightness is set at). We've switched back to v12 and will never again take for granted the inviting warmth and easy legibility of the old amber colored text!

Dear AE team. I've been on AE since CoSa times. Feel free to experiment with new UI / color schemes but please, please DO include a "restore legacy interface" button. For my sanity.

Cheers,

K.

+1 on the blue. At least make it a colour we can change.

But most critically, the lack of icon colour is wasting tons of time for me. It's very difficult to separate sequences from comps. The change to gray icons I simply don't get. The cleanup was otherwise nice, but please give us some more useful icons!

1) blue doesnt work. (numbers, keyframes, everything.)

2) tabs should be smaller.

3) pale colorless icons are hard to read.

4) check boxes and buttons are hard to identify as such. they are perceived as plain not-functioning rectangles.

5) whats with the giant slider control handles in script UI's?

6) please DO NOT IMPROVE THIS NEW UI. Just give back the normal one

thanks

This whole 2014 refresh really is a tragic error of judgement.

Well it has been a month! I am wondering whether they have decided not address this. Some sort of announcement would be most welcome!@

Hi Slipangle,

Slipangle10000 wrote:

 

Well it has been a month! I am wondering whether they have decided not address this. Some sort of announcement would be most welcome!@

The only announcement we have right now is to give feedback to our team about your issues with the UI. Have you done so yet? Here is the link: http://adobe.ly/feature_request

Sorry I don't have more.

Thanks,
Kevin