Constantly evolving Photoshop for the future

Adobe Photoshop has become an essential tool for designers over the past 25 years, and technology has made Photoshop a nearly dramatic change in the past 5 years--or hardening. At the same time, Photoshop is facing more competition to cope with the fast-changing market demand, so what will Photoshop look like in the future? Web Designer Depot interviewed the senior product manager at Adobe Photoshop today, Stephen Nielson, chatted about the future of PS.

Note: In the next interview, both names are used in initials, webdesigner Depot = WD, Stephen Nielson = SN.

　　The popularity of Photoshop

Wd:ps last year just over 25 years old, it can be said to be a well-deserved Adobe flagship product, it has changed from a simple noun to a special verb, such a unique product, whether should assume more responsibilities and obligations?

SN: Of course. A product that is so widely recognized and loved, naturally, has the right to speak more than any other product and the responsibility that must be shouldered so as not to live up to the success of the past 25 years. Millions of users are using Photoshop at the same time, which makes any changes to Photoshop face a high risk. For us, this means having to do the right thing, do quality control, and build High-quality software. Of course, we also cherish the opportunity to make this excellent software, become more irreplaceable.

WD: The latest version of Photoshop is running very fast, is the development team writing back most of the code? or is there any other secret behind this acceleration?

SN: As a 25-year lifetime of software, Photoshop code is almost non-stop to be rewritten! With almost every version upgraded, the schema design team rewrites the code once. But the benefits are obvious, especially in 2016, when architectural tweaks and code rewriting make the software progress very clearly, and you'll see more new features in the upcoming updates, so stay tuned.

WD: Despite the competition from new tools such as sketch and Affinity Photo, most web designers will choose Photoshop, and why is it enduring?

The energy of Sn:photoshop is derived from its powerful and malleable function. It can create almost everything, customize everything, and link to a large number of different types of documents. We will try to respond to customer needs, improve workflow, and try to build reliable standards for the industry, this is our historical tradition. Recently, we get user feedback faster through the new subscription model, which is why our PS version is updated more frequently. In addition, we use Creative cloud services as far as possible to explore new ways and channels of cooperation. We have the world's best imaging research engineers and scientists, we have enough research on the font, the latest font similarity Filter was born on this basis.

　　New features of Photoshop

WD: When it comes to fonts and similar fonts that filter these new features, have you considered adding a font-matching feature? This should be seen as a deeper collaboration with Typekit?

SN: At the moment we are not ready to release anything more, but we have an in-depth collaboration with every Adobe font team, including the familiar typekit. We know that font and font management are extremely important for designers. We like to integrate existing fonts and make up for broken fonts, and we've been exploring new ways to manage fonts.

Wd:photoshop has hundreds of new features, from style generation to 3D printing, have you ever considered some of these features stripped out to make a separate application to keep Photoshop core functionality?

SN: In fact we often do such a thing. Lightrom is a separate photographic post-special application, Project Comet has become a prototype tool for Web and mobile app design. Still, people like to use Photoshop to get everything done, so we try to make it easier and easier to customize.

WD: Recently added functionality, the Glyphs Control panel functions seem to come from the needs of the community. Does Photoshop's development team have a long-term plan, or is it designed to be developed for the needs of the designer?

SN: Both! As I said earlier, we will always listen to feedback from the user in a variety of ways, and we will take every feedback seriously. Glyphs Control Panel is really from the user needs, and we have to respond to the needs of the user long-term planning, we have to feedback the problem in fact we have considered, and even consider more, which also makes the solution we put forward can solve more problems. If you take a closer look at the new features we offer, we will find that they can handle problems that are beyond your imagination.

Photoshop and responsive Design

WD: Multi-artboard is one of the new features of Photoshop, which is an integral part of the design process of responsive web design. How are you going to get into this tool when the new revolutionary responsive design feature comes in?

SN: We have been accumulating and gathering information on various design trends, including responsive design, and looking for possible solutions for the future. As far as multiple artboards are concerned, a small team completes the original version, and then we open a private group on the slack to manage the development and carefully select a group of volunteers as test users. This group has almost every day to communicate, a new version every week. When we need more extensive testing, such as the design space function, we will directly release the technical preview version. We will also give feedback on the site to allow users to submit new features, even to vote and discuss. We are also very active on Twitter today, and we have a lot of feedback here.

WD: We're very excited about project Comet coming out in the next few months, how much Comet will be integrated into Photoshop and linked to it?

Sn:project Comet is a great compliment. We are now working closely with the team to communicate with each other to ensure that each important and compelling process between Photoshop and comet is seamless and easy-to-use. Part of it is obvious, and part of it is the need to carefully analyze the screening, through testing to comb the perfect. Photoshop and Comet will have the most intimate connections between programs.

Wd:photoshop now has a highly consistent UI with other CC series apps, will we see a highly integrated UI application in the future?

SN: Yes, actually, we began to focus on this from the earliest creative suite. But more importantly, we are trying to make Adobe's family of products a unified and consistent perception of the user.

　The future of Photoshop

WD: Now in Photoshop's welcome interface, the personalized tutorials will be recommended according to the user's personal usage habits. Will we see personalized UI setup options in the future, such as recommending tools and panel layouts based on the features you used last time?

SN: This is a very high probability. The Adobe and Photoshop teams are all trying to incorporate machine learning into the software, which is necessary. The main challenge is how to provide personalized and valuable advice to users without giving them a "surprise". The balance between the two is very important.

WD: In another 25 years, will Photoshop still be an industry standard?

SN: Of course it is. Although it's not possible to predict what will look like after 25 Photoshop, Photoshop is sure to keep working on the forefront of creative design. To celebrate the 25 anniversary, we have recommended 25 artists within 25 years of age whose work is stunning, and this is the feature of the new generation of designers and artists.

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• PS Getting Started Tutorial