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Posted on 22/10/25 9:54:25 PM |
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DavidMac
Director of Photoshop Posts: 5858 Reply  |
PIMP MY PHOTOSHOP - Ultra customisation of the Photoshop UI
ULTRA CUSTOMISATION OF THE PHOTOSHOP INTERFACE. Some time ago I read that it was possible to hyper customise the colours of the Photoshop interface. Hidden with the photoshop app itself (on a Mac right click the app in Finder and select Show Package Contents) is a text file which contains a listing of the 278 different elements that make up the Photoshop UI together with their RGB and Alpha values for each of the four basic colour schemes from Dark to Light. By editing these colour values you can completely customise the colour of every different UI element. You can 'pimp' your photoshop as much as you like! If you're a Barbie fan you could design an interface in every nuance of pink and gold. I can't think of anything much sillier to do with the UI but, if that's what turns you on, you can! Frankly, although I was mildly intrigued, I never took much notice of this ....... it seemed so completely unnecessary. But now i have had a very tiny change of heart. I have suffered most of my life from kerataconus, an eye condition that worsens with age. The only viable correction for this is rigid contact lenses. I wore these for fifty five years but because of wear and tear on the eyes had to stop a few years back. I won't bore you with more but, recently, using Photoshop has started to become tiring, particularly resolving fine details. This leads to some difficulty with reading the interface. So I remembered this customisation and wondered if it could help. I went researching and found more details with the well respected veteran Photoshop instructor Jésus Ramirez. I got hold of the script he mentions in his video and gave it a try. The result is just one tiny alteration to the buttons in my interface. Nothing more, but it has made life far easier. Below is the PS interface in the standard colours of the dark grey mode, which I prefer. Here it is shown shown with the Brush tool selected but with no attributes selected in the properties bar. It's clear enough. 
Sometimes when working with the brush I like to assign transparency to pressure. I can switch this on and off with the button in the properties bar. Here it is switched on. If you look, you can see it is darker now. But a good functional interface shouldn't really require you to look. It should be evident at a glance. To my eye it is not. 
So I used the script to change the general 'button selected' background from dark grey to black. If you look at the brush tool button itself and, more importantly, the harder to read pressure sensitivity button, they are now, to my eye, instantly readable as 'selected' at a glance but without screaming at you and becoming a distraction. 
I have simply shown the Brush Tool as an example but this change applies to all the tools in the tools palette and their associated property buttons. Obviously it's very subjective but, for me, a tiny change has made a real difference. And ........... as old age and second infancy approach, Barbie pink is always an option! _________________ The subtlety and conviction of any Photoshop effect is invariably inversely proportional to the number of knobs on it ....... |