Products · Product
Photoshop
Raised as a usability problem by 221 people on Hacker News over 20 years (2007–2026), in 191 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
- 1Software feels slow and laggy to useUnreviewed
- 2
- 1Software feels slow and laggy to useUnreviewed
- 2
- 3
- 4Tools are hidden and hard to findUnreviewed
- 5
- 6
- 7
Every issue, all time, most people first
Software feels slow and laggy to useUnreviewed
20072026- Photoshop has gotten worse with each version, making tasks slower than in alternatives2025-03-27
- Photoshop feels slow and sluggish, with every action lagging after updates2025-03-06
- App feels slow and laggy to respond on desktop2024-05-15
Takes about seven seconds to show anything after launchUnreviewed
20072026- Gets slower with each update, so it feels sluggish despite faster hardware2026-07-13
- Big flagship apps like Office and Adobe are much slower to open and respond than older tools2025-04-29
- Old files and everyday work run slowly; software feels sluggish and bogged down2025-04-11
Interface is hard to learn and only liked out of habitUnreviewed
20072026- User had to keep searching for how to do things in Photoshop2021-12-23
- Spent 10 minutes unable to find the option in Photoshop2021-03-13
- Gets lost doing even the simplest tasks in Photoshop2018-03-27
Laying out UI elements is harder than in vector toolsUnreviewed
20072026- UI is cluttered and complex because of its many features2024-06-07
- Laying out UI elements is harder than in vector tools; interface is sprawling and clunky2018-03-18
- Flat UI design is hard to read and work within2016-03-16
Resizing a selection to exact dimensions takes many steps through menusUnreviewed
20072026- Novice users can't find options like resize image among many menus2017-11-26
- Resizing a selection to exact dimensions takes many steps, digging through menus and checking size repeatedly2016-09-23
- Resize hidden under Edit then Transform submenu, took far too long to find2010-02-04
Superfluous features clutter the interface for newcomersUnreviewed
20072026- New features add useless clutter that makes the interface worse2021-02-26
- New features are placed in illogical spots, so newcomers struggle to find things2020-10-23
- Accumulated superfluous features crowd out the rest, cluttering the interface for newcomers2010-02-04
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 50 complaints
- Photoshop is notoriously poor in user experience2026-10-15
- Takes around 30 seconds to cold start, slow to get going2026-10-12
- Laggy, buggy; couldn't move the document or use features2026-10-08
- UI has rotted over time, making it hard to use2026-10-08
- Ads make the app slow and visually intrusive, so it is hard to use2026-10-07
- Firefly AI is shoved into every corner of apps, bloating them2026-10-06
- Randomly shows feature popups that interrupt work, and the UI has gotten worse2026-07-19
- Can trigger multiple save-as dialogs; steals focus back to its own desktop2026-07-13
- Timeline previews broken on Mac, forcing a switch to Windows to edit gif frames2026-07-13
- Gets slower with each update, so it feels sluggish despite faster hardware2026-07-13
- Getting slower with every release and cluttered with unwanted AI features2026-07-13
- UI feels less responsive and less readable since the redesign2026-07-05
- Photoshop is so hard to learn that users can't switch to other tools2026-05-19
- Focus handling is undiscoverable and opaque, so users can't predict how it will behave2026-05-07
- Redesigned UI moves things unexpectedly, disrupting long-term daily use2026-05-07
- New UI change made the modal dialog hard to use2026-05-07
- Dialogs don't focus the first field when opened, so keyboard users must click first2026-05-07
- Custom-built form controls handle hover and focus inconsistently, leaving them half-baked2026-05-07
- Palette layout isn't remembered across displays, and saved layout presets don't restore2026-05-07
- Popup modal is badly designed and hard to deal with2026-05-07
- Photoshop is unintuitive and takes classes to learn2025-10-31
- Super complicated UI with endless buttons; user has no idea how to do anything2025-10-31
- Interface feels cobbled together and cluttered with ads, and years of use make it seem rational2025-10-29
- MDI windows feel claustrophobic and foreign, forcing users to turn it off2025-09-12
- Users must navigate complicated, unintuitive software packed with features they never use2025-06-30
- Monochrome icons and missing text make tools hard to identify, so casual users struggle2025-05-08
- Big flagship apps like Office and Adobe are much slower to open and respond than older tools2025-04-29
- Photoshop gets stuck on the Hand tool until the whole computer is rebooted2025-04-12
- Old files and everyday work run slowly; software feels sluggish and bogged down2025-04-11
- Photoshop has gotten worse with each version, making tasks slower than in alternatives2025-03-27
- Can't assign the C key to open the color palette2025-03-17
- Nested menus and conflicting shortcuts make it hard to find and use functions2025-03-16
- Photoshop feels slow and sluggish, with every action lagging after updates2025-03-06
- Takes a lot of work to understand well enough for fine work2025-02-16
- Color management silently screws up colors when exporting images for the web unless it is disabled2025-02-07
- Commenter says Photoshop's conventions are terrible, preferring Fireworks2025-02-07
- Newer features slow dialogs and add ad-like popups cluttering the core tools2025-02-07
- UI keeps changing, buttons move and get renamed, functions buried in nested submenus2025-01-21
- Keeps showing out-of-date popup even after updates were disabled2025-01-20
- Takes 30 seconds to open2025-01-14
- Photos takes longer to load and AI pop-ups interrupt the user2024-12-27
- Clunky and slow to use, requiring learned workarounds to operate2024-11-12
- UI creates too big a hurdle just to get started2024-11-01
- Adobe's UI doesn't work for the commenter, so they stopped using it2024-11-01
- Crop tool now moves background instead of crop rectangle, confusing and terrible to use2024-10-17
- UI is cluttered and complex because of its many features2024-06-07
- Trial continued unintentionally and cancelling required payment2024-06-07
- Three different dialogs for saving JPEGs, each with different widgets and behavior2024-05-15
- App feels slow and laggy to respond on desktop2024-05-15
- Users endure a subscription and dark patterns to get functionality they need2024-02-04