For my photo and graphic editing needs I use Adobe’s Photoshop Elements. While Adobe have always annoyed me for their complete and arrogant disregard for UI standards, their Photoshop software has to be considered pretty good stuff and the trimmed down ‘consumer’ level Elements does more than I need. And finally, for the Mac, they recently released version 6 which runs natively on the Intel processor and has the speed and robustness previous versions lacked.

So far so good. Is there a negative coming up? Sure there is.

There is a growing tendency – and I believe Apple themselves started this trend – for a ‘black’ interface. Dialog boxes and toolbars are black with buttons and text being, well, nearly black. See for yourself on the illustration of Elements. It actually looks rather nice – I have nothing against black; I have a solid black desktop all the time. And when I am sitting in the office at my iMac with its great big screen, it is a pleasure to use.

When I use my MacBook Pro however, and this is the machine I use the most, I am usually out in the conservatory or on the patio under a sunshade. The screen is smaller. The ambient light is brighter. I load up Elements. And all I can see is… black. I can just about make out the text on that toolbar but there is no way I can see the textbox. Or the dropdown control. Or make out which tool is which in the tool palette. The very first time I installed and opened it up I was, in fact, outside and it was one of those ‘wtf’ moments as all I could see was black. Bloody black everywhere.

Take the test. See the bottom toolbar? Look along it until you find the word ‘Normal’. This is a drop down selection list so somewhere to the right is a little down arrow. Can you see it? Wait until night time and then turn out all the lights. You’ll be able to see it then. And if you can see it now tilt the screen to pretend you are working in a lighter room.

Professional software like this will go through hundreds of hours of design work and possibly thousands of hours of UI and usability testing. I am forced to assume that it was all done in a darkened room and nobody thought to turn the fucking lights on. Either that or everyone who works at Adobe has a mental age of 12.

And before anyone says anything – yes I have scoured the options, the help files, the documentation and nowhere does it say you can change it. ‘Bridge’ – the library program that comes bundled also has black on black and that can be changed. I even posted on the support forum and sent them a support request and guess what? Never even got a reply. That’s Adobe for you.

If you know how to fix this I will be indebted for the information. If you don’t, and like me prefer to be able to work at places of your own choosing, then I’d avoid this if I were you. Unless you’re under 12 that is.