Photoshop 10 and Lt. Uhura

Tired of windows on my mac 

If someone asks me what I do for a living, I say "I make buttons." This whittles the job down to a tangible (almost concrete) notion. A bigger explanation includes what those buttons say, what they do, the order in which they do it, and a myriad of other processes and constraints beside their color and shape. 

Usually I'm making buttons for websites, but there's the other field of application design that has always intrigued me. One could argue websites are applications and I won't disagree, but lemme tackle one topic at a time here. 

I spend most of my day immersed in email, a web browser, graphics program, text editor, and FTP program. It's a mess sorting through all of it. 

Perhaps this is a fault of operating systems, but with things like Apple's Aperture I feel there's a bit of hope for applications. Aperture provide options for a simple canvas, minimizing, if not removing entirely, other background applications to focus on the task at hand. 

For a good piece of time, I've been using Photoshop in full screen mode, which is almost but not near as good as these examples. Functionality is limited (on the Mac) even though I can perform most tasks with key commands. What I'd like for them to do however, is take the more radical approach that Apple has lifted for Aperture, and create a clean workspace. 

An example of what I'd like Photoshop 10 to look like.
(click on the image to toggle between the concept and current UI)

Photoshop-10

I'd also like my mail program to be like this, along with all the other apps. Coupled with a quiet, subdued notification system for messages bouncing around my system.

And I want a bouffant hairdo, a spicy little miniskirt, an earpiece, and touch screens. (see LCARS)

Uhura

8 responses to “Photoshop 10 and Lt. Uhura”

  1. Phu Avatar

    Ooh, the concept buttons for PS are very sexy:)

  2. electro^plankton Avatar

    christ, I just fell in love with your blog all over again.

  3. Luis London Avatar

    Wow, I am amazed by Apple’s ‘Aperture’, an amazing program indeed, I love when I get cool info like this while lurking into your website. maybe that makes me a spy or a voyeur. Anyway it helps.

  4. mohdali Avatar
    mohdali

    pls sent me “photo shop ” for download to my computer

  5. fluffy Avatar

    Some apps like ArtRage are moving in this direction. I’m not sure I like it, personally; I like at least having the option of hyperfocus vs. multiple simultaneous document windows. Drag-and-drop is still pretty useful at times, and sometimes I’m working on one thing in multiple apps simultaneously (graphics for a website, for example).

  6. Bob Avatar

    the link to the examples is 404.
    please email me if you get it back up, love to see it

  7. Christy Avatar
    Christy

    Looks like Lightroom.

  8. Chris Glass Avatar

    Indeed Christy, Lightroom (released in beta to the public the same month of this post) has lots of these interface elements (most lifted from Aperture I should mention). I’m still waiting for a modern Photoshop UI!