🚀 go-pugleaf

"I use a 30 inch display, and there is a ton of extra blank space in the options bar toward the right" - yep, or maybe dockable panels up there. Something useful anyway.

What you are aking for is document specific tool presets. All presets could be included like patterns, shapes, brushes, swatches etc attached to the document.

I'm not so sure about the need for this, Photoshop is not a vector app and its easy enough to load in swatch sets, these can be loaded in with an Action if you want. You can attach them to documents using Events Manager if you were desperate for this feature.

"larger than the swatches in the right column"?

Are you talking about the swatches palette?
And have you tried changing the size or display options for it? What you asked for has been available in the swatches palette since Photoshop 6.

Basically Chris, a lot of us do have big screens and would like to be able to use that space again (in the way that we could with the late-lamented "Well").

Please consider returning the Well to Photoshop again.

Photoshop's interface is antique, like from another era. It is like an old house that has been added to and remodeled many times as the family grew. You wouldn't design it that way if you could start from scratch. And seriously, it looks like it was designed by engineers, not artists. I know it grew slowly and is hard to change, but nobody wants to look through all those menus any more just to do a few simple things. The idea is to make it easy and intuitive, not high tech & fiddly. Swatches palette is too nasty & cramped. I don't want to jump through a bunch of hoops just to save a document-specific set of colors. I don't want to see all those colors I'm not using in the swatches palette. What are they there for? I only need the ones I am using. All other colors are in the picker, anyway. Think of it as an artist's work area. The tools are lying right where you can see them & manipulate them. Imagine how easy it would be to simply drag the current color to the options bar, where it could be named & saved with the document. All colors so dragged would automatically be a set; a document-specific color set. And as Mark mentioned, why limit it to color swatches? Anything that goes with that document could be up there for easy reference. Size & display options for the Swatches Palette don't even begin to cover what I imagine. Every time I have to think, I must exit the flow of the creative right brain and enter my linear left brain to read those ugly little lists. This shouldn't happen any more than necessary. Photoshop is irreplaceable, but that doesn't mean it can't be improved.

You do know, as Chris said, that the swatches palette has display options? There is already a color picker panel that someone made up. Its only a matter of time before someone composes a Swatch panel which can have even larger swatches.

Photoshops Interface is flexible - and highly customisable.

"like an old house that has been added to and remodeled many times as the family grew" - like the metaphor, but learn about workspaces, and all the view options. You can really strip it down if that's what you want.

Apparently, I have utterly failed to communicate my idea.