P: Bring back the Constraint Crop checkbox default behavior

Please restore automatic Constrain Crop in Adobe Camera Raw for professional workflows

I am a professional photojournalist based in Portugal, working regularly on football matches, political events and breaking news.

I use Photo Mechanic together with Adobe Photoshop and Camera Raw to process and transmit photographs to international news agencies under very tight deadlines.

The removal of the original Constrain Crop checkbox from the Geometry panel has created a serious problem in my workflow.

Previously, I could apply Geometry > Level and have the image automatically cropped to eliminate the empty white areas created by the perspective correction.

With the newer Camera Raw interface, this no longer works as expected. The Constrain to Image function requires additional manual interaction, and even after applying it, the preset creation dialog continues to show Constrain Crop as Off.

I have also tested automated processing through Photoshop Actions and the Camera Raw Filter. The Level correction works, but some exported JPEGs contain unwanted white areas around the edges.

This forces me to reopen and manually crop photographs that should already be ready for transmission.

During a live football match or a breaking news assignment, every second matters. Manually correcting these images is simply not practical.

Lightroom Classic still provides a working automatic Constrain Crop option, so I would appreciate having the same functionality restored in Adobe Camera Raw.

My request is simple:

Please restore the original Constrain Crop checkbox in the Geometry panel, allowing it to remain enabled automatically when applying Upright corrections.

The setting should also work reliably with presets, Photoshop Actions and automated batch processing.

I do not want Generative Expand or AI-generated content. As a photojournalist, I must preserve the factual integrity of my photographs. I simply need an automatic crop that removes empty areas created by geometric corrections.

This was an extremely useful feature for professional photographers. Please bring it back.

Thank you.

Ricardo Rocha
Professional Photojournalist
Portugal

After two months, it’s still an issue for me. While I see the appeal to the new crop button, it’s slow, unreliable and unintuitive (yes really). That new button is only available if you’re not editing numbers in the Geometry panel. I see the missing pixels, but the button is greyed out because it’s not registering that I’m done editing geometry. I have to click anywhere else, then the button becomes available, then I can click that button.

The thing is, I never had to do all this extra stuff before when we had the Constraint Crop checkbox. Out of frustration, I don’t use the new button. I crop manually now. A downgrade, sigh…

What is that button solving exactly anyway?

This was a frustrating discovery while I was trying to quickly get through a series of photos where I’m constantly relying upon the enforced crop-to-pixels behavior.

And I feel like the generative AI removal tool is consistently producing lower resolution results than previously, now with the extra cost of tapping into the generative AI credits...so I’m not about to rely upon generative removal to fill those holes left behind

back to version 18.3.2

Ältere Versionen von Adobe Camera Raw (Windows) | Uptodown

They make interface changes to lure us into spending more credits on Generative AI.

For everyone most of those changes are poorly defined value propositions, and oftentimes break peoples workflow.

Adobe needs to stop shipping (AI) features we don’t need.

p.s. Here’s a crop enhancement I desperately need.

Yes! This is a huge frustration and damage to my workflow. Pushing useless generative AI features to the detriment of the CROP tool working properly is insanity. Why remove the tickbox at all? The lag on the new icon is terrible. Bring the constrain to image checkbox back immediately!