+ Camera Raw Feature Requests +

Holding down the Spacebar causes the active tool to become the Hand Tool. It's the same in Photoshop

Maybe it's consistent with other filter preview panes in PS. But, still why no scroll bars? And, why make us select a tool just to scroll?

--John

Generally, I see no scroll bars in any preview panes (such as when applying filters), and ACR's window is just that, a preview box. I don't see it as being "different", quite the opposite: it's consistent.

I'm also wondering, why are there no scroll bars in ACR? If I'm zoomed in, why do I have to change tools to the "hand" tool just to scroll the image? Why are there no scroll bars? It's not a big deal, but a UI inconsistency I've noticed from day one and I'm puzzled why ACR would be different than everything else in this regard?

--John

A pet favourite of mine: more keyboard shortcuts to minimise mousing on Windows please.

-- Robert.

I wonder if you can manage one post without writing "Heck", followed by a comma. :D

I want to put my vote in for a shadow/highlights type feature in ACR.

With the RAW improvements in CS2 (specifically crop, rotate and curves), there are now a high percentage of my images that I can finish without going into PS. When that happens, that's a HUGE productivity improvements for my workflow. If I can finish most of the images in ACR and then just run image processor to make JPEGs from the RAWs, it saves soooo much time and storage.

But, I find that there are a tremendous number of outdoor direct sunlight images that benefit from a little shadow/highlights. Since I can't do that in ACR, I have to bring my images into PS to do it. It really slows down my workflow. Double the image files to deal with. Assigning new filenames to each one. Double the storage. It's doable, but soooo much less efficient than if I had that one function in ACR.

Before I get a ton of emails about how shadow/highlights isn't a normal image transformation feature like a curve or even an exposure adjustment. Heck, it isn't even available in an adjustment layer in PS yet. But, I expect that Adobe could solve that problem if they really wanted to. It's certainly doable - the technical problem is just figuring out how to make it fast enough to work like an adjustment layer without actually batch modifying the stored date and saving the result (like most filters do).

--John

Thanks for the reply, Thomas. I'm embarassed to admit that I never noticed that info in the title bar. It would be nice, however, to have access to more of the metadata (white balance setting, time stamp, etc.) from within ACR.

I am extremely pleased with ACR, and the subtle UI - I keep discovering hidden gems. I come from a nikon capture background and appreciate an app that always works, and works fast.

One feature (pioneered?) in NC is a more powerful curves tool, that features a dynamic histogram. There is one curve control for RGB and another for LCH. Each curve tool combines the capabilities of the photoshop curve and levels tools, and work on individual and combined channels. The Chroma and Hue channel tools are very effective for making subtle precise adjustments. I find this very useful. As mentioned by freelancer, a LAB curve would also be nice.

Perhaps this is already possible and I am unaware of how to do it, but while making edits, I would like to be able to save the current state, other than by saving all the settings to file, so I can return to that point if the adjustments do not work out. A multi-undo would also work.

I would like to be able to toggle between the current magnification and 100% with a single keystroke and a single mouse click, rather than the alt-ctl-0 or double mouse click, as I do this all the time.

Thomas - thanks for this awesome software - Rory.

Julian: FYI, some of the metadata (ISO, f-stop, shutter speed, and focal length) is currently displayed in the ACR title bar.