I think what gamma673 is saying is that he/she does photography and image processing for pleasure, and so it ought to be pleasurable to use.
Unfortunately, as products progress inevitably old capabilities will occasionally be left behind. Quite often product developers find ways to advance functionality without removing the old abilities, but sometimes they just have to remove things in the process.
For users, especially those who have made the deprecated functionality a central part of their workflow, such deprecation can be difficult, for several reasons:
1. We all have an inherent resistance to change. This is actually quite unhealthy - we tend to resist precisely that which keeps our minds young and flexible. Adapting to change is one of the best ways to keep one's brain firing on all cylinders. But it feels difficult, like exercise - which is precisely what it is.
2. Occasionally we find (combinations of) features/functions that work particularly well for us. So well that we tend to think that anyone would be an idiot for not doing things that way, even if most actually don't. VERY occasionally these things we rely upon are the very things that get changed or removed and we don't see a clear way to do the work another way. Sometimes there really isn't a good way. Then we complain.
An anecdote:
A few years ago the Camera Raw team removed an overall "defringing" feature that I liked. As I am particularly sensitive to "moire" color from de-Bayering at the contrasty edges of things, this was the perfect function for me to get rid of that moire color aberration, and so I enabled the defringing and saved it as my default.
The Adobe team then "replaced" this function with something they clearly thought was better - a de-fringing feature with two sliders with settings and color ranges. Unfortunately, though it might do the job of de-fringing better, the new feature DIDN'T actually replace the old feature for exactly what it was doing for me - minimizing the moire color noise. And so my conversions ever after have started out with more moire color aberrations than I have liked.
Thing is, Camera Raw also actually has a Moire Reduction feature in the Adjustment Brush tool - which DOES work but isn't configurable to be used by default, nor is it quick to run (which is probably why it doesn't show up as a main control). So the team clearly felt they had moire color noise covered, and concentrated on making the de-fringing feature a better de-fringing feature. Understandable.
However, ever since that change I have gotten more moire color noise in my conversions with my default settings than I had before. I also get a little more color detail in the images, so tiny colored things like stars and stripes in US flags come out better - the change was not all downside. But as recently as yesterday I found myself taking time painting out moire color noise in an image of sailboats.
Bottom line: Life didn't end, and I just had to learn to deal with the problem a different way - a way that actually costs me a little more time occasionally, but which also comes with an upside - my color detail may be a little better. Are my images better overall? I actually think so.
C'est la vie.
-Noel
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