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Participant
April 11, 2014
Question

Preview Button!!!!

  • April 11, 2014
  • 13 replies
  • 39597 views

Hello, I am incredibly upset about the removal of the preview button in Camera Raw. It has completely interrupted my workflow. I don't mind the ADDITION of new features for those who make take advantage of them, but the REMOVAL of perfectly good features that many of us are used to using is asinine and if you can't tell I am rather upset about it. Please for the sake of god bring it back.

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    13 replies

    Participant
    April 14, 2014

    Preview?!?!?!?   I can no longer see before and after preview of just my sharpness/noise reduction settings.

    I agree with stlouiscrash09. . . . "I am incredibly upset about the removal of the preview button in Camera Raw. It has completely interrupted my workflow. I don't mind the ADDITION of new features for those who make take advantage of them, but the REMOVAL of perfectly good features that many of us are used to using is asinine and if you can't tell I am rather upset about it. Please for the sake of god bring it back."

    Participant
    April 14, 2014

    Arbitrary software change like this are tough on those of us who work under deadlines.

    Noel Carboni
    Legend
    April 11, 2014

    Can you describe the workflow you use(d) in which you employed the Preview button?

    Perhaps there's another way to "get there from here" with the new version.

    -Noel

    Participant
    April 11, 2014

    I apologize for being so upset, but it is very frustrating to attempt to do

    something and find it's been changed. I've noticed that there is no way at

    all to see what the original photo looked like without resetting all your

    adjustments. The new "before and after" buttons only go back to your most

    recent settings. Not what the original photo was. I don't care what my last

    edit looked like, I want to know what my original looked like and what my

    current edit looks like. Again I apologize for being so upset, and I

    appreciate your time.

    Very Respectfully,

    Jules

    Hudechrome
    Known Participant
    April 25, 2014

    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


    I remember the discussions around that moire problem, and I agree that, while the new version with sliders made it more flexible, it did enter in additional work on the part of the user, steps that, if the control actually did a job not being done well at all, it is worth the effort. The overall complication then is worth it. In the case under discussion, I say no, as when the new version of Photoshop introduced the floating document. IIRC, that came at the expense of the older method and a cry went up. The solution was to allow either/or for the user. (I don't use floating).

    The conclusion here is the attitude I find from many software producers, which I fought early on when I was doing validation for an  overclocking control. The cumbersome use of the provided UI actually slowed down our testing and the response was that it was a user issue, not a testing issue. My response was I am the user first, and secondly, if I am having problems such that it seems that a user, having the same problems, would not want to use it. Ultimately, we made overall changes in important parameters that, incidentally, provided the software writers better confidence in our results.

    Years ago, I read Richard Persig's book "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". He has a chapter on gumption, and called it gumptionology 101. Just for that it is a good read, and anyone doing software that impacts the user at the UI level needs to take into consideration. This is exactly what is happening here, and has happened in the past. In fact, a major consideration driving my use of given software is that concept exactly. Some of this does involve a learning curve, and that is at the discretion of the user. Do I want to go there? Do I want a degree in EE for instance? If the answer is yes, one climbs the curve.

    As to the problem here, if the new version persists as presented, my potential answer is not to use the Snapshot but to make a dupe of the file have both loaded into ACR but leave the dupe unchanged and unsynced, then all I need to do is switch between them for individual checks. It's simpler than making and looking for Snapshots.

    Finally a history panel also provides this service. Be nice to see one in ACR. Snapshots then would work really well.

    -Lawrence