P: Folder Favorite Setting Cannot Be Changed

[Joe Hohner]

After installing the latest release of Lightroom Classic 7.4 I'm unable to unmark my favorite folders.  In other words, folders that were marked as favorites before the latest release can no longer be unmarked.  I can, however, select a folder that was not a favorite before release 7.4 and mark it and also unmark it as a favorite.  I use this feature a fair amount so I'm pretty sure this issue started after the latest release but I cannot be sure.  Thoughts?  Seems like one of those pesky software bugs to me. I'm an experienced user so I do not think this is some type of user error.  The catalog is my master catalog and has about 600,000 images.  I did not have any favorites marked in my sub catalogs before the release.  They work fine but, again, the problem seems limited to the folders that were marked as favorites before the release.

[Update: All of the reports here except one can be explained by the confusing design of LR's "favorite groups".  See Robert Somrak's post and John Ellis' post. Thus, this topic is marked as an Idea, rather than Not A Problem, to capture the concept that the UI design is very confusing.

Patrick Philippot identified a bug where right-clicking an unselected folder creates two folder groups. It has been forked into this bug report.

There's another topic expressing similar confusion. I'm not going to merge the two, since that will hide all the useful replies.

- John Ellis, 3/10/20]

[Reetesh15D5]

We will look into this issue. Folder Favorite and Favorite Groups may be infringing with intuition. 

[CAPC]

Hi,

If you have read my previous posts, you know that you have at least a way to reproduce the problem. I'm pretty sure that there's a connection with other UI problems as explained above. What I see seems to indicate that the UI is not managed in a consistent way as a finite state machine. Wondering whether this is even possible when using LUA.

[CAPC]

> We will look into this issue

You should be already looking into it :--)) . This has been reported 7 months ago.

[rtist2g]

I can confirm this exact problem still exists. 

[Yves-CH]

Bonjour, impossible de retirer et de supprimer un dossier principal marqué comme "Favorit", regardez la copie d'écran pour bien comprendre le problème !

Hello, can not remove and delete a main folder marked as "Favorit", look at the screenshot to understand the problem!




Ce problème existe depuis plusieurs versions de LR Classic ici (LR Classic 8.1)

This problem has existed for several versions of LR Classic here (LR Classic 8.1)

[bhousto90]

As noted above this is because the 'favourites' marker is the same for folders that are marked in groups and individual folders. You can have a folder in 1 or more groups and/or as an individual folder but the marker only shows once.
All favourite selections for that folder need to be removed in turn before the marker turns off.

If you select the 2 folders in this group " Dossiers: 2015_02 Amerique centrale,  2018" , right click -> remove favourites and then repeat for just the 2018 folder then the favourites the marker should go away.

The issue looks to have been present ever since the favourite markers were introduced. Different markers for groups vs individually favourited folders would help (you would still need to look through the list to select the appropriate group in order to deselect)

------

**There is also a bug reported in another post where if you right click on an folder that is not the currently selected folder(s) and mark it as a favourite, then that folder is added as a individual favourite (as expected) AND to a favourites group that includes those selected folder(s) (this creates unexpected favourite groups).

Another bug adds to the problem: The favourites list does not show the presence of 4 items correctly:
i.e. you should see "folders: one, two, three, four" or "one, two, three, ..." in the list but it only shows as "one, two, three" (no ellipsis) the ellipsis only seems to show for greater than 4 items?

So if you start with 3 selected folders and right click on the fourth and mark it as a favourite you get:
folders: one, two, three   <---(there is no indication here there is another folder here)
folder: four
Or select all four folders together and mark them you still see->  folders: one, two, three in the list.
Finding your extraneous group can then be a challenge if you have many favourites sets of 4 folders (the fourth is always unknown until you select the group)
You need to go through each one and see what actual folders get selected to find the correct group to unmark.

[RonD43]

Yes but what if the folders are not listed?

[Samoreen]

Still not fixed in LR 9.1. Are you still looking into it ? Well, I know, I'm aware of some bugs still alive in LR 8 years after they have been reported. So, we'll have to be patient. Please try to fix this before I pass away.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Correct. I'm on 9.1 and it's still going on. Ugh.

[AlexValtchev]

After marking some folders as favorites, later I try to unmark them but is not working. It still says MARK FAVORITE, then when I click it says UNMARK favorite, then again MARK FAVORITE and etc... so basically the little star is not disappearing. 

It is really frustrating. I don't know if it has something to do with having COLOR and being marked as FAVORITE, but in those stars DO NOT DISAPPEAR no matter how many times I mark or unmark them as favorites.

[Samoreen]

Welcome to the Club, Alex !
Maybe someone at Adobe will eventually wake up and do something about this annoying bug...

[AlexValtchev]

I am using the very latest version of Dec 23, 2019 which is 9.1
As far as Adobe goes I don't think they give a damn about bugs or improving Lightroom as long as they make money. They just announced ANOTHER record breaking profit never seen before... I strongly believe the whole team must be fired and the entire program rewritten. It's SO SO SO slow and buggy... Why Photoshop or other Adobe programs aren't like that? Just Lightroom... MY hardware is 2020 cutting edge...

[Samoreen]

> Why Photoshop or other Adobe programs aren't like that? Just Lightroom...

I have a few suggestions : offshore development, use of the LUA language for the UI development (a terrible choice), they don't care because the subscription is paid anyway, incompetence,...

All of the above ?

Globally, notwithstanding the choice of LUA and the accumulating bugs, I consider the overall design of the LR UI to be the best among all similar software. No discussion. However, I guess that all or part of the development has been subcontracted/delegated to less skilled people who are totally out of control. A lot of bugs are lasting since many years and nobody seems to be able to fix them. This is strange. Usually, self-esteem and professional conscience are a trait of motivated software developers. The Lightroom development team (or a part of it) seems to have given up these values.

[Samoreen]

About 300 bugs have been allegedly fixed in version 9.2 but not this one. Nothing changed.

I'm wondering whether real developers are still working on LR or just offshore trainees ?

[dajon0510]

LR Latest version 9.2 /Windows latest version as of 03.09.20    can't get rid of stars  same as mentioned above

[Bob Somrak]

I thought this was a bug a long time ago but I think it is just a poor design.  The main issue everyone is having is it is not very clear that a folder can be a favorite by itself and also part of several groups.  I can duplicate what Patrick Philippot shows as a bug but it is not a bug but just that the A and B folders are in groups.  The only sure way to know what is going on is to do the unmarking and marking in the dropdown above the filmstrip.   

For instance, unmark ALL the favorites and then select both Folders A and B and mark as a favorites.   A and B is a favorite GROUP.  You can STILL mark A and still mark B as separate favorites.  This is not a bug.

[Samoreen]

Robert,

Sorry, but you are wrong. The behavior I described in my "steps to reproduce" is not consistent even if we consider your "favorite group" theory. First, depending on how you access your favorites, you get different results. This is a bug. Please re-read my post. Second, there's no mention of any favorite group concept in the documentation. When program behavior doesn't match the documentation, this is also a bug. Third, if you right-click a folder that is already marked as a favorite and get the "Mark as favorite" command in the menu, this is a bug.

[Bob Somrak]

Patrick
I used your "steps to reproduce" and got your results but if you consider the "group" concept it is the correct behavior.  I have not had any issues setting and removing favorites now that I understand how it works.   I originally thought this was a bug and was one of the first posters in this thread but have since changed my mind that this is just a EXTREMELY POOR design and not well documented and needs to be overhauled.  I have no interest in debating the design as it is working for me now.

[DuanePDX]

What is a "group" concept?  How do I mark/unmark favorite folders?  Is this some sort of cutting edge idea that can't quickly be fixed?

[Bob Somrak]

Here is some documentation for "favorite groups" that is as poor as the user interface for favorites.  I find that I have to go tho the dropdown above the filmstrip to actually see what is in groups or not.  It took a lot of experimenting to figure out what was going on but now I have no issues.  As I said above, this an extremely poor design and not even close to being intuitive.

https://helpx.adobe.com/in/lightroom-classic/help/create-folders.html 

[John R Ellis]

Thanks Robert for explaining highlighting this obscure behavior and providing a link (it's new to me!). I agree that what most people are experiencing here is "as-designed" behavior of a confusing user-interface design. However, Patrick has identified a bug in right-clicking selected folders.  I'll  summarize the design first, and then explain that particular bug.

A "favorite group" is a set of one or more folders that a user has marked as favorites. A folder may be in one or more favorite groups. You can see the current favorite groups by clicking on the source indicator in the filmstrip:



Note that I've created seven folder groups, using all possible combinations of three folders A, B, and C.

To create a favorite group, select one or more folders in the Folders panel, right-click one, and do Mark Favorite(s).To delete a favorite group, select all the folders in the group, right-click one, and do Unmark Favorite(s).

When you right-click a folder selection, if the selected folders do not comprise a current favorite group, then Mark Favorite(s) appears in the menu. If the selected folders do comprise a current favorite group, then Unmark Favorite(s) appears.

If a folder is in at least one favorite group, there will be a star on its icon in the Folders panel. Note that after doing Unmark Favorite(s) on a folder, the star on its icon will still be present if the folder is still a member of another favorite group.

This design is logically consistent. But its user interface is confusing, because favorite groups are usually hidden in the user interface (in the filmstrip pop-up), and because the star icon can remain after doing Unmark Favorite.

------------------------------

Here are the steps in Patrick's bug:

1. Start with no favorite groups defined.

2. Select folder A.

3. Right-click folder B and do Mark Favorite.

4. Observe in the filmstrip's source-indicator popup that there are now two folder groups, Folders: A, B and Folder: B.

Only the group Folder: B should have been created in step 4. 

Other parts of LR have strange behavior with right-click context menus.  In the Keyword List panel, if you select multiple keywords and right-click, some of the context-menu commands apply to the current keyword and some to all the selected keywords.  There are similar inconsistencies with right-clicking thumbnails in the filmstrip.

[John R Ellis]

Merging with bug report specific to this behavior.

Please reference the new conversation here: Merging with "Right-click Mark Favorite in Folders panel creates two favorite gro...

[Bob Somrak]

It could be considered a bug but I also think that is an example of an extremely poor design.  You should have to actually SELECT two folders to create a group.  Selecting a folder and then just right clicking another folder without selecting it should not create a group.  I know how it works now so just use the dropdown for removing from favorites and it works.  Im also careful of what is selected when I create favorites.  This system really needs an overhaul to make it more useable but I don't see that happening any time in the near future.  I decided to just deal with the foibles of the design as it is something I rarely change.

[John R Ellis]

I filed a separate bug for the right-click behavior Patrick identified:
https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lightroom-right-click-mark-favorite-in-folder...

I honestly don't think any UI designer or programmer would consider that selection behavior "as-designed".

This misbehavior of right-clicking is a separate issue from the original subject of this topic, the perceived inability to unmark a folder as a favorite.  The two favorite groups created by Patrick's recipe can be unmarked as favorites just like any other favorite groups.

Long experience in these forums shows that it's important to separate concerns in different topics -- otherwise, Adobe will miss the buried issue.

[Samoreen]

Hi,

Now consider the following...

I'm working with a dual display configuration with the LR main window on the main screen and the secondary window in Grid mode on the secondary display. With this configuration, as I have explained in my "steps to reproduce" post, I can have contradictory information about the "favorite" status of a given folder. It can appear as a favorite on one display in the folder tree and as a "not favorite" on the other in grid mode when opening the the drop-up menu at the bottom of the grid.