Removal of 3D filters

[funnybob]

Who took the decision of removing the 3D filters in Photoshop? I don't care about the 3D tools but the filters, converting to height or normal maps are super useful. Why removing them? Why taking functionnaliies out of the software? It has been there for years, it works great, it's useful. 

[Bojan Živković]

This is a user-to-user forum, with occasional visits from Adobe employees. There are very slim chances that anyone will respond to your questions about technical decisions made within the company.

[jane-e]

Who took the decision of removing the 3D filters in Photoshop?

By @funnybob

3D does not work with the newer APIs in DirectX (Windows) and Metal (macOS), so Adobe really had no choice. Details here:

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/3d-faq.html#discontinued-photoshop-3d-features

The last version of Photoshop that works with 3D is 22.2, which Adobe has kindly left available for us to download. You can have both 22.2 and the current version installed.

Jane

[davescm]

'I don't care about the 3D tools but the filters, converting to height or normal maps are super useful.'

Those filters employed the same 3D engine that was no longer supported (see the link from Jane).

Adobe's business choice was to rewrite and re-introduce from scratch the 3D functions of Photoshop to use the newer APIs, or drop 3D from Photoshop as 3D is available (and works better than Photoshop ever did) in their Substance applications. They chose the latter.

Dave