Known Participant

Question

Save A Copy = Stupid

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
April 6, 2022
2 replies
2174 views

It's so wonderful when an upgrade makes you do 5x the work. Now to save to different format I have to do a Save A Copy instead of the normal Save As. So when I save to jpeg, for example, and choose a different folder, everytime I repeat it, Photoshop defaults to the folder the current image is in, not the folder I previously specified. I takes many more keystroked and mouse clicks to do something that was so simple before.

Why did they do this? The explanation is to make it more like how it behaves on a Mac. Oh, okay. So the Mac method was inefficient, but let's do that. That's progress for you....I guess.

Windows

D Fosse

Community Expert

No, that's not why they did it. They did it because a MacOS change made the old Save behavior impossible.

Save A Copy was a way to get around it. Later they found a better workaround, so they could add a "legacy"-option in preferences, to basically revert to the old behavior - but with caveats about unintentional overwriting.

Note that no other software on the planet can save directly to jpeg if the file has layers, 16 bit depth, transparency or alpha channels. Those things are not allowed in the jpeg specification. If the file already complies with the jpeg specification, Save works as it always has.

Saving directly to jpeg was in fact introduced with some fanfare in Photoshop CS5. That's right. Before that, you couldn't save to jpeg at all, unless the file was flat/8 bit/no transparency.

rayek.elfin

Legend

Note that no other software on the planet can save directly to jpeg if the file has layers, 16 bit depth, transparency or alpha channels. Those things are not allowed in the jpeg specification. If the file already complies with the jpeg specification, Save works as it always has.

By @D Fosse

Actually...

PhotoLine offers a setting to allow exactly this: the workaround is that a native PhotoLine file is saved alongside the jpg version as a sidecar file. When the jpg is opened, it will automatically open the native file in PhotoLine - with all layers, live filters, layer effects, etcetera intact. As if the jpg file was saved with all that extra information. 🙂

This is an extraordinarily useful and convenient workflow and I wish other design applications would support it.

(ps PhotoLine will also allow for saving a file directly to any file format but does display a warning that the selected file format will be flatten the file and lose all live properties)

D Fosse

Community Expert

Actually...that sounds like an equally cumbersome workaround, and I can imagine a noise level fully on par with the one we had, if this was implemented in Photoshop. No, on second thought, it would be a lot worse.

This is all about habit and short memories. Most of these people are convinced that Photoshop could "always" save directly to jpeg. It even says so in presumably credible articles from well-respected sources - but in fact they have just forgotten how it was up to CS4. They're angry because they feel something has been taken away.

Personally, I think Save A Copy is brilliant, because it directly reveals what is actually happening to the data. You instantly know what you're dealing with. That's what they should have done in CS5.

In all other instances where people claim other software can do it, e.g. Affinity, it's actually an Export. Which involves launching a separate process and always takes a long time.

Oh, BTW, engineer Adam Jerugim is also using the HAL avatar when he posts here. I thought it was him responding first.

c.pfaffenbichler

Community Expert

Have you read up on the issue?

Are you aware of the Photoshop > Preferences > File Handling > Enable legacy »Save As« setting?

B

buck-wAuthor

Known Participant

Okay. Thanks. I'll look into that. How about if they don't make the software less productive and then I won't have to scamble to solve what shouldn't be happing in the first place.

The Save A Copy isn't going to another folder after all, but there are other things that you have to do that I didn't mention.

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