Photoshop CC and Lightroom CC/6.2 Updates

[Mike Farley]

Adobe has just released updates to its flagship applications, which includes an increment to ACR, now at version 9.2 which are described on the Adobe blog.

http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal ... lable.html

Lightroom gets some changes as well. The new local dehaze function only seems to be available for Lightroom CC, but the import function has been "improved" in both variants by changing the interface and removing features. Most of what has gone missing are functions which I did not use, although I can see that they would be useful to some. The absence of eject card on import seems odd, since this is adding an additional step and is hardly a simplification. I have been advised that this is particularly important that cards are ejected in OS X as simply removing them can cause them to become corrupted. What was wrong with leaving the eject as a configurable option and turned on by default? There is an oveview of the changes on this forum post.

http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop ... update-6-2

Adobe updates are often worrying since the company does not appear to do adequate testing before releasing them and quite often there is a "dotdotone" version shortly afterwards as the newly introduced bugs and "features" are corrected. If the commenters are to be believed, this is the case on this occasion as well, with the Mac being particularly affected. Guess who has not followed their own previous advice and updated their Mac at the earliest opportunity? Fortunately, it has proved to be stable. So far.

http://www.lightroomqueen.com/whats-new ... troom-6-2/

[Mike Farley]

Photoshop CS6 users need not be concerned about the latest changes wrought by Adobe. That application is now forever set in aspic and this is the first update it has not received.

[Rose]

Good grief... For once, I don't think I'll be updating...

[Peter Boughton]

Heh, just when I was thinking it might be "safe" to upgrade to LR6. :/

Whilst I suspect that (despite being download only) the purchasable LR6 upgrade package will be 6.0 and would need updating (and thus could avoid upgrading past 6.1), I really don't want to reward the dimwits who made these changes.

Guess I'll investigate what the alternatives are doing - there's some free tools around now that I've not tried before, but if none of them are good enough then I'll check Capture One Pro out.

[Mike Farley]

In Adobe's defence, I have been doing a little bit of processing using LR 6.2 on my Mac without any crashes so far, but that machine is reasonably vanilla in that the main things I have installed to date is Creative Cloud and the Nik software. It is always possible that there are clashes with other applications which are confusing matters and Adobe does sort out its new bugs fairly quickly once others have discovered them. Maybe they will also reinstate the automatic eject while they are at it?

[davidc]

Lots more problems surfacing with the latest upgrade -

http://petapixel.com/2015/10/08/adobe-l ... rash-bugs/

[Mike Farley]

It seems that I have been fortunate when I updated on the Mac, which is just as well since I am intending to use it for a Lightroom based presentation next week. I do agree that the changes to Import have not been thought through. What with the stability issues as well, it does make me wonder how such updates ever get past the door.

[Mike Farley]

Adobe has now issued an update to fix the crashing and performance issues. This time I will not quite be so rash and will leave it a few days before applying it, although I continue to be fortunate that I have not experienced problems with the initial version of LR 6.2.

[Mike Farley]

There is some about the latest Adobe foul-up at Petapixel, amongst other places. As well as the update, the company has also issued an apology.

http://petapixel.com/2015/10/10/adobe-a ... -2-update/

What I find astonishing is the admission from Adobe that it was aware of the problems when they released 6.2 on an unsuspecting world, but went ahead anyway. What? They deliberately issued buggy software rather than wait a few more days while they fixed it? Adobe also acknowledges that it should have given more information about the revised Import function, rather simply stating that they had "improved" the experience. I went ahead with the update out of curiosity, but would not of done so had I known what they had actually done which was to make it worse.

Adobe has consistently demonstrated a lack of understanding of the principles underlying software development. Yes, even in the best regulated regimes mistakes can happen, but this kind of error is too frequent an occurrence to be anything other than a complete lack of any form of a meticulous and professional approach. By far the worst example of Adobe's carelessness was the infamous hack shortly after the introduction of Creative Cloud, which came about when it completely failed to comprehend the requirements for online security. Instead it implemented an ad hoc solution which fell well short of the mandatory standards set by the payment processing industry which left it open to attack, exposing the details of millions of its customers. It's totally slapdash and the company urgently needs to find someone who can impose some rigour into the process.

[Mike Farley]

If there is one possible crumb of comfort in Adobe's astonishing admission that it knowlingly released a buggy version of its software, it lies in the recognition that it screwed up and it is finally realising that it neeeds to do better in the future. I cannot think of too many companies which would give us the unvarnished truth like that. On the other hand, we have heard similar expressions of regret from the company and it might simply be symptomatic of a corporate culture that is too tolerant of mistakes. Such an open culture where there is no fear of repercussion might be good for team spirit, but this should not be at the expense of quality and there is a fine balance to be struck. Machiavelli wrote that it is better to be feared than liked and I cannot help thinking that maybe there is just a bit too much love in Adobe's offices.