[AP] Redesigning (Raw) Develop Persona's Escape route

[F_Kal]

I'd like to raise awareness to an issue that's bothering me (and apparently a few others) for over a month now. At first I hoped that my muscle-memory would get used to it; but a few hundred raw photos later, it's still as annoying as the first day.

 

I'm referring to the way one can exit/quit/cancel development: it's very counter-intuitive.

 

- It's totally understandable that one cannot proceed editing the image, if it hasn't been developed first.

- It's also understandable that the adjustments in the develop persona, cannot be retained, unless the image gets developed.

 

here are the quirks and some workarounds:

- If develop persona were implemented as a modal, the Esc key should allow one to... escape.

- If develop persona is not a modal and is a window/tab then Cmd+W and Cmd+Q should both allow you to close the document just like pressing the Cancel or X button (of the tab). The current message box when pressing Cmd+Q/W, is not meaningful: it's merely stating that you have to click elsewhere to cancel/close/quit. Why all the hoops and loops? This is particularly inconvenient when having dozens of develop personas open and you decide it's time to quit the application (or close them all). What could had been done with Cmd+Q is now mouse gymnastics! You have to close every develop persona individually, with the mouse, before you can quit the application.

- The cancel button, and the X button, shouldn't act differently: As it is, the X button never asks for confirmation, whereas Cancel always does! 

- when you haven't made any adjustment in the develop persona, canceling should not ask for confirmation. It should be performed silently.

- The confirmation should be rephrased. The yes no buttons are not very helpful. Yes, I want to cancel? Yes I understand? Yes I want the file saved? Yes I want it developed? If it were a rare occuring dialog, it would be okay to have and read all the text to know the meaning of Yes/No, but I see this dialog more often than I am asked to save a file, and I guess others too; so the buttons have to be as self-explanatory as possible; or the text as short as possible. eg. "Discard Changes?" Yes/No

An example (not the most thought out apparently) follows - it shows two self-explanatory options: "Cancel & Discard" and "resume developing". 

It could had been "Discard Changes" and "do not discard" or it could even had been 3 buttons such as "Discard Changes", "resume"/"return" and "develop and Save as...", but you get my drift: it needs rephrasing.

- Pressing the Esc key while the confirmation is displayed, should work (currently it does nothing). 

 

Hope this helps :)

-Fotis

 

Now that I got it out of the system,I have to say that I've started to really appreciating the Serif raw engine (and its speed) compared to other raw develop options!!!!