Or rather, someone please change Adobe’s mind. Today I spent some time looking online for what’s changed in the latest version of Photoshop (CS4). Along with numerous improvements across the board, I stumbled on a number of posts in forums and a few blogs on the ‘Change layer content’ menu removal.
This is unbelievably bad judgement on Adobe’s part1. It’s not that too many people were using the option — although I am sure tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands were — it’s that it is much more complex to do *exactly* what ‘Change layer content’ did in any other way without ‘side-effects’ and even when you do it’s not elegant, it’s not easily reversible and it’s definitely more time consuming than the original method.
Adobe could put forward several reasons — i.e. simplification, usability enhancement etc. — for removing the option, although those don’t seem to hold any water whatsoever in this case. First, I read that in place of the ‘Change layer content’ option, Adobe added ‘Layer Content options’ — what is seemingly a completely pointless, useless menu entry.
So what’s to gain by removing the ‘Change layer content’ option? Given that the application is not easier, more streamlined, usable or faster after the removal of this option, there’s little one can think of. It could be that Adobe doesn’t like Photoshop being that powerful for vector graphics (this is essentially where the functionality proves useful) and would rather see more people getting CS4 suites instead of PS copies and using Illustrator for vector graphics. While somewhat far-fetched it is a possibility. Yet even if this was not their intention, Adobe, being — essentially — a monopoly is probably not to concerned if newer versions of Photoshop disappoint some of its customers (who have few alternatives anyway).
The removal of ‘Change layer content’ from Photoshop CS4 is only one recent example of how Adobe is either incapable to comprehend which features are truly useful and which are not — or just too complacent in its dominant position. It’s a pity as it was a ‘feature’ that was effectively helping its customers create better vector-based works with Photoshop.
Ironically, most of Adobe’s promotional material for CS4 revolves around ‘Time-Saving’ features. Go figure.
