Your Final Votes Are in: Here’s “The Top 10 Things You Want Most In The Next Version of Photoshop”
Over 2,500 of you voted on Friday’s survey. Here are the top 10 results, in order by popularity:
Interesting stuff to note:
- You didn’t ask for wild new features, and stuff Photoshop can’t already do; instead you just asked for improvements to things Photoshop can already do.
- A lot of things you asked for, can already be done in Photoshop, but only through workarounds. For example, you can apply Shadow/Highlight as a Smart Filter (after you convert your layer to a Smart Layer), but obviously that’s not what we want; we want it as a real Adjustment layer.
Same thing for wanting Filters to be applied as Adjustment Layers. Smart Filters offer the same basic functionality as an Adjustment layer (it comes with a layer mask, it’s fully editable after the fact, you can change the blend mode and opacity, you can save your Smart Filter layers in a layered Photoshop document, and you can delete your Smart Filter layers any time—all traits of an Adjustment layer), but obviously; that’s not what we want. We want to apply filters as a simple Adjustment layer without converting it to a Smart Layer first.
Also, you can certainly apply watermarks in Photoshop, and you can even create an action that will do it for you—but that’s not what we want. We want a dedicated Watermarking feature.
- Seeing a quick before/after (like Lightroom lets you do) was one of the top 3 most requested features. Again, you could do this, in most cases, by going to the History palette—but that’s not what we want. We want a simple before/after keyboard shortcut, or button, etc.
- Overall, speed isn’t an issue—even having Photoshop launch faster wound up near the bottom of the list.
- Better noise reduction is the #1 feature request (but of course, this is skewed by my audience, which is skewed toward photographers).
- Just a reminder: Remember my original premise: Adobe could add 50 or even 100 other features as well, but in this “feature dreamland” they’d have to include your top 10 (as shown above) in the next release. Then, after a while another version of Photoshop would come out, and then you’d get to vote again, and they’d have to include your next top 10. I know–the mind reels.
Last night I forwarded your Top 10 to a list of people at Adobe, including Photoshop product managers, engineers, etc. Hey, ya never know. :)
My personal thanks to everyone who participated in this survey, and for sharing such great ideas with me, my readers, and Adobe.