Fireworks allowed editable filters but they were applies per layer not in the ‘everything under this layer gets affected’ way that Photoshop does.

3D Studio Max faces something similar with the way it implements ‘modifiers’. You have a base object and then a stack of modifiers that affect that object in various ways. You can edit at any point in the stack and either view at the current level or view the end result. Some modifiers are very processor intensive and the underlying datasets can be as big as in any Photoshop file. And, yes, sometimes the stack is unresponsive and updates take a long time. But you tend to know that when you are working on large objects.

After Effects also allows arbitrary nesting of filters and sub-objects (‘pre-comps’) and doesn’t come up against any particular issue.

A combination interruptible actions when they are taking too long, the use of low-res proxies for interactive display could easily get round this. I don’t know how much the internal plumbing of Photoshop is getting in the way but I don’t think a total rewrite would be essential. (and Tomek – my hunch is that a total rewrite would be a very risky endevour in terms of costs vs. benefit – the costs of rewriting something like Photoshop would be immense and you would have a lot of ‘v1.0’ issues to deal with – just like with InDesign!)

That’s the link btw. http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2006/12/the_secret_life_of_sf.html
but doesn’t convince me.

Good luck :)

It’s not as simple as us being inconsistent for history’s sake, as he points out.

Thanks,

Dave Story
VP Engineering, Digital Imaging and Web
Adobe Systems

My hunch is that it’s something to do with the fact Photoshop allows filters to process large images by splitting them into chunks. Adjustments aren’t a problem because they only need to process an image one pixel at a time (unlike more general image filters, the result of an adjustment is determined by one and only one pixel in the source image)

Layer effects don’t need to process the image at all. They only need to see it’s alpha channel.

But this doesn’t explain why Smart filters can’t be integrated into styles as these just store bunch of presets.

It also doesn’t explain why After Effects and Fireworks – both of which can use Photoshop compatible filters – have found a way round these limitations.

The entire application would have to be re-written for Smart coding to do that. I’m all for it, but it will take 10 years.

I know that’s not a rigid distinction (more a matter of degree) but the distinction between adjustment layers, smart filters and layer effects is simply a matter of historical accident.

And yes, I could choose not to teach these features to beginners, but, goddamit, they’re fun…

Instead of getting into all the quirks about various Photoshop features, it may be better not to confuse the students in the first place by waiting until they better understand the program and the nature of the work first.

At some point, the novice progresses to an intermediate skill level, and the quirks are easier to understand and work with or around. For example, when you know the difference between RGB, CMYK, Indexed Color, and Grayscale, then it’s easier to understand why a particular feature did not work the way you thought it should.

I’m not making an excuse for usability issues in Photoshop — there are plenty of them — but I want to point out that when users better understand the intricacies of the work they’re doing, they humbly realize that the “bug” was with them and not the program.

Well, maybe they aren’t always humble in their realization…

But it doesn’t always have to mean that the programmers messed up.