Developer Garrett Dimon has posted a nice set of suggestions for making feature requests. None of them are likely to come as a surprise, but it’s still a good refresher of things to bear in mind.
I mention this, by the way, not just as someone on the receiving end of feature requests, but as one who frequently makes them. Working with other teams at Adobe, we frequently pass along what we’ve heard from customers plus our own ideas for other products. Interacting with teams like Flash Player, I have to remember that they’re just as overwhelmed with good suggestions as we are on Photoshop, and that everyone comes to them asking for “just this one thing.”
Before I came to Adobe, I’d frequently craft suggestions for Adobe, Macromedia, and other companies. (In fact, I think they hired me in part to say, “Okay, smart guy–let’s see *you* do it!”) Garrett’s suggestions ring true in my experience. [Via]
[Update: I meant to mentione that the Acrobat.com team has kicked off ideas.acrobat.com to help gather community feedback & conduct discussions. We’re thinking about similar options for Photoshop. –J.]
Great Post.
Requesting to move the History Log check box to the “Save As” dialog box stands by requirements? 🙂
Hi John,
these suggestions are really great. I would just want to add one suggestion here:
I’ve also sent feature requests for many products in the past and what I’ve been missing quite often is a discussion (two way communicaton) of the request.
Most of the time it stays a one way effort and I’m pretty sure, that a requested feature could be cleaned, polished, improved before implementing it … if there was some more discussion, feedback from the “receiving end”. 🙂
Often a first feature request will be a rough outline of an idea with pretty much space for improvement.
Let me give you an example:
Some time ago I suggested a revamped presets management.
Currently, we have a set of brushes “loaded” and these are shown as a flat, pretty unstructured list of brushes. How about some more hierarchy? How about having all brushes available and organize them in virtual subfolders in the brush selection UI?
Same applies to custom shapes, swatches, styles, etc.
This is just a rough outline of my feature request and I’m sure it could be improved a lot with your and others’ ideas. If Adobe would show interest in this specific request, ask for more detail, maybe even add their own ideas to the discussion this could become a great improvement for many users.
Bottomline:
You guys at Adobe aren’t only on the receiving end. You are very welcome to discuss things with us and add to the requests. 🙂
Cheers,
Martin
Here is a feature request.
I would like to see Adobe create a set of feature request blogs (one for each product) that user’s could post their requests to and have those posts be commented on, expanded and refined by other users of the products.
Not only would this a be a great way to suggest improvements but would show Adobe that others are interested in it and provide a way for the feature requests to grow and expand and evolve in to truly useful deep features.
Kind of like a living feature request.
Robert
Great idea Robert.
Just because the Adobe people ARE at the receiving end there is no way to them responding directly, there should be a feature-pool for every software where mostly users and adobe employees (if they’re willed) can comment about features and discuss their purposes, i believe this would simply clean things up and the whole information process about the future of a major release.
in short: Adobe should get rid of the one-way-request-dialogue and leave it just to the bug reports.
maybe it would help making people less gripe and ranting (because they actually don’t get any response) plus the benefit being informed which features would make it into the next release instead of losing their sanity if features from the 2005 wishlist still aren’t in effect in the major release.
just a thought i want to share with Robert.
It could make your (Adobe) life easier.
Hello Jack,
Thank you and Adobe for allowing feature requests.
The one request I have would be;
In Lightroom there is a “soften skin” brush.
I would like to see this feature added either in “open in raw” section or in the presets.
I will assume this may not fare well with Marketing due to cross pollination issues, but My thought today in Spring Time in KY.
You guys come to KY and watch the races a Keeneland. The most beautiful boutique race course in America. You can land the Adobe Jet next door to the track.
Kind regards
Ken from KY
John, I’m not sure if this is the forum, but I couldn’t find an answer elsewhere:
There used to be a control or command in Photoshop long ago that used to “protect” the image window. Basically, it kept everything away from the window you were working in.
I’ve found that, in PSCS4, my working windows/tabs inevitably end up UNDER the application bar and/or the Options bar, which I keep open all the time, at the top of the page. Is there an interface setting that will keep me from losing the controls and draggable areas at the top of my working window?
Ehm, i think a few people here did not realized the intention of this Blogpost.
THIS IS NOT A FEATURE REQUEST BLOG!
It is ABOUT suggestions about feature requests!
Folks, i think John has better things to do.
[Oh, you’d probably be surprised & disappointed. 🙂 I’m taking the week off & find myself babysitting/checking mail periodically. –J.]
GoWish
or post ideas on how feature request can be made better and less painful for the adobe people.
[Oh, you’d probably be surprised & disappointed. 🙂 I’m taking the week off & find myself babysitting/checking mail periodically. –J.]
neither. i’m jealous 😉
but, at the other hand, mails don’t cry -_-
Is it possible to ask where we can send our ideas for feature requests?
Feature Requests can be submitted here:
http://www.adobe.com/go/wish
John: Using LR2 with OS 10.4.11. In SLIDESHOW, I cannot make the photograph go WIDESCREEN as it shows in the PREVIEW window. It only keeps showing “black” all around the image.
Why does it show one thing and not allow it to happen?
Thank you….
It would be great if Dreamweaver had a timeline to display animation rendering of swf and javascript (jquery, moo tools etc) elements in dreamweaver.
Feature request:
The standard way of expressing measurements are width x height.
In photoshop’s Open dialog, portrait is listed as 5×7 and landscape is listed as 5×7. COuldn’t landscape be listed as 7×5?
Hello, I have a GREAT! suggestion for Photoshop Features– I was recently designing a website, and I came across a situation where I needed to make a portion of my layer visible in the Layers menu. I basically needed a feature, “like a rectangle tool” to select a portion of my layer to make it visible or not visible. At this time, I believe you can only click the “little eye” to make the entire layer visible. Don’t know if this feature exists, but if it doesn’t it should. Thanks.