Adobe Systems apologized after the release of a Lightroom update, which caused outrage in the community of Adobe's product users.
The software company has to deal with the violent reactions from Lightroom's users, due to the changes it installed in the editing and cataloging photos program.
The last update to the Lightroom was highly anticipated, as it promised to fix a number of dysfunctional aspects. Some of them were for removing haze from pictures, correcting problems recurred with new lenses and importing photos into the catalog.
The update, however, contained a bug that caused constant crashing when using the import function. Even when it worked, the import function was frowned upon because the developers had removed some of its original, useful features. Friday, Oct. 9, a new update from Adobe fixed these issues. Adobe's chief of product management for photography, Tom Hogarty, posted an apology addressing the mishap.
"I'd like to personally apologize for the quality of the Lightroom 6.2 release," he declared.
"The team will continue to work hard to earn your trust back in subsequent releases", he added. In 2006, Lightroom was first released following an extensive 14-month public beta testing period.
Adobe works hard to drive customers towards availing paid subscriptions: for only $10 a month, a user gets both Photoshop and Lightroom. A full suite of editing tools for digital design costs $50 monthly, and buyers can create anything from illustrations to animations with them. This is a two-edged sword, however. On one hand, frequent payments make way for Adobe to release small patches that polish the products. On the other, the paying customers fret easily when they the product they receive is subpar.
A number of users still are not impressed with what Adobe had to say in their apology. "The new import module is a big step in the wrong direction," a user wrote. While one commented that he feels like a prisoner of the Adobe Creative Cloud subscription and if he had a choice, he would cancel it immediately.
Adobe is convinced that the photo-import process should keep getting simpler.
A senior product manager for digital imaging at Adobe, Sharad Mangalick, explained that before the changes, users of Lightoom had serious difficulties in navigating the Import dialog tab.
"In making these changes without a broader dialog I've failed the original core values of the product and the team," Hogarty further apologized.
