I finally had a chance to research the differences between Develop and Edit. There is a lot of documentation but I could not find anything that pulls the various pieces together.
As noted by LV_Bill, the following is specific to image formats other than RAW, such as JPEG, PNG, BMP and TIFF. Comments about reduction in image quality with repeated edits only applies to compressed image formats.
Assume I start with an image in the folder Inbox. Develop operations are a bunch of instructions for manipulating the image. When I exit Develop mode, the original image is saved in Inbox/[Originals] along with the Develop instructions. A copy of the image with the Develop changes applied is saved in Inbox making it easy to use the image from applications other than ACDSee. If I go back into Develop, the image is loaded from Inbox/[Originals], the previous Develop instructions are applied to the image, and the instructions are also used to pre-set the various Develop sliders so that individual changes can be easily backed out. Since Develop changes always work from the original file, repeated Develop passes will not degrade quality of compressed images.
Edit modifies the image in 'Inbox'. Repeated Edit operations requiring that the image be saved and reloaded will gradually degrade quality of compressed images. Once the file has been saved, individual Edit changes cannot be reversed.
At this point, ACDSee has access to three versions of the file:
This explains why Tools -> Process has two options: Restore to Developed and Restore to Original.
Going back into Develop mode after having done Edit operations requires a decision: throw away the Edits (revert to the image in Inbox/[Originals] with the Develop instructions applied) or save the image in Inbox as a new file. This new version (Develop and Edit changes applied permanently) can now follow the same path as described above. The original file is still in Inbox/[Originals] and the image with the first round of Develop+Edit changes is still in Inbox.
From a workflow perspective, it makes sense to do as much in Develop, even if similar tools exist in Edit. Edit operations should be minimized and done as the very last step, to avoid creating multiple versions of the same image.
Does this make sense? Are there any errors in the description? At some point, I might turn this into a flowchart.
As noted by LV_Bill, the following is specific to image formats other than RAW, such as JPEG, PNG, BMP and TIFF. Comments about reduction in image quality with repeated edits only applies to compressed image formats.
Assume I start with an image in the folder Inbox. Develop operations are a bunch of instructions for manipulating the image. When I exit Develop mode, the original image is saved in Inbox/[Originals] along with the Develop instructions. A copy of the image with the Develop changes applied is saved in Inbox making it easy to use the image from applications other than ACDSee. If I go back into Develop, the image is loaded from Inbox/[Originals], the previous Develop instructions are applied to the image, and the instructions are also used to pre-set the various Develop sliders so that individual changes can be easily backed out. Since Develop changes always work from the original file, repeated Develop passes will not degrade quality of compressed images.
Edit modifies the image in 'Inbox'. Repeated Edit operations requiring that the image be saved and reloaded will gradually degrade quality of compressed images. Once the file has been saved, individual Edit changes cannot be reversed.
At this point, ACDSee has access to three versions of the file:
- the original in Inbox/[Originals]
- the original with Develop changes applied (created dynamically)
- the current file in Inbox that has Develop and Edit changes applied permanently.
This explains why Tools -> Process has two options: Restore to Developed and Restore to Original.
Going back into Develop mode after having done Edit operations requires a decision: throw away the Edits (revert to the image in Inbox/[Originals] with the Develop instructions applied) or save the image in Inbox as a new file. This new version (Develop and Edit changes applied permanently) can now follow the same path as described above. The original file is still in Inbox/[Originals] and the image with the first round of Develop+Edit changes is still in Inbox.
From a workflow perspective, it makes sense to do as much in Develop, even if similar tools exist in Edit. Edit operations should be minimized and done as the very last step, to avoid creating multiple versions of the same image.
Does this make sense? Are there any errors in the description? At some point, I might turn this into a flowchart.
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