Why won't Apple bring back "Save As" since "Duplicate" clearly *****?

I gave a concrete example of how Duplicate is a safer option for achieving the same thing. Don't just tell me I'm wrong, tell me how I'm wrong.

You are wrong because of the following

Ahh, but you see, I said that Duplicate is safer than Save As! You have only shown that it is slightly less convenient. And if you create a keystroke for Duplicate, as I have, it's really not that much less convenient. The extra steps require a couple of extra keypresses, for a grand total of maybe a second or two added to my workflow.

You didn't address the issue of which is safer, and Duplicate is, hands-down, far safer than Save As. I have permanently lost a lot of hard work in the past by following your suggested Save As workflow, by simply pressing command-S instead of command-shift-S. I will gladly sacrifice a couple seconds of my time here and there to avoid that.

DeaPeaJay wrote:

Why don't you just

1) Scan image as TIFF

2) Make your adjustments

3) Export as PDF

?

Because that is not an equivalent operation. Step 2) changes the original. Even without Lion, I don't want to change the originals. Step 3) leaves the original open and the PDF closed. I want it the other way around. Save As allows you to transform a document from one name or format to another. In Lion, you always have to go back and close the original.

However, your advice to use Export is very good. Due to bugs in Lion Preview, you don't want to change a file's format and keep working with it. Bad things will happen.

My comparison is, in fact, based on an ideal, bug-free Preview that doesn't currently exist. What you actually have to do is:

1) Scan image as TIFF

2) Duplicate

3) Adjust contrast, brightness, etc.

4) Export (choosing PDF)

5) Close original TIFF document

6) Re-open saved PDF

I am assuming that Apple will fix this bug one day.

Step 2 in my workflow doesn't change the original because of Versions. if you need the original for whatever reason (not sure why you would), it's still there, you just need to activate versions and go get it.

So instead of managing multiple versions yourself in Finder, making more work for yourself, Lion saves you the trouble and all your versions are contained in one simple file.

You just would not risk using versions instead of a save as if your working. I dont know what you do on your mac but if you trust versions as a backup to your workflow then you deserve to get confused and loose your work!!!

What reason do I have to *dis*trust Versions?

missguided faith on something you have no controle over and does not belong on a professional desktop

DeaPeaJay wrote:

Step 2 in my workflow doesn't change the original because of Versions.

Doh! You've got me on that one 🙂.

I still definitely prefer the Save As workflow, but perhaps it is something I can get used to.

Dude, that's not a reason. What did versions ever do to you to make you distrust it so much?

I dont want versions and I dont want to have to duplicate instead of save as, I have tried and It makes no sense to me but thats me...

Yeah. I imagine it will be a change I'll have to adapt to also if/when Versions ever comes to Photoshop, which I work in all the time. It hasn't effected my workflow yet, but I suspect it will eventually.

Work, age, life experiance, trust or lack of it and common sense!

So essentially you're saying you're an old **** that's stuck in your ways 😉 ( Just playing with you )

Edit: ok, that wasn't an obscene word!!!! It was a friendly jab.

As DeaPeaJay has pointed out, it is a moot point in Lion. Ironically, the Autosave feature now makes it safe for you to use Save As - if only it were there. I will have to re-evaluate in the coming months. I am going back to graduate school so I may be doing a lot of scanning - or not.

In the past I would Save As

1. When I was doing a what-if analysis and wanted to save it without affecting the original document. This is is about the same as before but I have to remember to duplicate the file first or I end up having to take the additional step of reverting to saved.
2. Periodically as a backup for the rare occasion when a document gets corrupted and is unable to be opened. Duplicate gets the job done but it is more steps to do and I get tired of removing the word "copy" at the end of the file name (I usually put a date on the end). An option for Duplicate and Save would bring it mostly back in line.
3. When saving a version I might want to go back to. I don't feel the need to do this anymore. Now I use Cmd-S to lock in a version and I trust I can get back to it if I need to. This beats Save As and I don't have extra copies of the file hanging around to confuse me.

All-in-all I'm okay with the new way of doing things but it is not yet ingrained in my head.

Thomas A Reed wrote:

You didn't address the issue of which is safer, and Duplicate is, hands-down, far safer than Save As. I have permanently lost a lot of hard work in the past by following your suggested Save As workflow, by simply pressing command-S instead of command-shift-S. I will gladly sacrifice a couple seconds of my time here and there to avoid that.

Hmm...I've been using Macs since 1988, and I don't ever recall losing work in this fashion. Maybe that's because, despite being a keyboard shortcut freak, I never use such a shortcut to invoke "Save As...." I always do it via the menu command.

I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that I will NEVER upgrade our small advertising agency's Macs to Lion unless and until Save As is restored and Auto Save is an option rather than mandatory. Our Art Director works in Illustrator, and will try dozens of different layouts, experimenting with the elements of an ad or a brochure before settling on one he likes, saving, and moving on to the next step. Auto Save would play absolute havoc with the way he works. (I don't know if Illustrator will go with the flow and adapt the Auto Save model or not, but I'm certainly not taking a chance on it. Believe me, I can hear the howls of outrage already if it did!)

As for me, I'm a word (lowercase w!) rather than an art guy, and use Pages exclusively, so at this juncture my fate is sealed if I upgrade to Lion. I have no need for Auto Save and Versions. I'm a responsible computer user who long ago listened to the sage advice to save my work often and incorporated this into my daily habits.

Yet, as a responsible user, I'm now being asked to take the fall for the ***holes who still can't seem to adopt this simple and sensible practice.

Save As works perfectly for me. When I do a Save As, it's precisely because I want to base a new document upon an old one. I have no need for the old one to remain open. I've worked this way for over two decades, yet now I'm being told by Apple (and by several in this thread) that they know better than I do how I should do my work, and that if I don't see things their way, then there's something wrong with me.

Bollocks!

It's very simple; make Auto Save and Versioning a Preference, and leave the way that's worked perfectly for millions of us since 1984 alone.

And yet, if it's really true that there are Apple employees who look at every feedback message (and surely some who also peruse these forums), my fear is that the ultimate decision made by Apple will still be "We know better than you do...tough luck for you."

Some real human being somewhere will ultimately make this pronouncement. And that just *****.