Many thanks for your reply. Yes, I have made a preset for my work flow, which includes things like ensuring the crop tool is unconstrained and a few other things.
But the issue is I can’t seem to set the crop tool to be the tool automatically pre-selected when I open the Customise tab - it is always the hand tool. Am I doing something wrong?
In PhotoLab, we need to be in “customise” view for “R” to engage the crop tool.
And the keyboard shortcut to go to “customise” usually needs two hands.
In Lightroom, we can press “R” to switch tabs AND open the crop tool.
Little things like these make Lightroom so efficient.
Pascal, @Winterdune knows how to do that…but it’s not about including the tool or setting it to some value, it’s about making the tool (in the toolbar) active when switching to customise view.
Why doesn’t Adobe apply the same choices as DxO?
What I mean to say is that I’m shocked by the demands to reproduce - without nuance - the behavior of competitors.
No need to be shocked. Lightroom is simply more efficient in this case. Let’s look at the following scenario: You have a bunch of images in Library view and want to crop them to e.g. 1:1.
Lightroom:
Select image(s)
Press “R” (no need to let go of the mouse)
Set ratio and select area, hit ENTER.
Done
PhotoLab:
Select Image(s)
Press option-command-2 (I need both hands for that combo)
Press “R”
Set ratio and select area, hit ENTER.
Done
Lr step 2 is replaced by PL steps 2 and 3 which does not sound like much. But the selected key combination forces me to use both hands which is disruptive from an ergonomic point of view. Instead of pressing one key, I have to press four keys and need both hands and the necessary movement of the arm. Maybe we can replicate the key sequence with the help of some additional software?
Back to the shock: isn’t it shocking how unergonomic PhotoLab is? Add font size and low UI contrast…but that was already discussed in other threads.
Bottom line: Adobe has the background of years of pro use of their products and some of that was taken into account and shows, e.g. in how efficiently their products can be used.
As I mentioned, Pascal, I’ve already created a preset. But the hand tool remains the default tool. It’s not a question of copying Adobe - it’s a really simple thing - to be able to specify the tool you want to start your work flow with.