Digital Light & Color

I am thinking of removing the Apply button from all transformations as it seems to be confusing and of very limited utility. Does anyone ever use it for anything?

I personally wouldn't miss it.

Jeff

It would not be the end of the world for me.

Yes, I use the [Apply] button for incremental changes.
[Apply] performs operation and leaves dialog open;
[OK] performs operation and closes dialog.
The [Apply] btn does not display the tool tip when user hovers mouse over button; the tool tip would make it less confusing.
The mask dialog uses a little [running man] btn to perform operations. Should this be an [Apply] btn to be consistent?
Bob

I suggest keeping either the Apply or the Preview ( running man ) buttons, but not both, because they have the same purpose ( it seems ).

Apply] performs operation and leaves dialog open

This is how I would like to use the Apply button, ....
but if I try to use it this way with a more complex Workflow (20 or more steps) and I open let's say the fourth Transformation the dialog closes as soon as I click on another Transformation of the workflow to check the effect of my changes on the other/last Transformation (=result of the workflow) the dialog is closed.
So in my situation Apply doesn't really help to adjust Transformation within a workflow and I can live without the Apply button.

Just to clarify what Apply actually does...

For transformations that have their own preview (e.g. Multipass Sharpen), clicking Apply simulates clicking the red running man button to update the output image and then propagates any changes to any transformations that depend on the current transformation.

For transformations that do not have their own preview (e.g. Color Balance), clicking Apply propagates any changes to any transformations that depend on the current transformation.

Removing the Apply button removes the ability to propagate changes to downstream transformations while leaving the current transformation open -- updating the output image either happens automatically or can be done using the red Run button above the preview area. The ability to propagate changes was more useful very early in the development on PWP 8 when I allowed more than one transformation to be open for editing at the same time. This quickly proved to be unworkable since the proliferation of windows was very confusing. While the effects of the Apply button are immediately visible in the image browser, to view the effects on one of the downstream images in any detail, you have to double-click on the image which first closes the current transformation dialog box (simulating an OK), so Apply does not do anything useful in this case.

The one case where the Apply button retains some value is when you create a Preview window to monitor the effects on a downstream image.
To create a Preview window, right-click on a thumbnail in the Image Browser and then select Preview from the popup menu. Or, use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-E instead of using the right-click menu. This creates a Preview window that tracks the current image and displays it in the window.

I do not use it. If I ever did, it was was because I missed either of the other two.

Preview Window! This is awesome - how come I didn't know it :-)

There was one instant where Apply could be useful that came up recently: using the Readout tool on Main Image (Preview? but a different preview) window with the Compare control open, as the Readout only works on it.

This is a problem with the Readout tool which I plan to fix soon.