Hi Victoria (and Brad),
First of all: I am not really missing functionality. It is rather that I find the decoupling of the history list and the picture state counter-intuitive and still struggle a bit finding good reasons that justify it.
What for me breaks intuition here is that I can clear out the history list without undoing the edits. Asked to suggest how it works (which you did
)I'd say this:
a) Each edit shows up as a history list item.
b) If I clear the history list all edits are removed and the picture goes back to the original
c) If I press the 'reset' button, a new history item 'reset' is added to the end of the history (or right after the currently selected history list item, if there is one selected)
The result of this would be that the history list always shows the steps that have lead up to the picture we see. To me this is the intuitive meaning of the history list.
You see, I have not used Photoshop in a longer while and have never done too much with it. So for Photoshoppers, all this might be normal.
I was just wondering why we are looking at this from different angles. It could be that I am thinking with my 'non-destructive-editing' LR hat on. And here the history is what defines the end result and is even stored in some way. The history is actually stored. So closing and reopening LR and looking at the photo will show me the very same history entries. So to me this reinforces the understanding that the history items are not just a nice to have there for reference or so but integral information on the photo as it is now.
When you look at it from the Photoshop angle, the history gives you (only while the file is open) the luxury of being able to look back a bit from the result that you have there in front of you (which you have chiseled in stone by means of destructive edits).
So much for a feeble attempt at finding out where the differenet view points might come from. I am not trying to justify myself here and I am not saying I am right. I am just questioning. I have worked on Mac OS based applications for the creative field and I very well remember long discussions about this kind of thing and what the "users will expect when they find such and such interfaces."And I'd loved to have been the fly on the wall when the LR lot had their meetings on how the history list should work...
You see, it might just be me.
Again thanks lots for responding and discussing.
Cheers,
Joerg