Photoshop 2020: Problems with new Warp-Tool...

Previously, the warp tool showed the "mesh" in a 3 x 3 grid so you could actively see what the warp was doing even if the smart object you were warping was a solid color....For my workflow the NOW MISSING mesh grid is extremely important, to know if the interior mesh lines were bent even though the exterior lines were straight. But now that it's gone, there's no telling what's going on with the mesh on the "inside" of the distortion...just the outer edges. The new "default" setting is what I need but with the blanket grid showing. (not the new option to choose the type of grid because that warps the individual grid lines separately). There isn't an option to show the mesh?

Dan, I just jumped into 2020 (to hopefully avoid bugs with the initial roll-out) but I'm having the same problem. I do a lot of very precise label wraps on cylindrical surfaces and I relied on, as Jeffrey calls them, the interior isolines. My current work-around is overall quite inconvenient, but it works:

Any object intended for a Warp Transform is turned into a smart layer. Within that smart layer, I add my own 3x3 grid, or simple square grid. I do my transform as usual. Then I go back into the smart object and turn off my grid.

I had a lot of quibbles with the 2019 and earlier Warp tool and had always hoped for some simple changes to make my life wrapping labels easier. While the 2020 tool's new abilities are truly fantastic, it takes a step in the wrong way for my production work!

I would go so far as to say that the CC 2020 Warp function »improvements« missed the point of the existing Feature Requests on improving Photoshop’s Warp fairly badly. 
That a point’s handles snap to 90 ̊ angles relative to each other at editing negates the whole improvement in my opinion and prolongs its inferiority compared to Illustrator’s Envelope Distort. 

Bruce, I have had to fall back on the manual grid method as well on my Smart Object labels. It is now the only way to accurately work with the new Warp tool. The updated tool became completely inefficient at doing production label wrap work. Even with utilizing the grid, it takes a lot of minor tweeks back and forth on each side to eventually get everything where it should be.

As stated from engineer, this is by design with the new warp.

That could just be a joke???
It's make no Sense!!!

This is what i posted in a separate stream and was directed here - to see exactly the same problem.
They have thrown out the standard warp and replaced it with trash. The warp tool needed a refresh, not a replacement.

Step 1. Retain original guides as standard (legacy)
Step 2. Add features like selecting multiple handles and or points to drag in unison.
Step 3. Add feature of more points to warp - but don't mess with the way they work, just add more of them.
Step 4. Do not lock the points so two have to work together. Add a modifier key to be able to move points separately as per pen tool.

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It's no good guys, for some reason they have just implemented teh warp tool from illustrator rather than improve the transform warp tool in photoshop. You will notice that you cannot adjust points on the outer edges without them spinning and warping areas you don't want to warp. They have added four bezier points instead of two which creates a warp in all directions instead of being able to control the shape as previous.
They have also gotten rid of the guide lines on the default mode which are essential to a standard warp - if you want guide, you get extra points which you didn't ask for.

I don't know how to make it appear as legacy mode, but I am using 2018 until they fix it.
Once again Adobe throws out the old, but this time implements old tech (illustrator warp) to solve a problem which has been clearly documented and plenty of forward thinking posts to give advice of what is useful for the people who actually use this program.

Thanks for nothing photoshop team, for getting my hopes up that you listened to anyone in the forums at all.

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YES! It's ridiculous to have changed the "default" to NOT have the interior guides, grid, mesh, to see how the object is being affected. Go ahead and add the other grid options, but the default needs to stay the same to be useful.

If you have tried warping the edges, the problem there is unbelievable. They have four handles but you can't change the inside without warping the outside.
The only thing i wanted to change about the transform tool was the ability to move multiple handles at once to help with wrapping labels on bottles and keeping the horizontal and vertical movements consistent. But throwing the whole thing out is their fix apparently...

»It's no good guys, for some reason they have just implemented teh warp tool from illustrator«
Actually the Envelope Distort in Illustrator allows for the angle of the handles to be changed manually, in Photoshop the handles appear to be fixed at 90.
Which would restrict the achievable editing effects terribly. 

Even worse: When inserting a new line the resulting angles may be at whatever value (and stay at that angle when moving the point), but once one drags one of the four handles they apparently snap to 90 ̊. 

Or have I just missed something?  

ok, thank you so much! :-)

I'm using the Warp-Tool daily for my Work, and it finally becomes a dream come true if the tool works as expected as an addition to the old warp-Tool with more Columns and Rows :-)

Any progress on this? Please, please, please, please bring back the old warp tool....please!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After installing Catalina (temporary lapse of good judgement), my troubles got much worse. I thought that having subscription based software would be safe regarding compatibility issues, well, I was wrong. Long story short, I lost 2 days of work, had to wipe my system, downgrade to Mojave to even get my desktop computer to run properly, but the upside is that I re-installed Photoshop 2019 instead of 2020 and now I have my warp tool back. Hopefully they will fix all this soon. Suffice to say that I won't be upgrading to Catalina for a very loooooooooooong time.  

Any News on this Problem???
I can't use the Warping anymore, I have to use the older Photoshop!!! Please fix this finally!!!

The Warping is completely unusable!!!

Agreed! Any update on this? I am hesitant to install the 2020 version as I use the 2019 on a daily basis for work. Can you simply give the same warp functions to the basic warp and keep the additional features for those who like the new warp function? A win-win for all involved!

Are there any updates on this issue? I find it incredible that software as complex as Houdini can exist (and work properly) and Adobe can’t even fix this problem with the warp tool. I use Redshift for rendering and they fix issues with their renderer within days or weeks of a problem being reported. Adobe really need to pull their finger out on this because they’re being left behind in terms of customer support.

What i'm not understanding here is how the new warp is useless now when you have more control over the mesh? I totally get that being able to break the splits would be helpful, but that's not changed since the previous warp... If you need identical behavior like the legacy warp, then the default mesh reproduces legacy. I've been testing this afternoon and they behave exactly the same. The only difference is that the new default doesn't show the 2x2 interior mesh lines, but it behaves exactly the same.

You don't understand what the Problem is...

It's not possible anymore to make round Transformations...
The handle rotate and its impossible to make a round warping!

The »new warp« introduced new options – but in my opinion they are pretty much useless because being able to add additional non-corner-points but having their handles snap to 90 ̊ angles on editing restricts their usefulness and seems to miss the point of the original Feature Request. 

Christian, yes that's a bug, but you can fix it by touching the corner handle along the right edge of the mesh. This in no way prevents you from using the warp tool. It's just a glitch.

Christoph, i 100% agree and was pushing hard to have full pen control over all the nodes in the mesh. Hopefully with v2.5! Another feature i'm advocating as much as i'm able is the pre-warp mesh so that we can align the mesh to our subject and then warp after. Imagine trying to straighten out an 'S' ... that's not possible with the current warp tool.

Puppet Warp does not always allow for all the desired control in my experience so the »pre-warp mesh« sounds good.
But I suspect it might be pretty complicated to program ...

Did you ever post a Feature Request on this specifically? 

christoph, yes i've made several official Warp feature requests, including this one, which have been acknowledged by Adobe. 

Dominik, you can use the default setting of the new warp to reproduce the behavior of Legacy. Even though there are no grid lines in the default, i've tested and the behavior is identical.

I guess my statement was a little misleading. What I meant was that because of the missing grid lines the legacy option doesn't really work for me anymore. It's good to hear that the actual behavior is identical, but without those grid lines a lot of tasks are unnecessarily difficult now (at least in my opinion) – like exactly warping a label around a bottle. Thanks for your help anyways :)

ok, but the new behavior of Warp makes wrapping labels 10x easier and produces better results. With the new tool, you should be able to much more realistically distort an image to match a cylinder. I tried for decades to do the same with the previous warp and the results were never satisfactory.
Why aren't you able to use the new tool to accomplish the warp?

When you wrap a label around a cylinder both the right and left edge of the label need more distortion than the part in the middle (expect for super tiny labels which are exactly located in the middle of the bottle, then there is basically no visual distortion – but you know what I mean ...). 

To accomplish such a distortion/warp it's not enough to just drag the 4 corner handles to the right location. You need to distort the inner part of the label as well, which basically means you just click and drag somewhere on the surface of your label until you get the right distortion. 
But without any visual help, which is either the grid lines (that are now missing) or some visual clues on the label artwork itself (which of course don't always exist), you cannot judge if the warp is evenly applied on both sides AND if the now non-existing grid lines are still straight/perpendicular lines. Here's an illustration for clarification:



That's basically the problem I have with the legacy option.

Now after nearly a decade of waiting it is finally possible to change the grid size, which is really great because you have way more control over the shape and theoretically you should be able to warp labels around a lot more complex bottle shapes. But then again you can't actually because those non-corner-point handles snap to 90° angles, which doesn't make any sense to me (and obviously a lot of other users).

Thank you for the clarification, but again, why can't you use the new mesh options to create a better distortion than the previous version? It seems like you're getting stuck on the lack of grid lines in the default mesh, but if you take the time to learn how to manipulate the new mesh, you'll find that the results are vastly better than previously possible.

Don't get me wrong though, i totally agree with you that while the new tool is an improvement, it's like going from v1 to v1.5 instead of v2. There's still a LOT more that could and should be done.

I've spent hours to get used to the new mesh options (mostly to overcome it's limitations, to be honest ...) but I really don't see any chance how I can achieve better results with it's current behavior. A 3x3 or a 5x5 grid is awesome in some cases, but I simply don't need and want it in such cases like the example in my previous post. I would like to use the legacy mode for that. Why? Because every "higher level" grid adds anchor points you need to take care of, even If you don't actually need them for achieving a photorealistic result. And every extra anchor point has the potential to create a wonky warp/distortion. That's even more true because of the fact that non-corner-point handles snap to 90° angles. Maybe this explains it a little better:


As you can see in the illustration above, the current limitation of the tool creates visual bumps in the warp that I never encountered with the old tool.

So why can't we have those grid lines? I understand that it would not have been consistent, because it would somehow look like the new 3x3 grid. But come on ... Then simply use a dashed line or something for the grid lines in the legacy mode. There is definitely a solution for that UI "problem".

Don't get me wrong, I am happy that Adobe is improving that tool, but we obviously agree that they are only half way there. I hope some of the Adobe engineers is going to read that :)  

Thanks for the detailed reply, Dominick. I'll make sure the right folks see this.

But also, as a workaround for the label issue, in that scenario you can place only horizontal guides and then you won't have any nodes along the edges which can't be bent.

Definitely takes a little getting used to, but i've had great success with the new warp tool.

Thanks for your help, eartho! I will give it try the next time I do label stuff ...

Nonetheless I am looking forward to the next release, maybe there will be some improvements for a smoother workflow :)

I'll make sure the right folks see this.

The handles-90 ̊-angle-lock-issue has already been reported on again and again ... and apparently fixing it it has not been given a high priority. 
And my choice of the word »fix« is deliberate because I see no plausible scenario in which this angle-locking would seem desirable. 

This is disturbing. If we are going to trust Adobe to provide updates to us, we need tools to function. This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how the tool is used OR horrible QC. I'm not sure which is worse. On top of that, 10 months and still no fix? I just downloaded an update today with fingers crossed and no luck.

Same here :( I am still hoping for a fix in version 22.

Same here :( I am still hoping for a fix in version 22.