Just dealing with a Tiger user who kept getting inexplicable results. It turns out he was always choosing Make Test, so his images weren't being processed when they needed to be. The problem comes down to some very misleading translations auf Deutsch.

Make Test is translated as Änderungen erstellen, which back-translates as "Make Changes." Not nearly clear enough. That makes it sound as if it's going to take care of anything that's new or different. But as we know, it doesn't reprocess images if you've done something like changing the image bounds. Disastrous. The de translation should probably be something like Test Machen or Test Erstellen.

Force Remake is translated as Alles Erstellen, which back-translates as "Make All." Again, not clear enough. The translation should be something like Erzwungene Verarbeitung.

I'd like to have a native German speaker check in on the subject. It needs to be made clear to a user that a "test" build is inherently unreliable, and that a "force" build is overkill.

ETA: Perhaps Änderungen testen.

Even better, eliminate the Make Test option. It's never a good idea.

In 20 years (check my "Registered" date!), I have literally never used it. In the days of layouts that were based on HTML tables, it might have made some sense, but with the advent of responsive layouts, I don't think I'd trust it.

And as long as you do your experimenting with a small-ish test project, the image processing is so fast, there's no reason to avoid it. Users shouldn't be testing things with the 20,000-image family history album.

What prompted this was the user who was using Make Test when adding new images, and then never doing a real Make Album. It was producing a lot of weird, ugly things.

But at least provide better translations. The French versions are much better, happily.

The poor German translation probably goes back to January 2020, when make changes was renamed to make test. Maybe the German translation was not updated.

But like Jeff, I have never used that function, much prefer using a small test project.

I agree about Make Test. Twenty years ago, in the days of layouts driven by HTML tables, this might have made some sense, but with the advent of responsive layouts, and with the vastly improved image processing speed now available, it has outlived its usefulness. In fact, it leads users into doing the wrong thing, to wit, using Make Test without following it up with a proper Make Album.

But Force Remake is still needed from time to time. There are some situations in which it's the only way to get a needed change to "register." In theory, Make Album should always detect when a change means that images should be reprocessed, but that's not universally true. Fixing those fringe cases would cause every one of every user's albums to be completely reprocessed the next time the project was opened. I'm sure we'd hear about that!

And it has been improved since the early days. Now, instead of reprocessing everything - images and videos - it reprocesses only the images. In that respect, it is far better than simply deleting the entire local album and making the album from scratch. Video processing still makes most PC's do some very heavy breathing, with cooling fans going at full blast. And, of course, in an album with a lot of videos, it can take something just this side of forever.