Be careful, you could lose all your work when you annotate an image and this is why (testing technical support)

[carlosgm 77]

@Federico Simionato I have opened ticket #3826974 where I explain how you can lose all the work done on an annotated image when you use overlapping text boxes. I share the video where the text boxes disappears.

It took me a long time to find the reason why the text inside text boxes mysteriously disappeared, but I finally found it and have reported it.

I share with you what happened to me so that you know why you might be losing your information while annotating an image.

I initially published the ticket in Spanish (#3820954) but the elephant behind evernote support did not understand anything I wrote despite having shared a video and the steps explaining the problem. I had to write it for you in English, hoping that you understand it now (#3826974)

In addition to sharing the problem so that users who annotate images within evernote take it into account, I want to add this post as an experiment to see how long it takes them to answer and what the evernote's elephant answers.

 

7 days waiting for a response for the ticket in English, and 15 days since I opened the ticket in Spanish...

Status: waiting for response from technical support...

[PinkElephant 8,118]

You make quite a fuzz out of something. "Loose all your work" and this is why, quite sensational. So let me try, I thought.

OK, part 1: I followed your detailed description about HOW to "Loose all my work" (which should end up with loosing one of 2 annotations in a picture, hardly ALL my work"). This was the result:

As you may notice, nothing has vanished or been lost when I added the word "erweitert" to both text boxes while they overlayed.

And about the WHY I don't see any explanation. You just say "Boom, and there it goes, and it doesn't come back". That's for me HOW, not WHY.

Conclusion: I can't reproduce what happened to your edits. And I think your title is more clickbait than a valid description.

And beside this, yes, currently support sucks.

[carlosgm 77]

It was not my intention to clickbait, let me explain:

I have images with dozens of objects and there are days when I spend hours annotating the same image, adding, editing, moving objects and writing text boxes on the image. If I am unfortunate enough to finish my work editing a text box under the conditions in which the error is reproduced, the undo/redo system (ctrl+z, ctrl+y) becomes corrupted and therefore I lose all the work done about that image (which some days represents hours of work for me).

The steps to reproduce the bug are found in the support ticket, which are easily reproducible.

I don't know your operating system and maybe that's why you can't reproduce the bug. The tests I carried out and therefore the video recording is on evernote 10.75.1 for Windows 10.

[PinkElephant 8,118]

Actually I don't use the build in editor any more. I always use the "Open" function, which will import any picture into the Preview-App*. The tools there are lightyears ahead of these clumsy pixel-generators EN is still calling annotation tools. It is way outdated, and I doubt there is anybody left with EN who is able to maintain the aged code.

So I just reverted to these annotation tools to try if I could reproduce anything. Nope.

To avoid an significant loss of information, I would always try to close the picture from time to time, to make the changes save and sync.

(*) That's Preview on the Mac - it is part of MacOS. On Windows no such tool exists ...

[carlosgm 77]

Cita

As you may notice, nothing has vanished or been lost when I added the word "erweitert" to both text boxes while they overlayed.

To reproduce the bug you should not drag two text boxes, you have to add a single text box from the palette and then copy and paste it.

As your image looks, what you should do to reproduce the bug is the following:
1. Edit the green text box (when editing it the entire text box will be selected, click on any letter in the same green text box)
2. With the editing cursor over the green text box, click anywhere where the red text box is located.
3. You should continue to see the editing cursor over the green text box (editing the green text box)
4. Click on any area of the image, outside the text boxes.
5. One of the text boxes disappears and the undo/redo system becomes corrupted, which means that you can no longer go back to the work done before the bug, even if you press ctrl+z thousands of times

[PinkElephant 8,118]

The Green box in my screenshot was copied from the first text box. Tried again, no problem:

 

[janndk 495]

I can reproduce the bug (EN 10.75.2 Windows). And have actually also experienced something similar before, but not paid much attention because I thought it was myself that accidentally had deleted it.

I used to use annotation tools a lot - it was one of my favorite features. But not much anymore, as it doesn't function well if you use it in both EN windows and EN android. 

[ferol 429]

Áno, existujú problémy s anotáciou obrázkov.

 

Preto robím tento postup in Windows:

 

Nikdy nerobím jednu anotáciu na dlhú dobu, ale pravidelne šetrím a reeditujem a pokračujem.

 

A nikdy nekopírujte textové pole a vložte textové pole do obrázka... Vždy musíte vytvoriť nové textové pole a znova ho nastaviť.

 

Takto to teraz funguje celkom spoľahlivo. A doteraz som sa s tým naučil žiť. Anotujem veľa obrázkov.

[carlosgm 77]

@PinkElephant The test you just did is very interesting:

I have tested the bug on 3 different computers, all of which have evernote installed on Windows 10, and the same thing happens on all of them.

At this moment I just tested the same bug on the web application and the problem is the same (video *1)

video *1: I have added spaces between the text boxes to make it easier to reproduce the bug. In the video it is not visible how the undo/undo system is corrupted because there are only 2 images, however it is hell when you have many objects and text boxes in the same image:

 

 

[carlosgm 77]

It seems like a joke but when I recorded the video to show you the bug on the web platform, it turns out that a variant of the same bug appeared, which I don't know how to reproduce in steps like original bug:

 

 

 

[carlosgm 77]

I'm afraid to edit my support ticket to add the thread for this conversation because I learned that if you add additional information, you have to wait 15 more days than you already waited for a response.

Continuing with the experiment of also testing technical support of the elephant, I will add an update to the ticket to this conversation thread.

[carlosgm 77]

hace 33 minutos, ferol dijo:

A nikdy nekopírujte textové pole a vložte textové pole do obrázka... Vždy musíte vytvoriť nové textové pole a znova ho nastaviť.

@ferol Be careful because not copying and pasting the same text box does not save you from this bug.
There is a variant of the bug where it is not necessary to copy and paste the same text:

 

[ferol 429]

Of course. I sometimes lose a few minutes of work in my procedures. But globally, despite these mistakes, it is still the most efficient way for me to annotate images than to use any other editing options.

 

Other annotation is possible, but nothing is displayed directly in Evernote

[PinkElephant 8,118]

31 minutes ago, ferol said:

… Other annotation is possible, but nothing is displayed directly in Evernote

And that’s a typical Windows user comment.

Mac users experience this: When you open an attachment (be it picture or pdf) on the Mac in Preview, you can see the edits show up in the note nearly in real time.

When you save, it saves into the note, when you close it closes into the note.

Preview is working seamlessly with EN.

[ferol 429]

33 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

A to je typický komentár používateľov systému Windows.

Používatelia počítačov Mac majú toto: Keď otvoríte prílohu (či už je to obrázok alebo pdf) na počítači Mac v ukážke, môžete vidieť, že sa úpravy v poznámke zobrazia takmer v reálnom čase.

Keď uložíte, uloží sa do poznámky, keď zatvoríte, zavrie sa do poznámky.

Ukážka funguje bez problémov s EN.

What I meant was that if I used other programs outside of Evernote to annotate images - e.g. Adobe, Affinity Photo, Zoner, Sketchpad, whatever, it wouldn't show up in Evernote, just as an attachment in the same way that Excel, for example, doesn't.

Of course you could use PDF to annotate images, but I'd have to convert each screenshot to PDF and put it into Evernote that way.

[PinkElephant 8,118]

Preview works on several picture formats and PDFs alike.

[ferol 429]

13 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

Preview works on several picture formats and PDFs alike.

Obviously we don't understand each other and each of the two of us is talking about something else.
I do know that the preview works on images and PDFs...

I say it doesn't work on formats like:
*.psd
*.xls
*.afpub
.... and others.
That is, I can't use other programs with their native formats to annotate images if I simply wanted to get the annotated format to show up in Evernote. I would have to do that afterwards always exporting from that program to JPG or PDF...

And that's why I use native annotation in Evernote - i.e. the integrated old Skitch

 

[PinkElephant 8,118]

Skitch (nor native or in its inapp version) won’t work on .afpub (Affinity Publisher), .psd (Adobe Photoshop), and .xls should be avoided in general (use .xlsx  instead). Don’t know what this has to to do with picture annotation.

[ferol 429]

2 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

Skitch (nor native or in its inapp version) won’t work on .afpub (Affinity Publisher), .psd (Adobe Photoshop), and .xls should be avoided in general (use .xlsx  instead). Don’t know what this has to to do with picture annotation.

let it go... you obviously don't understand what I'm writing at all

 

[PinkElephant 8,118]

🤷‍♂️

[carlosgm 77]

On 9/2/2024 at 10:43, PinkElephant dijo:

Actually I don't use the build in editor any more. I always use the "Open" function, which will import any picture into the Preview-App*. The tools there are lightyears ahead of these clumsy pixel-generators EN is still calling annotation tools. It is way outdated, and I doubt there is anybody left with EN who is able to maintain the aged code.

So I just reverted to these annotation tools to try if I could reproduce anything. Nope.

To avoid an significant loss of information, I would always try to close the picture from time to time, to make the changes save and sync.

(*) That's Preview on the Mac - it is part of MacOS. On Windows no such tool exists ...

@PinkElephant Thank you, the workflow you have between evernote and macos is very interesting. I would like to try it in the future...
At the moment I am very tied up with the evernote annotation tool because I already have hundreds of images annotated and I would have to migrate all the annotations to the Mac image preview.

 

Update: I have updated the ticket with the bug report (#3826974) indicating that there are some variants of the bug and that it also happens in the web application.

7 days and counting, so far I have not received any response from evernote...

[PinkElephant 8,118]

Interesting - I still think it may have been an occasional glitch, or a combination of weird circumstances. The code used for annotation is rather old, and practically the same as the one used in the Skitch app.

Skitch was acquired by EN many years back. Maybe they just took the code for the annotation from the app, and integrated it into the app. Then it is likely the oldest code still running. I don’t think there is anybody left to maintain it.

With other tools I think you won’t be able to edit annotations. They are probably integrated into a flat picture file - this means the annotation pixels are burned into the picture layer.

[carlosgm 77]

I have added an update to the ticket indicating the exact steps to reproduce a variant of the bug.

13 days and counting since I reported the bug, and still no response....

[carlosgm 77]

On 10/2/2024 at 15:15, PinkElephant dijo:

Interesting - I still think it may have been an occasional glitch, or a combination of weird circumstances. The code used for annotation is rather old, and practically the same as the one used in the Skitch app.

Skitch was acquired by EN many years back. Maybe they just took the code for the annotation from the app, and integrated it into the app. Then it is likely the oldest code still running. I don’t think there is anybody left to maintain it.

With other tools I think you won’t be able to edit annotations. They are probably integrated into a flat picture file - this means the annotation pixels are burned into the picture layer.

I always thought that the application with which you edit images in evernote had been rewritten to javascript when they made the change from evernote 6 to evernote 10.

And precisely because of this rewriting towards javascript is that the image editing application in evernote 10 has bugs that did not exist in evernote 6 (for example the bug reported in the ticket mentioned in this thread)

[PinkElephant 8,118]

How does it look ?

Modernized ?

No, it just looks the same old ugly pixel graphics it had always been. I doubt anybody would recreate THIS when coding it new. To me it looks like a library reused.

And again: Even with several repetitions I was not able to reproduce your bug claim. Looking at your sensational thread title and the small problem - if any - , I think you overdo an issue.

Try to sort it out with support.

[carlosgm 77]

1 hour ago, PinkElephant dijo:

How does it look ?

Modernized ?

No, it just looks the same old ugly pixel graphics it had always been. I doubt anybody would recreate THIS when coding it new. To me it looks like a library reused.

I thought it was a FACT that it was a reused library and not just your perception.

1 hour ago, PinkElephant dijo:

And again: Even with several repetitions I was not able to reproduce your bug claim

The fact that you cannot reproduce it does not mean that it does not exist. You are probably not knowing how to reproduce (another user in this same thread was able to do it), or it is simply not reproducible on your operating system.

 

1 hour ago, PinkElephant dijo:

Looking at your sensational thread title and the small problem - if any - , I think you overdo an issue.

For my workflow it is not a small problem, it is a thorn in the side and it seems ridiculous to me that the solution is to save the image all the time (the same recommendation that they made 15 years ago in Microsoft Word for fear of losing the work done)

[carlosgm 77]

End of story:
25 days later they responded to the ticket telling me that they will pass the report to their developers (this is good).

With this answer I am satisfied, thank you evernote team