Home · Register · Join Upload & Sell

Moderated by: Fred Miranda
Username  

  New fredmiranda.com Mobile Site
  New Feature: SMS Notification alert
  New Feature: Buy & Sell Watchlist
  

FM Forums | Post-processing & Printing | Join Upload & Sell

  

Archive 2012 · Lightroom to Photoshop and Back Question

  
 
junk_bond
Offline
• •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Lightroom to Photoshop and Back Question


Hi All,

I have a question regarding how Lightroom brings back in a file which was originally edited in Lightroom and then externally edited some more in Photoshop.

In other words, I open up a RAW file into Lightroom and make adjustments. From Lightroom I then open that file up into Photoshop (edit a copy with Lightroom adjustments)as a tiff and make some more adjustments. Once completed I save and return back to Lightroom. The newly edited file is there, but I realize I want to make some more adjustments to the file. When I make these adjustments to this newly created file in Lightroom, is it editing the original RAW file? Or am I making adjustments to the tiff file? (in other words your a little more limited to the edit-ability of the tiff file in Lightroom compared to the orignal RAW file, meaning it would be best to make those larger adjustments before exporting into Photoshop) Hope that makes sense. Thanks!




Apr 17, 2012 at 12:01 PM
Peter Figen
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: On
p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Lightroom to Photoshop and Back Question


Your re-imported tiff is still a tiff and any further adjustments in LR are done on the tiff. Generally, it's better to do most of your tonal and color corrections on the RAW file, but you always have better and more precise control over so many things in Ps. It's easy enough to do a couple of versions and see for yourself if you prefer one method over the other. What was the reason for wanting to use LR again?


Apr 17, 2012 at 12:24 PM
wlpelzmann
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Lightroom to Photoshop and Back Question


Yes, when you edit the TIFF file output by Photoshop, you are NOT adding changes to the original RAW file. So, it is best to make any big adjustments before exporting to Photoshop, but minor tweaks to the TIFF are fine.

NOTE: if you take the LR adjusted TIFF back into Photoshop, you will need to decide if you want to keep the LR adjustments or edit the original TIFF.



Apr 17, 2012 at 12:24 PM
Eyeball
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Lightroom to Photoshop and Back Question


In the scenario you present, your LR edits are made non-destructively to the TIFF file, not the raw.

Different people like different work flows but in general I would recommend trying to get at least your basic exposure and white balance set in the original raw before the edit in Photoshop. If you know you will be going to PS anyway, most of the other things (healing, dodging, burning, HSL adjustments, etc.) you can defer to PS if you want. It really depends on which software you find does the best job with the least amount of effort. You might want to consider doing a little noise reduction and capture sharpening in LR before the move to PS - again, there is a lot of personal preference involved and it depends somewhat on the characteristics of the specific image (how much noise, for example).

If you want to give yourself a little more wiggle room at the expense of larger file sizes, you can bring the image from LR into PS as a Smart Object. This allows you to open up the Smart Object and re-adjust your original raw edits. How helpful this will be depends on the types of edits you are doing in PS. If all your PS edits are standard adjustment layers it works pretty well. If you are doing a lot of cloning and healing or like to use intermediate "snapshot" copy layers, it works less well since those things will probably need to be re-done if you change the Smart Object.

As long as you are bringing the image into PS as 16-bit, the loss from raw is not great UNLESS you make radical exposure changes after the image is in PS. The raw file contains anywhere from 12 to 16 bit data, depending on the camera, so it sounds initially like a 16-bit TIFF or PSD would work fine without any data loss. The problem is that the tonal values are not distributed the same across those bits in the raw as they are in an RGB format like TIFF or PSD, so tonal values can be lost (primarily in the highlight values) in the move from Lr to PS. This is why it's a good idea to make your basic exposure adjustments (including possibly the LR tone curve) before the move to PS.

Now with all that said, it may or may not be necessary for you to worry about these things. It depends quite a bit on how much you are going to enlarge the image and just how anal you are about image quality.



Apr 17, 2012 at 12:29 PM
junk_bond
Offline
• •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Lightroom to Photoshop and Back Question


Perfect, thanks all!


Apr 17, 2012 at 03:45 PM
James_N
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Lightroom to Photoshop and Back Question


One option is to open your original raw file from Lightroom into Photoshop as a Smart Object by using the Open in Photoshop as Smart Object command from the Photo menu.

Then if you realize you need to make additional adjustments to the raw file, you simply double-click on the Smart Object thumbnail in the Layers palette and the file will reopen in Adobe Camera Raw (not Lightroom).



Apr 17, 2012 at 05:30 PM
Alan321
Offline
• • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Lightroom to Photoshop and Back Question


That smart object thing seems to be pretty powerful. It is probably ideal for those important images that will deservedly get a lot of attention but for routine stuff - the bulk of most images - I think working within Lr is more efficient.

Presumably Lr can view those smart object psd files and keep its preview up to date, but I have not yet tried that. Perhaps you could set up a dedicated colour label in Lr to flag up such files so that you know to refresh the preview whenever you open them in Lr but I'm guessing that would also open Ps to rebuild the preview data from the original raw file and the smart object edits. Another option would be to have all such files in one folder so that in Lr you know what to expect.

- Alan



Apr 17, 2012 at 10:24 PM





FM Forums | Post-processing & Printing | Join Upload & Sell

    
 

You are not logged in. Login or Register

Username       Or Reset password



This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.