For all the reasons I mentioned earlier, it is best to configure the External Editing preferences in Lightroom (see Figure 2.9) to generate 16-bit TIFF files whenever you choose Photo ➯ Edit in ➯ Photoshop. If an image you have captured has lots of levels of data per channel, why throw them away when you switch to editing the photo in Photoshop? If the subsequent editing you do in Photoshop involves further tone and color manipulation, even if it’s only slight or is applied to localized areas, it doesn’t make sense to limit the editing to 8 bit when choosing 16 bit guarantees you will preserve as much image integrity as possible.
When you choose Photo ➯ Edit in ➯ Photoshop, this opens a rendered version of the original image in Photoshop but does not actually save it as a new version until you choose File ➯ Save in Photoshop. Only then do the file format and compression settings (configured in the External Editing preferences) come into play. Saving also automatically adds that version to the Lightroom catalog and saves it to the same Lightroom folder location as the original. If Stack With Original is checked (circled in Figure 2.9), the saved, rendered version will be stacked with the original. However, this assumes the versions of Lightroom and Photoshop you are using are both com- patible or up-to-date. If you are using Lightroom CC with Photoshop CC, the obvi- ous solution is to check that you have installed the latest updates for both programs.
But if you are using, say, a perpetual license version of Photoshop for which there is no current update to match the version of Lightroom you are using, you will be faced with a dialog such as the one shown in Figure 2.10, where you have several choices.
Open Anyway instructs Photoshop to open the image directly without saving. This will work fine as long as you have not applied any edit adjustments in Lightroom that will be incompatible with the Camera Raw plug-in used in your version of Photoshop. If this is going to be an issue, you can choose Render in Lightroom. This uses the Camera Raw engine in Lightroom to create a rendered copy that can then be opened in Photoshop. So the difference here is that in such circumstances choos- ing Photo ➯ Edit in ➯ Photoshop (followed by clicking Render in Lightroom) will always create a rendered file copy in the process.
There is also an option to open files from Lightroom in an external editing pro- gram. You’ll see this option in the External Editing preferences, and the settings you select here are reflected in the Lightroom Photo ➯ Edit in menu, where the program NOTE
Images added to the Lightroom catalog can be grouped into stacks. This can be done in the Library module by choosing Photo
➯Stacking ➯ Group into Stack and undone by choosing Photo
➯Stacking ➯ Unstack. It is par- ticularly useful when you need to group together a number of associated images such as a pan- orama or HDR stack, as well as for time-lapse sequences where the number of images may run into the hundreds. In this section of the text, I refer to how Lightroom can be configured so that images that have been edited in an external editor are automatically stacked with the original master image.
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FIGURE 2.9 The Lightroom External Editing preferences, where you can establish the settings to be used when creating a rendered image for editing in Photoshop or another external program.
FIGURE 2.10 The dialog you will see if there is a mismatch between the versions of Camera Raw used by Lightroom and Photoshop.
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ptg18144731 settings you configure in the preferences will be shown listed. For example, you
might wish to have the option to render your Lightroom files in an older version of Photoshop, or some other pixel-editing program. The preferences can also be config- ured to open your images in the same version of Photoshop, but using different TIFF file compression or bit-depth options. Whatever you do, choosing Photo ➯ Edit in
➯ [selected external editing program], or using the shortcut #aE (Mac), caE (PC), will always produce a rendered version, saved to the same folder as the original master image.
To sum up, choosing Photo ➯ Edit in ➯ Photoshop (#E [Mac], cE [PC]) normally opens the raw file directly in Photoshop as an unsaved rendered image ready to be edited. If you close the image without saving it, the file closes without being added to the catalog. If you choose File ➯ Save in Photoshop, it then saves the image using the Lightroom External Editor configured settings and adds it to the Lightroom catalog in the same folder location as the original. Choosing Photo ➯ Edit in ➯ external editor (#aE [Mac], caE [PC]) always generates a saved rendered file in the same folder location as the original using whatever settings have been configured in the Lightroom External Editor settings.
PHOTOSHOP IMAGE EDITING
When editing raw files, the ideal approach is to carry out as much of the editing as you can in Lightroom and only export the files to Photoshop when it is necessary to retouch them further. These days you can do a lot in Lightroom without ever need- ing to use Photoshop. You can add localized adjustments and remove objects, but for complex image-editing jobs, it will always be faster and more effective to leave Light- room at some point and take your file into Photoshop to do the heavy-duty retouching.
My preference is to keep the image-edit retouching as nondestructive as possible at every stage. When you choose to edit an image in Photoshop, or export a photo as a TIFF file and edit it, you can’t then go back to Lightroom and readjust the original Develop settings because the edit settings become fixed when you create a rendered TIFF image. Once you export a file in this way, whatever retouching work you do in Photoshop is done from that baseline starting point.
Having said that, it is possible to export photos from Lightroom as smart objects.
In this workflow you can select a raw photo in Lightroom, go to the Photo ➯ Edit menu, and choose Open as Smart Object in Photoshop. This allows you to open a raw image from Lightroom into Photoshop and keep it in a raw image state (see Figure 2.11). If you do this and double-click the smart object layer, it will open the Camera Raw dialog, which will provide you with access to the same Camera Raw settings that were applied in Lightroom. This workflow allows you to open a photo in Photoshop and retain the ability to edit the Camera Raw/Develop settings. You can edit a raw smart object photo in Photoshop and apply most Photoshop image
FIGURE 2.11 You can open a raw photo from Lightroom as a smart object in Photoshop. In this Lay- ers panel view, you can see the image layer has a smart object icon: double-clicking this opens the Camera Raw dialog to reveal and give you access to the applied Lightroom Develop module set- tings. In Photoshop you can apply filters to smart objects. In this example, you can see I applied a Blur Gallery filter to a raw image smart object.
ptg18144731 adjustments and filters and still be able to re-edit the underlying raw settings. The
problem is, when you do this it can really slow things down, and the onscreen updates will take a while to refresh each time you update the underlying Camera Raw settings. More importantly, should you use any of the Photoshop retouching tools on an empty new layer (such as the spot healing brush or brush tool), you can’t then update the settings for the underlying smart object layer because this will render all the brushwork on the layers above obsolete. There are some instances where it is useful to open raw images as smart object layers in Photoshop, but because of the above limitations it is not something that is always practical or particularly helpful when you switch from editing in Lightroom to editing in Photoshop. However, smart objects/smart filters are still very useful for some specific Photoshop image-editing tasks.
Adjustment layers
The easiest way to keep your Photoshop image editing nondestructive is to make full use of layers and adjustment layers. The clone stamp and healing work is best applied first on an empty new layer just above the image background layer. If you need to carry out further retouching work on any areas of an image that have already been worked on, you may want to fix the work done so far as a merged visible layer and carry on editing. For example, you can clone unwanted blemishes first, fix the retouching work by merging the visible layers to a new layer above, and then proceed to edit using the brush tool, say, and then fade the layer opacity to blend the paintbrush work with the spotting work. Adjustment layers should ideally be placed above the pixel retouching layers, where they can be applied either to the layer immediately below (in what is called a clipping group) or to all visible lay- ers below, or masked so they are applied to selected areas only. Figure 2.12 shows an example of a simple layer stack where the Spotting layer is immediately above the Background layer, the Painting layer is above the Spotting layer (with the layer opacity faded to 70%) and lastly, a masked Curves adjustment layer is added last at the top of the layer stack. This demonstrates some of the fundamental principles of Photoshop layers, whether the job you are doing is fairly simple or you’re creating more complex image composites.
It is also a good idea to minimize the number of adjustment layers used. When multiple, global adjustment layers are added to an image and you choose to flatten all the layers, the result is a cumulative series of adjustments, rather than a merged blend. For example, if you add a Curves layer on top of a Levels on top of a Bright- ness and Contrast adjustment layer and flatten to merge, the result is the same as if you opened an image, applied a Brightness and Contrast adjustment, then applied a Levels adjustment and a Curves adjustment. Clearly this is not good practice, as the image is progressively degraded at each step. If you consider that Brightness
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FIGURE 2.12 Here you can see the steps taken in Photoshop to retouch a beauty photo.
At the top left, you see the optimized image exported from Lightroom with just a Back- ground layer. Next to that, a spotting layer was added. At the bottom left, a merged composite layer was edited using the brush tool, where the layer opacity was set to 70%. Next to that is the final version with a masked Curves adjustment layer at the top of the layer stack.
ptg18144731 and Contrast, Levels, and Curves adjustments can all be summarized with a single
Curves adjustment, the ideal solution is to reduce everything to a single Curves adjustment. It is not quite the same if you apply masked layer adjustments, because here you are using adjustment layers to adjust distinct areas of an image, rather than applying a global adjustment. You will often see retouched images where lots of adjustment layers have been added, but because each adjustment layer relates to a small area of the image, it does not have an adverse effect on the image as a whole when the layers are all flattened.
Continued editing in Lightroom
Each time you save an image that has been edited in Photoshop, Lightroom will update the preview for the rendered pixel image that’s been added to the catalog.
Once the Photoshop editing has been completed, there may be nothing more that needs to be done to that image. If a photo does happen to need a little more work, there is the option to reopen the image in Photoshop and edit it further, but instead, you can always make those adjustments in Lightroom.
What you decide to do here depends on your preferred image-editing workflow.
Some photographers feel that once you start editing an image in Photoshop, every- thing subsequent to that should be done in Photoshop. But once you have finished doing all the Photoshop editing and saved an image back to the Lightroom catalog, you do have the option to apply a new set of Lightroom Develop adjustments to the Photoshop-edited rendered TIFF image. What I typically do is to carry out all the initial image processing in Lightroom, edit a rendered TIFF copy in Photoshop, where I will do all the complex retouching, and save back to Lightroom, where I may carry out some further fine-tuning adjustments. For example, if you want to make a print, it is advisable to soft proof the image first before printing (which is discussed a little later in this chapter). Basically, the soft-proof process may require you to make some additional adjustments using the Lightroom Develop module controls to optimize the image before making a print. To create a black-and-white photograph, it makes sense to have a master up-to-date version that is kept in color, where the black- and-white conversion process happens last. So in these situations I will carry out the initial optimization in Lightroom, edit in Photoshop (keeping the photo in color), and save to add it to the Lightroom catalog. Once I am back in Lightroom, I can use the Black and White Mix controls in the HSL/Color/B&W panel to apply the black- and-white conversion. This way, if I decide I would prefer to use the image in color, it is a simple matter of removing the black-and-white conversion step in Lightroom, or more likely, I will create a separate snapshot or a new virtual copy so I can easily access both the color and black-and-white versions of the same image.
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