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Freed eXplore
Participant
March 6, 2018
Answered

RAW on LR > Edit on PS > colors problem & more when edit back on LR

  • March 6, 2018
  • 1 reply
  • 616 views

Hi there ! (first, sorry for my english)
I have a problem that i don't understand, and it's really annoying!  I wanted to delete/change some stuff with PS on a photo RAW.

So here is how friends tell me to do for the best optimization (if i have to change the preset later on LR, i don't want to do edit on PS each time) :

- Load Raw in LR, apply Lens Correction.
- Right click : Modify in Photoshop CC.
- Do my stuff in PS CC, then Save (Ctrl + S).
- Back on LR, do my preset & edit on the new the modified.tif  file.

Now i tryed to apply my LR preset on the original RAW file  AND  on the modified.tif file. The result is totaly different !!!!

Here a screenshot of the results :  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VyGlqEOhngaoEpi7ERcE38DHclSPEoHv/view?usp=sharing

I checked camera raw on PS, it's ProPhotoRVB 16 bit
I checked the export to PS preferencies in LR, it's TIFF ProPhotoRVB 16 bit
PS CC, LR Classic CC and Camera raw are up to date.

Can someone explain me why? It is normal? What is the best way to do LR + PS edits and keep the exact colors ?

Thanks

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Jao vdL

Presets applied to rendered tif files will have completely different results then when you apply them to a raw file. raw file contain raw sensor data and are in a linear space (every increase of one is an extra photon detected by the pixel on your sensor) and each pixel only describes the response in one color area (there are red, green, or blue filters on each pixel site on your sensor laid out in what's called a Bayer array. They are not corrected for white balance and are not in a device specific color space or anything like that. Tif files on the other hand are gamma corrected (which means that the brightness corresponds non-linearly on the number in the file) and rendered in a certain color space and referenced to a color space white value. This means that the adjustments in a typical preset really only are valid when you apply them to one kind of file. This is especially clear for white balance. For a raw file, white balance is a value in Kelvins and a green purple shift (tint) value that is absolute. It describes the color temperature of the light source illuminating the scene. For a tif or jpeg file, the white balance is a relative shift from zero since the real white balance has already been baked in.

Bottom line is that you should do as much of your edits as you can in Lightroom before ever opening photoshop. In most cases (depending on your editing style), you should never go to Photoshop. There is very little that you really need photoshop for and as soon as you go to Photoshop all your edits become baked in (except if you open as a smart object but that limits your editing ability).

1 reply

Just Shoot Me
Legend
March 6, 2018

I disagree with your friend.

You should do all the work you can in LR. If you find you then need to do other editing work that can't be done in LR it is at that time you send the image to PS.

Freed eXplore
Participant
March 6, 2018

Thanks, but if you modify something into PS (delete a building on a city shot, smooth the face on a protrait...)  at the end of your LR work, and want to change something again in LR or apply a new preset or whatever, your .tif has lost all what you worked on before the PS save.

But maybe you right as i got some colors problem when i come back and apply my preset on the .tif....

JohanElzenga
Community Expert
Community Expert
March 7, 2018

Why do you apply the preset on the tiff, and what kind of preset is it anyway? Isn't that preset already applied to the raw file before you sent it to Photoshop? If it is, then applying the preset on the tiff file means you've applied it twice...

-- Johan W. Elzenga