How to edit a photo as LINKED smart object in PS?

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
August 6, 2023
3 replies
9467 views

Hello,

LRC already has the option to edit a photo as smart object in PS. If that happens a PSD is generated with a smart object that embedds the original raw file and uses camera raw to develop it. That is already pretty great.

Yet, to my understanding, this copies the raw file to the PSD. That looks unnecessary because the raw file is right next to the PSD in the file system!

Is there an option to create a linked smart object instead of an embedded one when exporting a photo to PS?

Windows

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Vibrant_writer0D4D

Participating Frequently

That's brilliant, thank you very much!

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

A faster, but more dangerous, method: Use 'Open as Smart Object' as usual. If you have an embedded smart object in Photoshop, then you can change this to a linked smart object (I type this on my iPad, so I can't check the exact steps). This will export the smart object (i.e. the raw file) to disk. Do this and overwrite the original raw file with the exported raw file. Lightroom won't know that this happened and will see this exported linked raw file as the original raw file.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

Vibrant_writer0D4D

Participating Frequently

I just tested this and it works a treat!

I opened my RAW file from LR as a smart object in PS, then right-clicked on the smart object in the Layers panel and chose: "Convert to Linked...", save as dialogue opens, chose the RAW file on my disk, smart object is linked to RAW file on disk. Upon saving the edits done in LR, the smart object updates automatically in PS and vice-versa

(in LR, go to "Read Metadata from file").

It works very fast and seamlessly. Thank you very much. Big lifesaver!

File size is not really a concern for me. I think it's better than having several versions of the file but am a bit concerned why it may be dangerous to use this method?

Conrad_C

Community Expert

Also, once you’ve got it set up as a linked Smart Object, that makes it possible to send the edits back to Lightroom Classic. If you edit the linked raw Smart Object in Photoshop by double-clicking to open it in Camera Raw, Camera Raw writes the edits back to the external metadata. Which means, back in Lightroom Classic, you can select that photo and choose Metadata > Read Metadata from File, and that will update the original raw file in Lightroom Classic.

john beardsworth

Community Expert

No, in LR there is no option to do that - that's a shame - so you have to do something like this:

First do a Cmd S (Mac) or Ctrl S (Win) to save edits back to the file, which will help later.
Next do an Edit With, opening the file into PS and essentially creating a document of the right size and with any metadata.
Save the file at this point (if you don't, there'll be a "can't place file in itself" error in the next step)
Then in PS, choose File > Place Linked and add the raw file. It'll probably take you through ACR, which should pick up the adjustments from that Cmd/Ctrl S earlier, and you should check that ACR is outputing a 16 bit file.
This should open the file as a linked smart object, centred and filling the document space (if not make sure the resolution is the same in LR's External Editing prefs and in ACR - so 300 in both cases, or 240 in both). You can now delete the background layer, and you have what you want.

If you now make changes back in LR and do a Cmd/Ctrl S, you'll see the Photoshop link being refreshed.

I am pretty sure that's all the steps.

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