How to Roundtrip from Lightroom to Photoshop to remove the background and return to Lightroom

[timothyh11860951]

how do you rountrip from lightroom to photoshop to remove the background and create a transparency and roundtrip back to lightroom where I could continue to make cropping adjustments and color adjustments without losing the RAW color depth?

I have hudnreds of files I want to be able to resize, crop and color correct after background removal if neccessary.

[Akash Sharma]

Moving to Lightroom Classic CC — The desktop-focused app​

[Laura Shoe · Accepted solution]

Right-click in your image in LR, choose Edit in>Photoshop CC. Do your PS work, then File>Save. This saves it back to the original folder, stacked with the original image.

Preferences for file type (PSD, TIFF), bit depth, color space and naming convention for the PS file are in Preferences on the External Editing tab.

[Laura Shoe]

But I didn't address your "without losing the raw color depth". You really can't preserve the file as a raw file (if this is what you mean). LR let's you open the file as a smart object in PS (Edit in>Open as Smart Object), but you have to rasterize the layer (i.e. convert it to a pixel layer) in order to remove the background.

It's therefore best that you do some initial work in LR, taking advantage of the raw format, particularly white balance and preservation of highlights and shadows, before you create your Photoshop file.

[timothyh11860951]

Hey Hey. Thank you for the responses!!! All such great advice. It seems there really is no way to remove that background and keep the raw data.

Again thank you so much for your response. This will definitely be s great resource later on for someone.

[elie_dinur]

Keep in mind that even Lightroom itself (or any other Raw convertor) operates on the original Raw data for only a few seconds before altering it by: a. Demosaicing it, b. Converting it to RGB data in a version of the ProPhoto color space that has a linear Tonal Response Curve, c. Applying the chosen profile for your camera, d. Applying White Balance. (Not necessarily in that order.)

By the time you see a preview image on your monitor a TRC has been applied to the display 'cause the linear version retains the maximum Raw data possible, but it ain't pretty.

Of course, any further editing also looses data, but the high bit internal workflow minimizes loses. And it's non-destructive.

Nevertheless, if the RGB data sent to PS is 16 bit ProPhoto (with a Gamma 1.8 TRC) and saved out as a 16 bit Tiff or Psd, a large proportion of the original data is retained and that's about the best you can hope for.