Moving from Lightroom Classic to Photoshop and back to Lightroom Classic loses develop settings

[Graphicalman]

Hello Community,

When I move an image from Lightroom Classic to Photoshop "Edit in Photoshop", make an edit and then "Save" back to Lightroom Classic the original Develop adjustments are reset to zero.

How can I maintain the Develop adjustments for continued editing.

Kind Regards,

Graphicalman

[DS256]

@Graphicalman  the step you are missing is that LrC exports a file (normally TIFF) to load into PS for processing. PS does not understand LrC development settings.

When you return to LrC from  PS, you should see that you now have a TIFF file and the original file in a stack. From a workflow point of view, you would now continue your edits in the TIFF file.

Personally, I use very little PS so it's normally the last step in my workflow.

[GoldingD]

"PS does not understand LrC development settings.'

What? Not true.

Unless you are using creative profile, the profile will not be embedded, known bug. 

[JohanElzenga · Accepted solution]

Your technical explanation is completely wrong, but your conclusion about the workflow and why the sliders are all set to zero is correct. What actually happens is that Lightroom does not export a tiff, but instructs Photoshop to open the raw file with the Lightroom edit information. Photoshop uses Camera Raw to do this, but because the edit settings come from Lightroom, the Camera Raw interface is suppressed. After the raw conversion in ACR, a new RGB image is now open in Photoshop, and because that image has not been saved yet, the titlebar will show the file name and the raw extension, not yet a tiff or psd extension. That is what often confuses people, who think that the raw file itself is opened in Photoshop.

When you have made your Photoshop edits and hit the 'Save' menu, the image is saved as a tiff file or a psd file (according to the external editor settings in Lightroom) and is added to the Lightroom catalog. Because it is a new file, all the sliders in the develop module in Lightroom will be set to zero. The initial Lightroom edits and the Photoshop edits are 'baked into the pixels'.

[DS256]

Thanks @JohanElzenga and @GoldingD for correcting my misinformation.

My statement was based on Preferences where there is a setting under 'External Editing' for Photoshop 2020.  The preference says "16-bit ProPhoto RGB is the recommended choice for best preserving color details from Lightroom.". I assumed this was the setting of the extract passed to PS 2020. It seems to be for other external editors like Topaz.

From testing, I now see this PS setting is for the format to return to LrC from PS; either TIFF or PSD.

Thanks for the lesson.

[GoldingD]

If you are talking about the new photo showing up in LrC after Edit in Photoshop, and you close Photoshop, That is a brand new photo in LrC, all previous LrC edits to the original photo are baked into the new photo.

[Graphicalman]

Thank you to everybody who replied - I think that I will following the advice of "DS256" and not use photoshop until the last step in my workflow - using this method will preserve my original adjustments in Lightroom Classic for future use.

Kind Regards,

Graphicalman