Saving edited LR CC photos in Photoshop

[wayneh92496952]

I usually operate my LR Classic on a iMacPro and have an external HD with my LR photos and catalogue.

I understand editing LR Classic with Photoshop on my iMacPro and saving back to that external HD

But I am a little confused on another computer, a MacBookPro, which I am signed in on my Creative Cloud account but do not have my external HD attached and use LR CC on that computer.

There I can edit in LR CC on my MacBookPro and have those changes sync back via the Cloud and when I am on my iMacPro with LR Classic with my external HD and have those images then are synced.

My question is about editing in Photoshop on my MacBookPro and saving that edit. I suppose that I can not Save but rather have to Save As and put it on the desktop and then figure out a way to eventually Import it into my other computer with the external HD?

I am guessing that I cannot edit in Photoshop any LR CC images on my MacBookPro but only on my iMacPro with the external HD attached OR to have the external HD be attached to my MacBookPro. Is that correct?

[Jim Wilde]

LRCC has an "Edit in Photoshop" option, similar to LR Classic's but not as extensive. Assuming you have PS installed on the MBP, then you can select an image in LRCC and use the "Edit in Photoshop" option.....that would open the file in PS, where you can edit it as normal. When done, you save in PS and the resulting Tiff file will appear stacked with the original in LRCC. From there it's automatically uploaded to the cloud, and will thus automatically download into LR Classic on your iMac.

Pretty simple and seamless, apart from one catch....to work like that the image in LRCC has to be an original, but if the images in LRCC are synced initially from LR Classic they will in fact only be Smart Previews, i.e. much lower resolution and not really suitable for editing in PS (in fact, although they would open in PS I think most of the edit options in PS would be disabled).

So, if you have originals in the cloud, you can use the Edit in PS option in LRCC and get that fairly seamless integration. However, if you only have smart previews in the cloud and you want to edit in PS on the MBP you're going to have to find a workaround. Simplest would be replacing the smart previews with originals (assuming you have the cloud space to allow that), more complicated would be to connect the external HD to the MBP and use Bridge/Photoshop to edit an original file and save as a Tiff or PSD back to the drive, and from there either import it into LRCC on the MBP or into LR Classic on the iMac.

[Jao vdL]

Pretty simple and seamless, apart from one catch....to work like that the image in LRCC has to be an original, but if the images in LRCC are synced initially from LR Classic they will in fact only be Smart Previews, i.e. much lower resolution and not really suitable for editing in PS (in fact, although they would open in PS I think most of the edit options in PS would be disabled).

I just tried it and if you open an image that only has a smart preview (i.e. synced from Classic). It opens just fine in Photoshop but of course at the lower resolution and everything will work as normal, so no restrictions in tools that you can use.

[Jim Wilde]

Ah.....I think I was caught by that current PS bug when using Edit in PS. If PS is not already open when I use the Edit in PS option from LRCC, PS opens OK with the image, but most of the edit tools are disabled. However, if I open PS before using the Edit in PS, all the tools are enabled.

[wayneh92496952]

Thanks. Great explanation. One question: How do I replace the Cloud with originals from either LR CC and or LR Classic?

[Jao vdL]

You should be able to upload the full raw file to a web browser open to lightroom.adobe.com and it should figure out that it has the image already but just as a smart preview. I don't think this works reliably and you might sometimes end up with duplicates this way but you can try and see if it works with a single image.

[Jao vdL]

Correction, they turned it of in the web browser for some reason. You now have to go through the Lightroom CC desktop app. If you simply import the original raw into it it will recognize it already knows about this image and append the cloud copy with the full raw image.

[Jim Wilde]

Nice catch, Jao. Just tested and confirmed that LRCC Web is handling duplicates differently to LRCC desktop when smart previews already exist. I hope that's not the sign of things to come, so would be worth asking the question, perhaps?

[john beardsworth]

It's something I noticed in LrWeb only last week, and I had similar fears. But I also found that importing the raw into LRCC Mac resulted in a duplicate and seemed to affect the originally-synced-from-Classic thumbnail. I hadn't had time to dig further, but something isn't quite right in this area.

[Jim Wilde]

John, I'd checked Friday (on Windows) to make sure that the "add originals to LRCC desktop" still worked as expected to replace previously synced smart previews without duplication. Yesterday, after your post, I repeated the check but this time on my Mac, and again it worked as expected. Concerning if you had a different experience though.

[john beardsworth]

What I think I saw, Jim.... I had a raw file ("the photo") imported into LR Classic, adjusted and rated, and added it to a synced collection. I then dragged a copy of the file (no xmp sidecar) into LrWeb and noticed that it didn't upload. So on the same computer I imported the file in LRCC. I then got a duplicate, and "the photo" lost its adjustments and metadata. But as I said, I haven't gone over this and convinced myself it wasn't user error.