Burn tool options greyed out (version 25.1)

Well, the year 2023 has rolled away and no answer has been posted to this message for several weeks... I conclude that no one has a clue about what caused the problem I encountered (and still encounter), which is disappointing... but I will learn to live with it!

Happy New Year to everyone anyway!

I am afraid that, alas! I have to re-open the subject, asthe exact same problem is occurring again.

Considering all that's already been going on, I don't have much hope for a solution, but maybe other people have been experiencing the same difficulty. Let me describe it in detail again:

I run a fully up-to-date Lightroom/Photoshop suite on a 2022 PC with 16 GB of RAM. OS is a fully updated version of Windows 10. Version of Photoshop is 25.2, but theproblem has been occurring for months under older versions.

My Lightroom/Photoshop suite is configured so that my RAW photo files (.NEF files as I am a Nikon shooter) open in Lightroom. There, I do what I call the "development": let's say color temperature, Tone and Presence adjustments. Then, I export the file to Photoshop in TIFF format, Adobe RGB color space, 16-bit.

Photoshop launches, the TIFF file opens and I begin to work on it. All the tools work fine, including the Burn tool that will give me trouble later. But for this first photo, all is fine.

When I'm done with my first photo of the day, I export a JPEG version of it and close the TIFF file. Then I open the next RAW (.NEF) file in Ligthroom, develop it like the first one, and export it into Photoshop. And that's when the problem appears: when I click on the Burn tool icon (or call it up with a custom keyboard shortcut), its options are greyed out and cannot be adjusted.

If I shut down Photoshop and launch it again, the Burn tool and its options are back and fully functional. But as soon as I tackle the second photo ==> greyed out!

Now, that's a mystery for you guys! Me, I give up trying to figure it out.

OK guys, this is the deal: I don't think Lightroom was responsible. In spite of what Trevor.Dennis said (or because of what he said), I decided this morning to delete my custom desktop and re-create one from scratch. It was painful and took me the better part of the morning but I did it. And since then, I've been working all day (it's almost 8 pm now here in France) on maybe a dozen RAW photo files exported from Lightroom as TIFFs, like I've always done, then processed in Photoshop using, inter alia, the Burn Tool, and I have not yet encountered again the issue that first caused me to create this topic. Everything is working just fine, as it should.

My best guess now is that somehow, at some point in time since I began to use that custom keyboard shortcut to call up the Burn Tool, that command got corrupted. Maybe in conjunction with one of the many updates I have implemented since I first created it, maybe otherwise. Today, having deleted it together with all my other desktop-related customizations, and having created fresh, clean ones, the problem is gone. Keyboard shortcut corruption seems to be the logical answer —at least to me, but I'm not a computer geek, just a normal user.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I will re-open this topic should be the problem resurface (fingers crossed), but for now I think and hope we can consider it solved.

Thanks a lot for this detailed answer. I have configured Photoshop so that my RAW files open in ACR, done some developing in ACR like I do in Ligthroom, then opened the file in Photoshop (instead of “exporting” it to Photoshop from Lightroom), and the fact is, so far I haven't been able to reproduce the problem I had before...

I will keep trying one method and the other and report back here in a couple of days. I cannot imagine that there would be a conflict between two Adobe programs that are meant to connect seamlessly and be used one after the other... but after all, who knows? We've seen worse in the past. I prefer Lightroom for developing RAWs and I'd not be pleased to have to give it up because of a conflict.

The workflow is fairly simple: open RAW file in Lightroom, do whatever adjustments are required, then export it as a TIFF file into whatever programm is needed to do the next task: most often Photoshop, but also PTGui or Helicon Focus.

Thanks again. Will keep the community posted!

We seem to see a lot of posts about issues when moving an image to Photoshop from Lightroom.  I don't use Lightroom, so am not clear on the workflow, but does the issue persist if you save the image to disk, and open it in Photoshop?

I imagine Lightroom is nondestructive, so how does it save edit information, and how does Photoshop deal with that information?

BTW Dominique, resetting Preferences should not affect custom workspaces, shortcuts and actions, but to be safe, if you have not already set a custom workspace, make one and use the highlighted options.  I particularly like being able to save custom shortcuts with workspaces, as it lets us re-purpose shortcuts according to context.

As a Windows user, you'll find workspaces and Preferences in:

C:\Users\[You User Name]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop 2024\Adobe Photoshop 2024 Settings\

Incidentally, thanks for the screen shot.  They nearly always help to some extent, but full res, full workspace with relevant panels showing, is prefered.  My best guess is that your issue is related to Lightroom, because we see so many posts about problems moving images between LR and PS.

Never used a beta version. As stated above, I run the regular version 25.2.

Are you using the Photoshop Beta?

I am "reporting back here" as announced above because it is happening again. I describe:

I run version PS 25.2 on a PC under Windows 10, fully updated. I launch Photoshop (usually via exporting a photo file I have developed in Lightroom). The first time I click on the Burn Tool icon to use it, the options (Range and Exposure) are reachable and modifiable, no problem. Once I'm done with the photo I'm working on, I close the file. Then I do the same thing again with another photo, but when I click on the Burn Tool icon to use it (or call it via the keyboard shortcut I custom-dedicated to it), then the options are greyed out and unusable.

As I explained previously, the Exposure setting can still be modified as the small down-pointing arrow is still clickable, so I can adjust the Exposure with the mouse pointer, by dragging the cursor. But the numeric box where one defines the percentage via the keyboard is greyed out, and so is the entire Range setting.

This happened to me for quite a while, under the previous versions of Photoshop, and I would love to get rid of it, as I use the Burn Tool quite frequently.

Switching to another Tool of the same group (like Dodge) or of another group doesn't change anything. The settings are all available for those other Tools, only Burn seems to be affected.

Thanks a lot in advance for any ideas you may have!

Perhaps resetting the photoshop preferences will fix the issue:

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/preferences.html