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Edit (RAW file) in Photoshop 21.2 from Lightroom Classic 9.3

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
July 8, 2020
4 replies
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Hello,

After updating my Creative Cloud (inc. Camera Raw), the workflow for "Edit in Photoshop 2020" from LR seems to have changed.

BEFORE : As set in the Preferences, LR would create a TIFF and open it in PS. After PS edit complete, I would save the TIFF file and it would be added to my LR library. Worked perfectly.

NOW : the RAW file (.ARW) is opened in PS, I can edit it but when quitting PS, it proposes to save (overwrites ?) the RAW file. Which is not what I want to do ...

Anybody knows the new, correct process ?

Thanks

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Correct answer Per Berntsen

There should be no Save dialog appearing when using this workflow.

Just press Ctrl /Cmd + S and close the file.

If you use Save As, a dialog will appear, and the saved image will not return to Lightroom.

The .ARW extension you see when the image opens in Photoshop is misleading.

When you use Edit in Photoshop from LR, the image will open silently in Camera Raw, where the edits you have done in LR are applied. Then the image opens in PS, and this is not the raw file, but an entirely new file, derived from the raw file.

This new file is not any particular file type, it's just a generic image until you save it.

Note that Photoshop cannot open raw files, the image has to be rendered in the Camera Raw plugin first.

Also note that only digital cameras can save raw files, so there is no way that Photoshop can overwrite a raw file when saving.

Edits are always applied to a new version of the image (using Edit in PS or Export, or when using Camera Raw instead of LR), leaving the original untouched.

A

Admirable_Ray6C12Author

Participant

ISSUE SOLVED.

It works fine : edit starts with "ARW" but it appears as "TIFF" after Saving, then the TIFF is correctly added in LR. Thanks to your comments, I now undersand the integration process. Thanks a lot !

Per Berntsen

Correct answer

Community Expert

There should be no Save dialog appearing when using this workflow.

Just press Ctrl /Cmd + S and close the file.

If you use Save As, a dialog will appear, and the saved image will not return to Lightroom.

The .ARW extension you see when the image opens in Photoshop is misleading.

When you use Edit in Photoshop from LR, the image will open silently in Camera Raw, where the edits you have done in LR are applied. Then the image opens in PS, and this is not the raw file, but an entirely new file, derived from the raw file.

This new file is not any particular file type, it's just a generic image until you save it.

Note that Photoshop cannot open raw files, the image has to be rendered in the Camera Raw plugin first.

Also note that only digital cameras can save raw files, so there is no way that Photoshop can overwrite a raw file when saving.

Edits are always applied to a new version of the image (using Edit in PS or Export, or when using Camera Raw instead of LR), leaving the original untouched.

DdeGannes

Community Expert

I do not think if you sent a raw file to PS you would get an option to overwrite the source image, I believe that only happens if you select a tiff or jpeg to edit in PS.

Regards, Denis: iMac 27” mid-2015, macOS 11.7.10 Big Sur; 2TB SSD, 24 GB Ram, GPU 2 GB; LrC 12.5,; Lr 6.5, PS 24.7,; ACR 15.5,; (also Laptop Win 11, ver 24H2, LrC 15.0.1, PS 27.0; ) Camera Oly OM-D E-M1.

A

Admirable_Ray6C12Author

Participant

Thanks. The image tab reads "DSCxxx.ARW" so it looks like the RAW file (before the upgrade, it was showing DSCxxx.TIFF". Didn't want to take the risk o overwriting the RAW file so I did not try to save. I'll try it with a copy of the file.

elie_dinur

Participating Frequently

That is just a little idiosyncrasy that Photoshop has had for ages. It is confusing but technically justified. When the source of an image is the Camera Raw plugin, what opens in PS proper is a rasterized bitmap which at that moment exists only in memory because nothing has as yet been written to disc. Since the image hasn't been saved, it can't be identified as being in a particular format (psd, tif, jpg, etc.) so PS identifies it by its origin in the Raw file - in your case an ARW.

When LrC and PS/ACR are parallel versions, the "Edit in ..." causes LrC to send across, not a link to a converted and saved tif (or whatever), but rather only data, the Raw data from the ARW + LrC's relevant catalog data. From that point the CR > PS datastream is the same as always and as usual the raster image carries the name of the Raw file.

When, however, the two apps are not concurrent, LrC has to do the heavy lifting, process a conversion and write an image format to disc. Thus, when PS finally gets the goods it is just like opening any other saved file and the display tab bears the regular (RGB) format name.