Basic LR question

[santa]

When I make an adjustment to a raw .cr2 file in LR such as an exposure development I would like to be able to make that adjustment and be able to open the file without even using LR and have that setting "seen" by Photoshop. Currently if I make an adjustment in the develop module, quit Lightroom and open the file by double clicking (mac) to open it in Photoshop the change is not applied. If I open Bridge the change is seen and applied, but I'd like that change to be availble regardless of Bridge or Lightroom. Is that possible?  Currently my Catalog Settings prefernces for metadata has all boxes checked. I would like LR,Bridge and PS to all remain syncronized such that if I double click on a PS raw file and make changes I will see those changes when I open Bridge or Lightroom and same with the other programs.

[marcgoldring]

In Preferences, you can configure 2 different external editors so that you can take the LR changes with you when you need to edit the file in PS or LightZone or whatever. Essentially it creates a file with "-edit" appended to the filename and you can play with that in PS to your heart's content...

Hey, others! Pile on. Did I get that right?

Marco

[santa]

No, that's not what I'm looking for. I know I can open and edit a photo in PS...I simply want to be able to develop a raw file in LR and later, if I double click in the Finder window to open it without using LR I would like Photoshop to see the settings that I applied in LR.  If I use LR for the next year and then choose to no longer use it, I want to know I can trash LR and be able to open the files with the raw settings I set in LR, and be able to work up a few images in LR then simply go to their files on my HD and double click on them and open them in Photoshop without going through LR. Currently if I develop RAW settings in LR and quit it, then go to the file in question and double click it to open it, the settings from LR are not recognized. If I go to Camera Raw Settings from within Bridge and develop it then open the file from the Finder, Photoshop recognizes the settings properly.

[Tim Gray]

going from memory here, but unless you use the DNG format, LR stores all metadata in the xmp sidecar.  I'd suggest you convert one of your raw files to DNG, work the setting up in LR etc. etc. and see if having the metadata actually embedded in the file solves your problem.

[Nat Coalson]

Lightroom has the Save command like all other programs; on Windows use Control S and on Mac use Command S.

After adjusting your image in Lightroom, executing the this command saves out your Lightroom changes in one of the following ways:

1. If the original file format can contain the updated metadata (PSD, TIF, DNG, JPG) the changes will be stored within the file.

2. If the file format cannot have metadata saved into - eg native camera raw files (CRW, CR2, NEF etc) a sidecar file will be created with the .xmp extension.

Regularly saving out your Lightroom edits is a good idea, regardless of the type of file you're working with.

Capturing in raw, converting and editing DNG is the best method.

If you later edit the file in Bridge/ACR, you have to use the Done or Save commands there, too, to update the metadata edits. Then, you can use the Synchronize command in Lightroom to update the file in the LR database.

There currently is no way to automatically keep everything synchronized between programs if you're not saving out the edits.