Round-tripping to CS2

[marcgoldring]

Or maybe it's prehistory... I don't do this that often so maybe I'm missing something. I take a file I've worked on to PS CS2 for soft-proofing and want to bring it back into LR to print and do some final color tweaking since I seem better able to get what I want than I can in PS. Fine, no problem.

But then I notice that there's no history. It just says Edit in External Application and the develop settings are essentially back to neutral.

I assume this is standard behavior and that my earlier manipulations are now somehow baked in by round-tripping? I'm not sure it bothers me, just want to make sure I'm understanding this in case there's some setting I can change to make it act differently.

Thanks,

Marco

[John.Murray]

Pre-History would be apt; if your source files are in RAW, the  you have no choice but to send to PS "with LR Changes", what comes back is a new file.

LR being a parametric editor treats it's source file as read-only, reflecting changes via database, or sidecar - essentially never touching the original.  As soon as you go to a pixel editor - the file *is* being changed, hence the lack of history upon return to LR

[Nat Coalson]

In other words, when you go back into Lightroom from roundtripping to Photoshop, you're looking at the newly created file.

When going out from LR, it bakes in the metadata edits during export, saves a new file, then automatically imports it into the LR catalog. Thus this new file only has the Import step in its history.

If you need to go back and edit the original raw/dng file (which will still have all its history) you will need to also redo the Photoshop edits.

For this reason its a real good idea to be as sure as you can that you are "done" with your LR edits before roundtripping to Photoshop, especially if you need to perform any significant work there.

[Tim Gray]

I know you can open the file from ACR as a smart object and subsequently go back and change the RAW processing paramaters in ACR and have them reflected in PS.  I don't have LR in front of me, so can't check if the same is possible for LR.

[marcgoldring]

In other words, when you go back into Lightroom from roundtripping to Photoshop, you're looking at the newly created file.

When going out from LR, it bakes in the metadata edits during export, saves a new file, then automatically imports it into the LR catalog. Thus this new file only has the Import step in its history.

If you need to go back and edit the original raw/dng file (which will still have all its history) you will need to also redo the Photoshop edits.

For this reason its a real good idea to be as sure as you can that you are "done" with your LR edits before roundtripping to Photoshop, especially if you need to perform any significant work there.
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Ah, well, I suppose I'll take some comfort in knowing that I sort-of figured it out. But having worked in LR so much now, I was kinda hoping I could lay off PS - cuz when I go back to soft-proof, I have a hard time getting the match and it feels like it would be easier in LR.

Thanks for the answers, folks!

Marco