Lightroom to Photoshop

[Wayne Fox]

I'm not sure if this is something new in my workflow, or perhaps I just noticed it for the first time because of the particular image I was working on.  Tonight when I opened a file as a Smart Object into Photoshop CS4, I popped back into LR, and noticed the two images are slightly different.  I set up both to display just the image on black, and used command tab to go back and forth and few times thinking something was playing tricks on my eyes, but the difference was easily observable.

In Photoshop, the image appears with a little less contrast.  This particular image was of a wet brick walkway, so the effect of the rain on the brick was visually different, as was the dark shadows in many areas of trees.

My first thought was my color settings were messed up when moving to CS4, but I checked my color settings panel ... they appear to be right. I opened the image in CS3 and it matched CS4.  I did find that if I choose Convert to Profile, and set Photoshop to convert to the working space (ProPhotoRGB)  - which is the space the image is in, the image then matches exactly.  I can toggle the preview button off and on, and the image changes from what it looks like in Photoshop to what it looks like in LR.

Is this a difference in the way Photoshop uses the monitor profile vs. Lightroom?  Or have I somehow messed up a setting?  I've had a little trouble when printing straight from LR without going through PS getting a little less contrast than I thought i would get ... perhaps I've found why.

[Jeremy Roussak]

I'm not sure if this is something new in my workflow, or perhaps I just noticed it for the first time because of the particular image I was working on.  Tonight when I opened a file as a Smart Object into Photoshop CS4, I popped back into LR, and noticed the two images are slightly different.  I set up both to display just the image on black, and used command tab to go back and forth and few times thinking something was playing tricks on my eyes, but the difference was easily observable.

In Photoshop, the image appears with a little less contrast.  This particular image was of a wet brick walkway, so the effect of the rain on the brick was visually different, as was the dark shadows in many areas of trees.

My first thought was my color settings were messed up when moving to CS4, but I checked my color settings panel ... they appear to be right. I opened the image in CS3 and it matched CS4.  I did find that if I choose Convert to Profile, and set Photoshop to convert to the working space (ProPhotoRGB)  - which is the space the image is in, the image then matches exactly.  I can toggle the preview button off and on, and the image changes from what it looks like in Photoshop to what it looks like in LR.

Is this a difference in the way Photoshop uses the monitor profile vs. Lightroom?  Or have I somehow messed up a setting?  I've had a little trouble when printing straight from LR without going through PS getting a little less contrast than I thought i would get ... perhaps I've found why.

What view magnification are you using? If you're not at 100% (or 50, or 25), it's possible that PS is rendering the image for the screen in a different way from LR, perhaps adding some anti-aliasing, and that that explains the difference in contrast.

Just a thought.

Jeremy

[ddk]

I did find that if I choose Convert to Profile, and set Photoshop to convert to the working space (ProPhotoRGB)  - which is the space the image is in, the image then matches exactly.  I can toggle the preview button off and on, and the image changes from what it looks like in Photoshop to what it looks like in LR.

There's your answer, the default color space in LR is ProPhotoRGB, if you don't change it all your files will open in that color space unlike CS which opens the files according to your camera's setting, ie; sRGB or Adobe RGB, that's why you see the difference between the two programs.

david