Lightroom 3 problem with Cs4 when opening

[Gary Gray]

I've just recently experienced a funky little problem with LR3 and CS4.  Maybe somebody here has dealt with this and has an answer.

Background.

Mac OS Snow Leopard, up to date.
LR3, up to date.
Photoshop CS4 (as up to date as it can be)

Problem...

I make edits to a RAW or DNG file in LR3 then right click on the image to open it in Photoshop.  Firstly, I never see the dialogue box for selecting "edit with lightroom adjustments, edit original, edit a copy)  The image opens directly but not all of my edits are converted to the PSD file (or Tiff File) that LR creates for editing in photoshop.  Some things seem to transfer over, such as saturation and brightness adjustments, others never make it to the new edit file, such as lens adjustments (CA, distortion, etc...)  This problem doesn't happen with non RAW formats such as Tiff, or JPG files.  Does happen with CR2 (canon raw) and canon raws converted to DNG.  I worked fine after first installing lightroom 3, but somewhere between then and now it's goobered up.

My first thought it may be a problem with ACR or something but I don't think so.

Tested this with other editing software, it exports the file exactly as the edits were made in lightroom.

Next, I tried adding CS4 as a secondary editing option (like where you'd put noise ninja or something), and when I do the edit to that option, it opens the file with all the correct adjustments made in lightroom.  This tells me it is capable of exporting all the edits to the edit file, but something is not working between the default LR export and PS-CS4.  Strange indeed.

Maybe a reinstall of LR?  Anybody else seen this?

Thanks
Gary

[madmanchan]

Hi Gary, unfortunately when using PS CS4 as a direct editor in LR3 -- that is, the image opens directly from LR3 into CS4 without creating an extra file on disk -- the new lens corrections features in LR 3 (profile-based lens corrections, manual perspective corrections, etc.) do not get transferred over. This is a limitation resulting from the fact that the last version of Camera Raw for CS4 (i.e., 5.7) shipped before lens corrections were implemented by Adobe. Other image settings, like White Balance, HSL adjustments, Sharpening, etc. do get carried over correctly. That is, when you use Photoshop as a direct editor, the way it works is that LR3 hands the raw file over to Camera Raw to perform the rendering, so you are limited to what Camera Raw can do (version 5.7 in this case).

When you use CS4 as a secondary editor or are using other apps, then you don't have run into issue because LR3 itself does the rendering and writes the file out to disk, which is then handed over to the external editor.

[Gary Gray]

Thanks Eric,

Yes, after dinking around with it for a couple of days, I've come to realize what the limitation is and can work around the issue by creating the edit file with lightroom.  I suppose I'll have to limp along until I upgrade CS4 to CS5.  Having not done a great deal of editing work on raw files lately, I never noticed anything different but it's obvious that the newest versions of LR and PS have changed the game a little.  I never used CS4 for raw file editing, so it didn't occur to me that the Camera Raw in Photoshop was doing the work with direct editing.

[John S C]

I noticed the same problem that the lens correction setting were not transferred.

I posted on the Adobe forum, and the suggestion came back to simply remove the RAW plug in from Photoshop. This way Lightroom has to do the rendering not Photoshop. I did this and guess what it works.  I also get the Rendering Option box before Lightroom renders the file. All other functions seem to work OK with the image being saved back in the correct location within Lightroom.

[Gary Gray]

Interesting solution Chappers..., disabling the Adobe Raw Plugin in Photoshop does seem to produce the editing result I wanted.  Now, I'm wondering what other functionality is lost in Photoshop as a result, ie...things like "edit contents" on raw files and such.  Does this affect "export as smart object?" I'll have to test this solution a little more.  I hate having to define Photoshop as an export option, I'd rather have the second export option available to other software.

I guess the question is..."is this a bug or a feature?" Since lightroom automatically finds Photoshop on your computer for exporting and that exporting edits are limited, you'd think it could do a little better job identifying and accounting for different versions of Camera raw between lightroom and photoshop to maintian maximum capability.  Something like, the newer version of Camera raw is the boss.  Poorly thought out or perhaps thought out and made that way to encourage you to buy another version of Photoshop.