Lightroom3>PhotoshopCS5.1>Lightroom3>PhotoshopCS5.1

[jimf]

Any suggestions on if possible and if so, how to do the following.

I work a photo in lightroom (extensive edit)
I export it to photoshop (intending to final tweak and then output)
     End up spending a good 30 minutes tweaking in photoshop
Find out final image doesn't match some of the color in previous images that needs to match.

Desirable (much easier)  to go back to Lightroom to adjust a particular part of the image (color) in the image.
Would also like access to the history of the original edit in lightroom.

Anyway not to lose the 20 minutes of tweaking from Photoshop?

[wolfnowl]

I'm not sure if this is what you're asking about, but let's say you start with an image in Lightroom, and you go to Edit In: (Photoshop) and make changes there, from Photoshop you select Save (not Save As), and it saves the image back in Lightroom with filename-Edit as a filename, beside the original you exported to Photoshop.  So now you have the image you edited in Lightroom, and beside it the image you edited in Lightroom and Photoshop.  No reason you can't do further editing in Lightroom at that point...

Mike.

[Sheldon N]

As Mike pointed out, you can add additional Lightroom edits on your Photoshop file once it's saved and brought back into Lightroom. I'll do that often, but usually limited to things like cropping, post crop vignettes, and sometimes split toning.

If your asking about how to take the original lightroom RAW file and re-do some of the develop settings, then bring that back into the Photoshop file, that's a little more difficult. There's not really a direct way to do it automatically.

However, if you have a good non-destructive workflow in Photoshop and save your layered file with all the adjustment layers, then it is possible to re-develop your image, edit it in photoshop, and copy/paste it into your existing layered file on top of the background layer. Obviously you'd lose things like dust spotting and true pixel edits, but for some files it would work.  I've done it before when I wanted to make a basic exposure/white balance adjustment on the RAW file, but I was well into the editing process.

[jimf]

Thanks.  Wolfnow, your suggestion is what I'd guessed could be done.  I'll give it a try, but guessing I'll loose some of my snapshots, etc from the first Lightroom edit.  I do alot of try this, try that as I'm learning Lightroom.  Haven't really figured out how I want to do things. So far I've used cloning a bit and compared 3-5 version of an image that is later going to matched to 3 other similar photo's where I want the toning of the 3/4 of the images to be similar...  Trying for a in-between version version of an exact photo of reality and just a little artistic license, to capture my emotion of the moment.       

In my current case, I found some very small water droplets in the lower portion of my photo ,( perfectly round spears) which look like perfect circles with a colored rim and it is distracting and shows on larger prints when viewed very closely.  I manually fixed them in Photoshop on what I thought was my final version then realized I went a little off on the tint I'm looking for on the thunderous clouds.  Find that easier to fix in Lightroom.  Yes, working on the saved image as a new image in Lightroom was the only way I could think of to make it work.   Think I'm hoping for the impossible.

Sheldon, I"ll try your suggestion, but I'm guessing your comment about loosing dust spotting and true pixel edits is what's going to doom this process for me.

Thanks to both of you for your guidance.

[MikeHoffman]

Jim,

If, instead of "Edit in Photoshop," you "Open as Smart Object in Photoshop," you'd have access to the original raw image within the Photoshop file. You could double click the smart object, and make color adjustments from within Adobe Camera Raw (within Photoshop), without having to create a new file and paste an adjusted layer into the first edit.

mh++

[PixelRake]

I'll second Mike's suggestion.

[wolfnowl]

Good idea!

Mike. (the other one)

[digitaldog]

Just be sure that IF using a smart object, your copy of ACR and Lightroom are on parity. If your version of LR is newer, then you lose those newer functions when you re-edit the metadata instructions in an older version of ACR. Its a useful workflow assuming you keep both products up to date.