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Author Topic: Adjustments in LR vs PS. workflow advice needed  (Read 6415 times)

David Eichler

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Re: Adjustments in LR vs PS. workflow advice needed
« Reply #20 on: May 27, 2012, 09:41:58 pm »

I'm new to both LR and PS and am still trying to figure out my workflow. I'm doing all my adjustments in LR because I'm still having a hard time learning all the complex manoeuvres in PS. Most of the time it's all I need but sometimes I need to do more advanced stuff so I try to figure it out in PS. Now, I have read that many do the same thing, with only a small percent of the images going through PS but here is my issue. With the advantages with layers, wouldn't it be better to do all adjustment in PS? Also, as I understand it, when doing a lot in LR, there will be a loss in quality. And when I take an image through PS, I save it as .psd but then I got two edited copies of the image which clutter things up. What do you suggest. Should I start in PS with the heavy stuff and then do basic adjustment in LR on the .psd file?  Are the adjustments the same in both so if I'm already in PS, there is no need to do anything in LR? I think I confuse myself but I need to get my workflow right soon. My images are still mostly jpeg but includes (or will soon) many scanned tiffs (which will need some retouching in PS) and later will also include RAW/dng.

Any suggestions and advise are welcome. Thanks

Do you have any of the major reference books on this software, such as those by Scott Kelby or Martin Evening? If not, I would suggest studying those extensively and then start asking questions. As someone suggested above, you may be asking for much more than can be dealt with in one (or even several) online discussions. If it is of any help, I only made the transition from film to digital about 3.5 years ago. I started out by buying Lightroom 2 and PS CS4 (along with the current Martin Evening books), but it took me awhile to really get going with Photoshop. I don't think it is necessary to know every little bit about Lightroom before trying to do much in Photoshop, but I think you at least need to master the Lightroom (or Adobe Camera Raw) Develop module, which really shouldn't be that hard for anyone who has a decent background in photography and a good eye.
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MarkH2

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Re: Adjustments in LR vs PS. workflow advice needed
« Reply #21 on: September 01, 2012, 01:01:54 pm »

... But when you do, there is a veyr nice feature that makes it almost seamless to move you parametric edits from Lightroom 4 into Photoshop CS6 and maintain these edits and being able to reedit them. You select edit as smart object in Photoshop CS6 from LR4... Now you can do the edits in Photoshop CS6 and if you need to reedit the edits you did in Lightroom you open the smart object and get into ACR 7 (!). This means that you need familiarize yourself with the different look of the same editing tools as you have in LR4 in the develop module. But if you can accept this you have a very powerful way of combining the editing capabilities from LR4/ACR7 with Photoshop CS6.

Sorry for reviving this rather painful thread (the senior restraint here is remarkable  :) ), but you can still use LR for editing your PS Smart Objects.  Make the edits in LR, then in PS replace the contents of the smart object with the LR edited version (Layer / Smart Objects / Replace contents).  I find it convenient to make snapshots in LR and select the appropriate one in PS if I'm doing multi-layered objects, such as sky vs foreground.  Pretty sure I picked up this hint from Julieanne Kost, Adobe evangelist.
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Arlen

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Re: Adjustments in LR vs PS. workflow advice needed
« Reply #22 on: September 01, 2012, 04:15:35 pm »

you can still use LR for editing your PS Smart Objects.  Make the edits in LR, then in PS replace the contents of the smart object with the LR edited version (Layer / Smart Objects / Replace contents).  I find it convenient to make snapshots in LR and select the appropriate one in PS if I'm doing multi-layered objects, such as sky vs foreground.  Pretty sure I picked up this hint from Julieanne Kost, Adobe evangelist.

Thanks for that very useful tip that I'm not sure is widely known. I would say it deserves to be in its own thread, where more people will see it and it will be easier to find in the future (without bringing up this uncomfortable thread again, as we are unfortunately doing).
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