Newbie question about blending two exposures. Is workflow ideal?

[sanfairyanne]

I'm hoping to explain this without causing too much confusion. I am trying to get to grips with exposure blending using luminosity masks. Somewhere or other I read that if you can damage a RAW file if you do too much editing. I'm hoping I'm not damaging my image with this workflow.

This is what i'm doing:

So I'm beginning to get to grips with opening two files in ACR, one exposed for the darks, and one for the lights. I'll then right click and ENHANCE each RAW file. I'll then ask ACR to MERGE TO HDR. Then I open to Photoshop as a SMART OBJECT. At this point I'll right click on the layer and get a NEW SMART OBJECT VIA COPY. I'll then open each individual Smart Object and process one for the highlights and one for the darks. At this stage I'll go to my ACTIONS and begin to blend the layers using Luminosity Masks. I may put the layers in a group and a mask on the group in order to refine the blend.

I'm just hoping that my workflow is not damaging my end file. Is it true that when I use the Smart Object I am going back into the RAW file? In theory if I was to go in and out of RAW enough times would I eventually cause some damage / degradation. Truthfully I don't understand what 'damage' to look out for. Maybe I'm worrying about nothing, after all I'm currently not doing a tonne of editing.

Many thanks in advance.

[digitaldog]

First thing first; you can't damage a raw by any editing. It is read only. Where did you hear this? As interpreted, if actually written, that's rubbish.

[Redcrown]

Ditto digitaldog on the RAW question. But confused on the rest. Why are you doing ACR "Enhanced"? That's mostly about Super Resolution, and in normal res mode does little or nothing to "enhance" an image. Then, if you merge to HDR, why are you fooling around with luminosity masks and blending layers? What layers? The merge to HDR blended the light and dark images for you, and probably did a better job than you can do manually with lum masks.

[sanfairyanne]

Ditto digitaldog on the RAW question. But confused on the rest. Why are you doing ACR "Enhanced"? That's mostly about Super Resolution, and in normal res mode does little or nothing to "enhance" an image. Then, if you merge to HDR, why are you fooling around with luminosity masks and blending layers? What layers? The merge to HDR blended the light and dark images for you, and probably did a better job than you can do manually with lum masks.

Sorry for the late reply, I guess I must have notifications turned off.

Regarding Digitaldog - ok I see, I can edit the RAW file as much as I like without degrading the image. I thought eventually you'd degrade it.
Going on to the rest; I Enhance because I read that it enhances the file, it even appears to on my monitor. I also read that there are much better algorithms for upsizing an image than Super Resolution.
Going on to the Merge to HDR; I'm merging so I have all the dynamic range of the two (or three files). The result I choose is not a tone mapped HDR because I don't allow ACR to tone map my image.
I guess this isn't something that can be easily explained on a forum.

[sanfairyanne]

First thing first; you can't damage a raw by any editing. It is read only. Where did you hear this? As interpreted, if actually written, that's rubbish.

Ok that's good to know, I assumed you could damage the RAW with too much editing.