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Using Lightroom as ACR for newer camerasEditing in photoshop via Lightroom if photoshop ACR is out of date.

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Posted by richw: Tue Apr 17th, 2012 01:00

1^st Post

If you have a new camera with a raw format that is not supported by your current version of Photoshop and you have a more up to date version of Lightroom, you can still edit the use the Raw file with Photoshop via Lightroom's ACR engine. Updating light room is obviously much cheaper than updating Photoshop, and on past history Lightroom tends to get the updates quicker than Photoshop (probably because it is a smaller program and written in a way that is easier to update, with photographers it's core market).

You will see that the file extensions I have below are DNG, that is because some time ago after some reading around I choose to use DNG for my DAM. Whilst I am happy with this I know there are other schools of thought, and you do not need to convert to DNG for this method to work, it works perfectly well with native Raw files as long as they are supported by Lightroom.

The light room preference panel can be accessed on a Mac by clicking on 'Lightroom' in the commands menu and I believe accessed on a PC by clicking on 'File'. In this panel you can set up the options for editing images from Lightroom, into an external image editor.

By default light room will select the latest version of Photoshop installed on your computer as its default image-editing program. It also offers an option of a 2nd program that you can set up in the preferences panel. The default file format for editing with Photoshop is TIFF; I generally change this to PSD, which is purely a personal preference.

The default colour scheme is Prophoto RGB, and 16-bit images; I generally leave these as they are as this carries the maximum possible amount of information into Photoshop for editing.

You can see the preference panel for Lightroom in the below screenshot.

Once you have the preferences set up as you desire, from the library module select the image that you wish to edit and then either go to 'Photo'>'Edit in' from the menu bar or, as I normally do, command or 'right click' on the image to pull up the contextual menu options and choose 'Edit In>'.

You can see from the screen shot that I have CS6 set up as my primary editor, Lightroom did this automatically after I downloaded the Beta version for trial. The second editor I have there is CS5, which I set up after the Beta came in. I used to have DXO set up in my Pc days and this worked well also, although the integration is not so smooth as with Adobe products.

Three options will be presented, choose 'Edit Copy using Lightroom adjustments'. Once you have selected this option, if your version of photoshop's ACR is out of date a warning message will appear on the screen telling you of this. One of the options presented is 'Render Using Lightroom'.

When you have finished editing the image in Photoshop just save the file (do not use 'Save as') and then close the file. When you come back to Lightroom, you will see your Photoshop edited version next to the original Raw file in the light room library (as long as you left 'Stack with Original' ticked in the preference panel, see top screen shot). You can use the light room filters to search for PSD or TIF files. I generally do all my output work from Lightroom, many of the images I use do not need to go into Photoshop, given the power of ACR editing these days.

In the screenshot where I chose to edit the image with Photoshop you will see that there are some other options, some of which are greyed out. Opening the image as a smart object in Photoshop allows you to double-click on the smart object layer and alter the ACR settings. This can be very useful if putting together composite images, but clearly won't work if your Photoshop ACR is out of date which is the purpose of this tutorial. The merge to panoramic and HDR options will take multiple images from Lightroom and open them in either the HDR or panoramic merge modules in Photoshop. You can also take multiple images into Photoshop as individual layers, which is the bottom option in the screenshot, 'open as layers in Photoshop'.

Posted by Robert: Tue Apr 17th, 2012 04:35

2^nd Post

Excellent article/how-to Rich, thank you. Once the image issue is resolved it needs a copy of placing in the FAQ section and making into a sticky.

Just hope Adobe don't see it! ;-)

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Posted by Robert: Tue Apr 17th, 2012 04:40

3^rd Post

Regarding the images, just fyi, in Safari the images are showing up as squares with question marks, If I look at the raw text by pressing Quote, I can see the link.

In Firefox there is nothing, no question mark or [bracket code] when viewing in Quote mode. Would be interesting to know how the images appear in other browsers...

____________________
Robert.

Posted by jk: Tue Apr 17th, 2012 04:49

4^th Post

Thanks Rich. Excellent article.
Cant see the screen shots on my iPad but will check on MBA to see if it is an iPad thing.
Same on MBA I cant see images in Firefox.

Can we keep you off sick for a while longer.
:rofl:

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Posted by richw: Tue Apr 17th, 2012 06:53

5^th Post

I had difficulty pasting the images into the correct position, worked OK on Safari initially, I'll check again and try again.

Posted by Robert: Tue Apr 17th, 2012 08:22

6^th Post

Perhaps Steve could have a look and tell us what's wrong?

I took the URL and entered it in the browser, it offered me a download and produced a blank page image.

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Posted by jk: Tue Apr 17th, 2012 09:53

7^th Post

richw wrote: I had difficulty pasting the images into the correct position, worked OK on Safari initially, I'll check again and try again.I think that you need to load the images somewhere either on the server in your gallery in a sub gallery and then reference them from there or make a single post for each image call it Fig1, Fig2 .... etc...
It is a limitation we need to overcome.

Another thing for the enhancement list after the Gallery is done.

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Posted by richw: Wed Apr 18th, 2012 03:29

8^th Post

Fixed it, dropped them in the background of my web site and referenced them from there.

Posted by Doug: Wed Apr 18th, 2012 08:31

9^th Post

richw wrote:
Fixed it, dropped them in the background of my web site and referenced them from there.
At least the new forums allows posts to be edited days later so issues like this can be fixed :cheers:

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Posted by jk: Wed Apr 18th, 2012 08:37

10^th Post

That looks very good Rich.
:applause:

Thanks very much.

How are you liking CS6 ?

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Posted by Robert: Wed Apr 18th, 2012 10:55

11^th Post

Doug wrote:
richw wrote:
Fixed it, dropped them in the background of my web site and referenced them from there.
At least the new forums allows posts to be edited days later so issues like this can be fixed :cheers:

Yes, that's a big plus Doug.

____________________
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