A seamless workflow using Lightroom, Photoshop and Adobe Camera Raw
Many photographers use either Photoshop or they use Lightroom. But since Adobe offers their photography plan that gives you Photoshop and Lightroom together for an attractive monthly fee, the number of photographers who own both programs is growing. In the featured video tutorial below, Colin Smith from Photoshop CAFE shows you how the two programs integrate beautifully with each other and how they complement each other.
You can work on an image in Lightroom with all the tools that Lightroom has to offer, and then bring it into Photoshop as a smart object, e.g. to clone out major portions of the image or to work with layers. This may not be new to you, but one of the main Aha! moments that you’re going to have is that you can then open the image into Adobe Camera Raw (Photoshop’s native Raw processor) and have full access to all the adjustments made in Lightroom. This also includes any targeted adjustments like gradients, radial filters and adjustment brushes.
The opposite direction (from Photoshop back to Lightroom) is not quite as straight-forward, but with the Synchronize function in Lightroom, you can apply the original adjustments to the Photoshop version of the image again and continue working where you left off in Lightroom.
So the workflow between the different tools is almost seamless, giving you great options to make your workflow more flexible.
Is it not true that everything you did in Lightroom can be done in Photoshop ? I don’t see the advantage of using both programs together if you already have Photoshop.
First of all, it’s not me who is presenting this video.
But to your question: Yes, you can do everything in Photoshop. But Lightroom is optimized for an efficient workflow. Some adjustments are just faster in Lightroom, especially if you have to process many photos.
The other thing is that Lightroom is an photo management software that allows you to catalog, rate and tag photos. Photoshop cannot do this.
So, it is indeed sometimes required to use both programs in one workflow.
Whilst this video does show how integrated the workflow can be, it also shows me how confused Colin’s process can become. Do some work in Lightroom, take it into Photoshop, undo what was done in Lightroom, do something else, go back to Lightroom and redo what was originally done in Lightroom that was undone in Photoshop. I don’t think Colin thought this example through very well.
Hi Tony,
I think Colin’s intent was to show you the whole round-trip and also to point out the difficulties that you may be facing when you do this. In this sense, he picked the right workflow. Would you wanna do this to each image? No! Obviously, you’d want to find a more efficient way.
Cheers
Klaus
Thing is if you use RAW files you can either do the initial processing in Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom.
If you use Lightroom for management it makes sense to follow Colin’s workflow, if not, then I guess it doesn’t matter.
That said I agree the video was more convoluted than necessary and perhaps could have been presented as two separate videos, the first showing the basic workflow and the second showing how cahnges can best be managed, in order to aid those with limited experience / exposure to the technologies.
Whilst this video does show how integrated the workflow can be, it also shows me how confused Colin’s process can become. Do some work in Lightroom, take it into Photoshop, undo what was done in Lightroom, do something else, go back to Lightroom and redo what was originally done in Lightroom that was undone in Photoshop. I don’t think Colin thought this example through very well.
Yes, it may have been recorded in a bit of an ad hoc fashion. But I still think there are some important tips to take away here.