Keeping Track of Externa Edits to Images

[kkovak]

I work mainly in LR 5.6 as my base organizing tool and for most of my post processing. There are times, however, when I would add additional processing using NIK or Topaz software.

My question is how do folks keep track of what they have done to the resultant .tif file that gets saved back into LR? I keep the tif and the raw file stacked together, but that doesn't tell me what I did in Color Efex, for example.

I could do all this external editing in Photoshop and save the layers with a separate layer for the "other" software, in the resulting tif but even that doesn't tell me what I did; e.g what effect or pre-set I may have used.

I could do this with keywords in LR but that seems clunky.

Just wondering if anyone has come up with a goood method or if I am missing something simple?

Thanks
Ken

 

[chris02]

I use the "copy name" function in the metadata to state which external editor I have used, but I do not go as far as stating which pre-set has been used as I have probably tweaked that further.

 

[LouieSherwin]

Hi Ken,

One option is to open the raw file as a Smart Object in Photoshop before going to any of the Nik tools. Then you can apply the Nik tools as Smart Filters in Photoshop. When you reopen the filter at a later data it has all the settings saved. The down side of this is the resulting TIFF or PSD files are huge.

When I am working on an image and want to try out several alternatives I will create either a saved preset or saved recipe with a name that contains the part of the image name so that I can tell which one applies to which image. This creates a lot of presets but it is the only other way I know to keep track of exactly what my settings were if I don't use Smart Objects.

You might want to go the the Google Nik support and request that they save the settings in metadata. I have done so in the past and another voice wouldn't hurt.

-louie

 

[johnbeardy]

See cross posting here - in agreement with Louie.

John