Lightroom (not Classic) and Round Tripping to Photoshop

[Speacock110]

Lightroom Version Number

7.1.2

Operating System

1. macOS 14 Sonoma

I have used Lightroom Classic since V1 but have kept my eye of Lightroom mobile since its introduction. As I am not a fan of cloud usage as my default workflow I have not taken it seriously until the Local option came along. Now I use it a lot for a single image workflow and to cull initial shoots before importing into Lightroom Classic.

However, I have a few issues that stop it from becoming a more dominant workflow, renaming and the ‘Biggy’ round-tripping to Photoshop. No matter the type of image when I open an image in Photoshop from Lightroom edit and then go to save it opens the Save As dialogue with the default location that is within the ‘Lightroom Library.lrlibrary’ container in a folder named TemporaryEdits.

This does not seem correct to default to a container rather than a folder (double clicking on the container opens Lightroom, to see the folder and file you have to right-click on the container and show package contents).

Is this a bug, By Design or a fault with my installation? I have uninstalled and reinstalled it to no avail.

Until I can reliably and easily round trip this is a barrier for me in using Lightroom as a dominant workflow.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

This is by design. I do not think Adobe even considered people starting to use Lightroom as a local images only editor, let alone doing a round trip between Lightroom and Photoshop and wanting everything to stay locally.

 

[Speacock110]

Since I wrote the last post I have been experimenting again and Lightroom does round trip, but it is a hell of a convoluted process. Whilst experimenting I had the TemporaryEdits folder open in Finder so I could see what was happening.

1. Choose ‘Edit in Photoshop
2. Lightroom creates a .tif file in TemoraryEdits
3. Opens this .tif file in Photoshop.
4. Carry out your edits in Photoshop (I did some horrid HS changes)
5. In Photoshop File-Save
6. SaveAs dialogue opens (should automatically save the file as it is named with a location)
7. Check that the file type is tif, (Sometimes it was tif and sometimes it was psd for me)
8. Agree to Replace
9. Click OK in tif options
10. The Photoshop file is saved over the original tif in the TemporaryEdits folder.
11. Close File File-Close or cmd-W
12. Lightroom moves tif file to the original file source folder and deletes the file from TemporaryEdits Folder
13. After a short delay, the new tif file appears in Lightroom.

I have tried this with various types of files and it is repeatable. What you cannot do from Lightroom is edit the original if it is tif or psd.

To me, stages 6 to 12 should be automatic and hidden from the user.

Also if at stage 6 you change the location you end up with loads of files staying in the TemporaryEdits folder.

I think Adobe still have a long way to go to make Local editing useful.

 

[Speacock110]

It's quicker to open in Finder and then open the file in Photoshop. Except for PSD files, I think photoshop opens with all lightroom edits. Still testing