I find that Lightroom is an excellent adjunct to Photoshop but that the relationship between the original file in Lightroom and the editing of the image in Photoshop can be very confusing. As most of you know you can continue editing the image in Photoshop by bringing the image with the edits that you have created in Lightroom ( Ctrl-E) and if you have setup Lightroom so that the image has the file extension PSD the image can be processed in Photoshop. This image if saved and brought back into Lightroom will have the file named xxx-edit.psd. This PSD file will have all the adjustment layers intact. My problem is what you should do if you need to go back into Photoshop to do additional work on the image. If you bring it back with lightroom edits ( like you did the first time) you will lose the adjustment layers which leaves editing the original ( which is the xxx-edit file) or a copy of the original.
Now, if you save this file ( original or copy of the original) you now have xxx-edit-edit.psd. I think you would agree this is not exactly intuitive file naming. The problem compounds itself if your workflow is such that you do not do any image resizing or sharpening until the last step and you want to do this in Photoshop because you may be using third party sharpening programs ( Photokit, Nik Sharpener Pro) or a last minute adjustment. What is the best step? Do you edit the original or use a copy of the original, flatten the adjustment layers, resize and sharpen and then save the file ( now it would be xxxx-edit-edit-edit.psd and then print in :Lightroom? OR do you do the final resizing and sharpening in Lightroom on the xxxx-edit.psd file ( the Photoshopped file).
There are a number of articles on the web that are proponents of sharpening in Photoshop rather than Lightroom. I am very interested in discussion of workflows because my problem is that I want to keep a master file with all my edits and leaving the master file without resizing or sharpening in case different consumers want to purchase different size prints. I would not like to start from the beginning each time a new size is needed. I might add that this even gets more confusing if you export the final file for completion and rename it. You would need to be very careful that you don't pick the wrong file to export !!
Now, if you save this file ( original or copy of the original) you now have xxx-edit-edit.psd. I think you would agree this is not exactly intuitive file naming. The problem compounds itself if your workflow is such that you do not do any image resizing or sharpening until the last step and you want to do this in Photoshop because you may be using third party sharpening programs ( Photokit, Nik Sharpener Pro) or a last minute adjustment. What is the best step? Do you edit the original or use a copy of the original, flatten the adjustment layers, resize and sharpen and then save the file ( now it would be xxxx-edit-edit-edit.psd and then print in :Lightroom? OR do you do the final resizing and sharpening in Lightroom on the xxxx-edit.psd file ( the Photoshopped file).
There are a number of articles on the web that are proponents of sharpening in Photoshop rather than Lightroom. I am very interested in discussion of workflows because my problem is that I want to keep a master file with all my edits and leaving the master file without resizing or sharpening in case different consumers want to purchase different size prints. I would not like to start from the beginning each time a new size is needed. I might add that this even gets more confusing if you export the final file for completion and rename it. You would need to be very careful that you don't pick the wrong file to export !!
