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Opening raw Image in Ps

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Colin Grant

Active Member
Joined
Apr 18, 2016
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512
Location
Norfolk
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
Classic
Lightroom Version Number
10.1 (Photography plan)
Operating System
  1. macOS 11 Big Sur
In the past, when I opened a raw file in Ps via Lr it opened in the ACR window within Ps. Now when I open it just opens as a base layer in Ps. What has changed or am I missing something? Happened with nef and rad files.
 
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I think you're misrembering (or I am).....I don't think the ACR window has ever been opened when using Edit in PS from within Lightroom. When using Edit in PS on a raw file in Lr, either ACR is invoked in the background of PS to convert the raw file (when ACR compatability exists between Lr & PS) or Lr itself will do that initial conversion before the Tiff/PSD is passed to PS (when the ACR level in PS is older than the ACR level in Lr and the user then opts to have Lr render the file).

Only if you open a raw file directly in PS, i.e. not from Lr, then the ACR window will open first.
 
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When I right clicked on a raw in Lr and selected edit in Ps the raw file opened in the ACR window (I assumed it was a Ps window as the ACR presentation is different to Lr in terms of titles but functionally is the same). When I do the same thing now it just opens as a layer in Ps. Not sure if something has changed since the last update. You mention "ACR level" Jim but I do not understand :(
 
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I believe Jim is correct, what you are describing is what happens when you right click on a raw file on your computer file system.
 

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I am sure I am not mis-remembering (???). Image opened in the intermediate ACR window. It gave one the option to open in Ps or close (after applying edits if necessary).
 
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But was it driven by Lr or Ps? Oh well, whatever it was it is not happening now and it was an academic question to a very large extent. Thanks fr the help :)
 
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The way it works when you use Edit in PS on a raw file from within Lightroom Classic, depends to a small degree on the respective version level of ACR in the two apps. LrC has the ACR code built-in, and PS has an ACR plug-in. If both apps are up-to-date, the version of ACR should be the same. If you do Help>About Lightroom Classic (will be under the Lightroom menu on Mac) you will see the Camera Raw version number, currently 13.1 in LrC10.1. Similarly in PS you can find the version number of the ACR plug-in, and if PS is up-to-date the ACR plug-in would also be version13.1.

The way it works now, i.e. using Edit in PS from within LrC, when the ACR level is PS is the same (or later), LR seamlessly passes all the relevant data to PS using an API called Bridgetalk. Obviously PS cannot directly render the raw data, so it has its ACR plug-in do that rendering (you might see a progress bar in PS to that effect). ACR silently (i.e. no ACR UI is shown, as it's not needed) renders the raw file and applies all the LrC edits, storing a Tiff/PSD in the system cache for PS to open.

If the ACR level in LrC is newer than the ACR plug-in in PS (can happen if running a back-level version of PS), LrC does not automatically pass the data to PS. Instead it asks the user what they would like to to via the "ACR Mis-Match" dislog message. That gives the user the option to have LR render the Tiff/PSD first, or to use the "Open Anyway" option to proceed to have the ACR plug-in render the file as per the normal "both ACRs at the same level" method. The reason for this is that when the ACR version in LrC is newer than the ACR plug-in in PS there is the possibility of new ACR functionality having been used in LrC which the ACR plug-in in PS would be unable to deal with correctly.....so in that situation it might be better to have LrC render the file first, thus ensuring all edits are applied. The only downside is that it means the Tiff/PSD is automatically created and stored on disk and added to LrC's catalog before getting to PS.....and if the user subsequently chooses to abandon the PS work without saving, there's then a spurious Tiff/PSD to clean up in LrC.

But in neither case is the ACR UI shown in PS.
 
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But was it driven by Lr or Ps? Oh well, whatever it was it is not happening now and it was an academic question to a very large extent. Thanks fr the help :)
 
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Must be me mis-remembering. Lockdown must be getting to me! Thanks for all the great info. This is such a reliable forum :)
 
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Colin,
Maybe you were doing the following ?
in LR : Edit in PS as a smart object
in PS : double click on the smart object , ,you get the ACR window
 
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If you "open as Smart Object..." and then open the ACR filter, it brings up all the sliders at "0" - not at the LcR settings.
However, if you open the RAW file (dng in my case) directly from PS (which hen uses the ACR plug in, the slider reflect the LR setting and can be adjusted from there. In my workflow, I use LR only about 90% of the time. for special files, I'd like to essentially start from scratch - or at least with the LR starting place in PS. the only way I see to do that since "edit copy in PS" went away is to go to open the dng directly from file explorer. just a bit clunky.
 
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drwho4222 said:
If you "open as Smart Object..." and then open the ACR filter, it brings up all the sliders at "0" - not at the LcR settings.
Click to expand...
That is not how this works. What you need to do if you want to edit the smart object is double click on it in the layers panel. That will bring up ACR with the Lightroom adjustment settings.
 
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