After doing the PSC Bootcamp on Photoshop plugins a couple of months ago, I thought I’d do an article on plugins. All of the plugins I use can be used within Photoshop, some from within Lightroom and some can even be used as standalone programs. However, when I use plugins I’m usually doing more extensive editing that requires Photoshop, so I use them as filters within Photoshop. This allows me to use them on layers, and use masks and vary the opacity to alter the effect. Using them from Lightroom or as standalones doesn’t give me the power and versatility I get in Photoshop.
So I felt the first important topic was how to get images from Lightroom to Photoshop and back again. In order to make this work smoothly there are some settings we need to adjust in Lightoom and Photoshop.
In Lightroom go to edit/preferences/external editing. The first section is for editing in Photoshop, and Lightroom will find and default to the most current installed version of Lightroom. These settings control how the image will be sent and opened in Photoshop.
The first setting is file format and the two choices are PSD or TIFF. I use PSD since this is Photoshop’s native format, but TIFF can work as well. If you select TIFF, you will also have an option about file compression.
The second selection is color space, and I always set Prophoto RGB, which is Lightroom’s native colorspace. Raw files (DNG, and the native format of your camera like CR2, NEF, etc.) will be sent to Photoshop in Prophoto RGB. Non-raw files like TIFF, and JPEG already have a color profile embedded and that may or may not be Prophoto RGB, and if it isn’t and we have the settings correct in Photoshop we should get a message if there is a mismatch.
The third setting is bit depth and this should be set to 16.
The last setting is resolution, and I always leave this at 240. Resolution really isn’t an issue while we work in Photoshop and only becomes an issue when printing or using a file in another program, like a word processor.
Preparing Photoshop to receive images from Lightroom
There are a few settings we need to make in Photoshop so it will properly receive the image from Lightroom.
Go to edit/color settings and set the working color space to Prophoto RGB. There are three checkboxes for missing color profiles, and mismatched profiles when opening or pasting. Make sure each of these is checked.
The last Photoshop setting is under preferences/ file handling. The setting to maximize PSD and PSB file compatibility should be set to “always”.
Sending an Image from Lightroom to Photoshop
Now there are two ways to send an image from Lightroom to Photoshop. The first is to select an image in Lightroom and right click on it and choose “Edit in Photoshop” or use the shortcut CTRL-E (CMD-E for Mac users) to open the image in Photoshop. This opens the image as a layer in Photoshop, and at this point, it is no longer a raw file, but a layer that we can work on, copy, add adjustment layers or apply one or more of our plugins.
If the image is a raw file, it will be sent to Photoshop along with any editing we have done in Lightroom. If the image is a non-raw file, you will see a dialog box asking whether to edit the original, edit a copy without Lightroom editing, or a copy with editing.
Also, since non-raw files have a color profile embedded, if there is a color profile mismatch you will get a dialog box asking what to do. I usually select the second option to convert to the document’s working profile which will be Prophoto RGB.
The second way to send an image to Photoshop is to select the image, right click and choose “open as smart object in Photoshop”.
When you open an image as a smart object in Photoshop, it is still a raw file and it will have any editing you did in Lightroom. You can tell it’s a smart object by the small icon in the lower right side of the layer thumb nail.
Double clicking on the thumbnail will open the image in camera raw and you can change your editing or make new edits. When you close camera raw, the edits are still there, but at any time you can double click and change your editing. This is a great workflow if you will only be working with Photoshop filters and adjustment layers. Since I’m usually adding third party plugins to new layers, the smart object layer is covered up by the new layer and any advantage of the smart object is lost, so I don’t use this smart object workflow very often.
Saving an image from Photoshop back to Lightroom
Once you are through with your Photoshop editing, go to file/save or use the shortcut CTRL-S and the image will be saved to the folder it came from with “–edit” added to the file name and in PSD format. If you have multiple layers, Photoshop will save the image with all of the layers intact, so you could open it later and resume editing with all layers available. The disadvantage is every layer makes the file larger and if you have a lot of layers files get very large very fast. I tend to flatten all layers once I feel I’m through with an image. The disadvantage is that if I want to do a major re-edit, I have to start from scratch.
If you need to do several versions of a file, use the file/save as command or the shortcut CTRL-Shift-S. When using “save as” you will see a dialog box asking for the file name you want to use. Also look carefully at the folder where Photoshop wants to save the image. Sometimes it’s not the folder you want, and finding the image later can be a nightmare. I may start with a basic edit and save it, then do a Black and White conversion and “save as” with B&W in the name, add a texture and “save as” with texture in the name. Be careful here with using the shortcut since if you forget to hold down “shift”, your first edit will be overwritten. Good thing I’ve never ever done that. Also after a “save as”, you may need to synchronize the Lightroom folder before the new version is visible.
So that’s the basics of moving an image from Lightroom to Photoshop and getting your image saved back to Lightroom. And we’ll use this process over and over as we get into using plugins, since I normally apply them in Photoshop.
Wait- what’s that? Did I hear someone asking what was all that about color spaces and bit depth in our settings? If you’re not confused enough already, here is a very brief explanation.
Color Spaces
A color space is simply a range of colors. As usual our eyes are superior to our cameras and can see more colors than our cameras can capture, or our computers can process or our monitors can display. In photography there are three common color spaces, sRGB which contains the smallest range of colors, Adobe RGB which is larger, and Prophoto which is the largest. BTW, sRGB stands for standard RGB but most photographers have a different name for it.
In your camera menu, there is a setting for either sRGB, or Abobe RGB. Remember RAW files don’t have a color profile embedded, so it only affects JPEGs, including the JPEG preview you see on your LCD when you capture a RAW image. If you shoot only JPEGs and select sRGB, you are limiting the range of colors your camera captures and that you will be able to work with later. If you only shoot JPEGs and do little or no editing and are only posting images to the web, sRGB might be the appropriate choice. If you only shoot RAW, this camera setting doesn’t have any effect on our editing workflow.
In general, you want the most color information possible; we can always reduce it later, but we can’t increase beyond what we start with. Lightroom uses the Prophoto color space, so if we are working with a RAW Image, it has the most colors to work with. JPEGs will default to their embedded color profile. This is why we selected the Photoshop working color space as Prophoto, and also set up the warning dialogs for color space conflicts. By the way most computer monitors can only display the sRGB range of colors and can’t display all of the subtle colors in Prophoto or even Abobe RGB, but Lightroom will make the images display nicely on screen. There are high end monitors that can show the larger color spaces, but they aren’t cheap (think the price of a high end camera body), and they aren’t necessary for most of us.
The one time you absolutely want the sRGB color space is for images displayed on the web. Most web sites and browsers do a horrible job of converting a Prophoto or Adobe RGB image to the sRGB that monitors use. If you ever put an image on the web (or even display it on your monitor outside of Lightroom or Photoshop) it will look dull and colors will be obviously wrong. So whenever an image is intended for the web, convert it to sRGB when you export it from Lightroom or else convert it to sRGB in Photoshop (Edit/convert to profile) and save a copy for the web.
Bit Depth
And now for everybody’s favorite subject – MATH! Our cameras, computers and monitors see colors as mixtures of shades of red, green and blue.
8 bit color means there are 2^8th or 256 shades of each of the three primary colors. And since colors are a mixture of all three, the possible colors are 256 x 256 x 256 or 16.7 million colors. JPEGs are always 8 bit since the format does not support 16 bit.
16 bit color means there are 2^16th or 16,384 shades of each color. And again since we see a mixture of the three colors that becomes 281 trillion.
Most current digital cameras capture 14 bit color (my first cameras were only 12 bit) or 44 trillion shades.
I’ve been told that processing HDR files in Lightroom or Adobe camera raw (ACR) is done in 32 bit color which is 7.9 Octillion (79 with 27 0’s.). There is also a setting for 32 bit in Photoshop, but only very limited functions are available.
For much of our processing 8 bit may be adequate. The problems come when there is a gradual transition across a narrow range of color. Think of the gradation in a clear blue sky. Adding adjustment layers, linear gradients and the like accentuates the problem and we begin to see banding, which is distinct bars of color rather than a smooth, gradual transition. I have very rarely seen banding in my RAW images, but I have seen it occasionally in JPEG’s.
16 bit gives us much more subtle gradation in shades of colors and you won’t see the banding effect. You will also see smoother transitions from shadows to highlights. The tradeoff is larger file sizes and slower processing. Also many of the third party plugins (and even some Photoshop effects) won’t work in 16 bit. The best compromise here is to do as much of our editing in 16 bit, and then convert to 8 bit (image/mode/8 bit) when it’s time for our plugins. As I get into plugins in subsequent articles I’ll try to remember to mention which plugins support 16 or 8 bit color.
For more information on color spaces
https://petapixel.com/2020/01/30/explaining-color-space-and-how-it-can-screw-up-your-photos-after-export/
https://photographylife.com/srgb-vs-adobe-rgb-vs-prophoto-rgb
For more information on bit depth
https://www.bwillcreative.com/8-bit-vs-16-bit-vs-32-bit-in-photoshop/#:~:text=The%20Difference%20Between%208%20Bit,can%20display%20281%20trillion%20colors
