No doubt other photographers will have have a much
longer list, but before adding them they should remember that Lightroom
is not intended to replace Photoshop. Nevertheless, the absence of the
above features often requires the Lightroom user to make what is known
as a round-trip into Photoshop. Unfortunately, for some this trip isn't
always as pain free as it should be. Why?
Adobe Lightroom uses the ProPhoto RGB
color
space internally and will always embed a profile for this color space
within images that are exported via the Edit in Adobe Photoshop
command. The problem is that many users do not use this color space
and are therefore greatly annoyed with the appearance of the
Photoshop Profile Mismatch alert. They are further annoyed at
having to convert the image to their preferred color space.
The quickest and easiest way to avoid the problem
described above is to configure the Lightroom External Editor
preference so that images when exported from Lightroom using the
Edit in Adobe Photoshop... command are already converted to their
preferred color space, which is typically Adobe RGB (1998).
Lightroom Preferences Dialog
Alternatively, with a bit of reconfiguration within the
Photoshop Color Settings dialog it is again possible to avoid
both of these annoyances. The two settings bounded in red in following
screenshot show the settings that should be used in Photoshop.
Photoshop
Color Settings - Optimised for Adobe
Lightroom
Notice that the RGB workings space profile is shown as
Adobe RGB (1998), but it could be sRGB, ColorMatch, etc. Anyway,
the next time an image is opened via the Lightroom Edit in
Adobe Photoshop command the screenshot shown below is likely to
appear in Photoshop. If it does, it will be necessary to check the box
labelled Don't show again followed by OK. The most
obvious benefit of this alternative approach is that it provides the
user with a much greater range of color space options than Lightroom
offers (e.g. ColorMatch, ROMM, Apple RGB).
Photoshop Profile Mismatch Alert
The last point to made about the
Lightroom-Photoshop-Lightroom round-trip is that the modified image
MUST be saved using the same name and file type (i.e. TIFF, PSD) as
the original and must be placed back into the same folder as the
original. The best approach is therefore to use the Save command
in Photoshop rather than Save As. If the modified image is saved
using a new name or in a new location Lightroom will not be able to
keep track of it and the image will therefore be outside of the
Lightroom managed Library. Finally, it's worth noting that any
adjustment layers applied to the image within Photoshop will be
preserved and Lightroom will fully honour the appearance of the edited
image. Unfortunately, Smart Objects will not be preserved, so
it's best to flatten the image prior to saving it.
Remember Rule 5 - Enjoy!
