Im Confused ... (not difficult)

Lawrence

Senior Member
So I have LightRoom and PhotoShop CC

I download my photos from my card into LR. Process what I can there - which is most everything - and move to PS if I need to.

This last week I signed up for a "Sharpening for printing" course. It is very specific and designed to produce exceptional prints.

The first thing he teaches is to remove all noise in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and specifially says that LR's RAW function sucks in comparison to ACR.

So what I did was select the RAW file in LR then select the Develop tab > Photo > Edit in Photoshop CC > Filter > Camera Raw Filter

Believing I was now in Adobe Camera Raw I proceeded to do the required only to be told this is not the way to do it.

I have to edit the RAW in ACR - so my question is how do I get (inot) ACR with LR and PSCC?

I don't particularly want to drop LR altogether as I like the cataloging system and I have thousands of images in there now.

Hope all that makes sense and someone can help.
 
The way you are getting into ACR is correct and that is truly ACR. But I have a real problem with the notion that Lightroom RAW processing is not as good as ACR via Photoshop. As far as I know it is the exact same engine. The difference is that LR has a lot more control.
 

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
"The first thing he teaches is to remove all noise in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and specifially says that LR's RAW function sucks in comparison to ACR."

The first thing I would have asked the guy is how it's possible for the same software to suck in one interface and be perfectly acceptable in another? This guy has no idea what Lightroom is.

Let me explain then. LR is a comprehensive piece of organizational and publishing photo processing software built around the Adobe Camera RAW engine ... the very same ACR engine that Photoshop uses - which is why there are always simultaneous releases of ACR and LR (you can occasionally get a Beta version of ACR ahead of time). LR simply adds the organizational capabilities of Adobe Bridge on the front end, and a variety of output and publishing modules on the back. The Develop module simply takes the tabs listed in ACR and stacks them vertically in the right panel.

Don't believe me? Take a RAW image and don't import it to LR, simply copy it to your hard drive. Open the RAW file directly using Photoshop, this will invoke ACR as a front end. Make your adjustments and then choose the Open Image to get it into Photoshop. This creates a .xmp sidecar file in the same directory as the RAW file. Now go to Lightroom and import that RAW file to your catalog. Like magic, those same settings you applied in ACR that are applied during import and are now shown in the LR Develop module. All of them!! Even radial and graduated filters. Because it reads the sidecar file.

This could never happen if it wasn't the same engine.

For what it's worth, this demonstration works the other way as well. After making adjustments in LR, then right-click on the image and choose Metadata -> Save Metadata To File. This will create a (wait for it) .xmp file for the RAW image. Now go to Photoshop and open that RAW file. It will once again invoke ACR as the front end, and immediately apply all the setting from LR to ACR.

I suspect your instructor is under-informed or over-prejudiced against LR for some reason. And while that's OK, it's not cool to spread misinformation to people who are paying to learn something.
 
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Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
The history of Lightroom and ACR is pretty well documented and I think it would be an easy thing to pull up on the Googles.

As I recall ACR and Lightroom have used the exact same rendering engine since Adobe acquired RAW Shooter Essentials (the primeval RAW conversion engine) back in 2006 when they bought another company called Pixmatic or Pixmantic... Something like that. Anyway, in 2008 ACR and Lightroom were merged with the release of LR v2. Since then both have been developed, and released, in conjunction with one another. Again, same exact rendering engine, different graphic user interface.
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There are a few people I know that have a few connections to more info than I do that are saying that in the near future that Photoshop will go away and Adobe will merge all the features into Lightroom. Actually sounds like a good idea.
 

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
There are a few people I know that have a few connections to more info than I do that are saying that in the near future that Photoshop will go away and Adobe will merge all the features into Lightroom. Actually sounds like a good idea.

I am a huge fan of both, and this scares the crap out of me. Lightroom has been a bloated piece of software since version 4 and continues to get worse and worse. The idea of adding something as complex as Photoshop into that mix is a disaster waiting to happen. LR is an all-encompassing program with basic photo processing, like a darkroom, and works extremely well as that. Photoshop is a graphic design engine that does so much more than photography post-processing. If what you're telling me is true then the "Photoshop" that likely gets merged in will be a stripped down Elements-like subset of elements, while the rest of the PS functionality (3D, Video, etc.) likely going to a new piece of software that they can then charge us for. That's when I'll be dropping my subscription.
 

Lawrence

Senior Member
Thanks everybody for your comprehensive answers.
I happen to like LightRoom so this "LR is crap" thing he was feeding me was a shock. But to be fair it was a specific thing about LR that he didn't like and I will look it up again and if I find it will post it here for comment.

Thanks for the Video (and detsailed explanation) Jake
 

ShootRaw

Senior Member
PS is not going anywhere..It is the most used Post-processing tool in the world. There is so much more control in Ps versus Lr..
 

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
PS is not going anywhere..It is the most used Post-processing tool in the world. There is so much more control in Ps versus Lr..

Which plays into this very well for Adobe. Right now they give away Photoshop in the Creative Cloud Photography plan for $9.99 a month. Folks have said from the beginning that at some point Adobe would raise that price while they have promised not to. So, you get full functionality LR and PS. But, if they were to somehow make a "Photoshop for Photographers" that stripped out many of the non-photography specific functions of Photoshop (likely using the same logic and intellect that caused them to determine that no one uses the Eject on Import feature in LR) they could them roll that into Lightroom and still call it "Creative Cloud Photography" and still charge $9.99 ("See, we told you we'd never raise the price!!"), and then make full blown Photoshop part of an extension that would cost you an additional $5-15 a month.

It makes no sense from a user perspective, but if falls in line with everything Adobe has done since introducing the CC offering, which is to drive up CC functionality, subscriptions and revenue. You can't sell someone who already pays $9.99 a month anything new if it's already bundled in. With the graphics and video functionality getting greater and greater in Ps they can simply say, "It's more than just a photography tool, so we need to be able to charge for it accordingly. Photographers will still get the most used functions of Photoshop as a part of their subscription, and videographers can opt for the CC for Video bundle, and graphic designers will retain full functionality in the full Creative Cloud offering."

This is all theory, but the real question would be, if they create a stripped down version of Ps what does Adobe consider essential to photographers? If it's what we see in Elements then they have they heads up a dark chute. If they strip out everything in the 3D menu I won't even bat an eyelash - I'd love to play with it but that's truly outside of any photographers need (unless they are a graphic artist, in which case they're likely already ponying up). I have more of an issue with them stripping video editing functionality out. If I can shoot video with my DSLR then I should be able to grab frames from it and do at least basic edits and extracts to/from it. If that happened, I'd likely be more than OK with carrying on. Start stripping out some of the Filters, particularly the render effects that can be seen as more graphic arts oriented, and minimize the usefulness of content aware functions and we're gonna have a huge problem.
 

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
PS is not going anywhere..It is the most used Post-processing tool in the world. There is so much more control in Ps versus Lr..
Agreed. Getting rid of Photoshop, in any way, shape or form, amounts to killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

PS is used not just by photographers for raster graphics, it also has tools for working with vector based graphics and as such is used by graphic designers, fashion designers and web designers. It's used by architects, commercial printers and web designers and that's just off the top of my head.

I think a far more logical path has Lightroom, or at least some of it's core features, being "absorbed" into Photoshop. This would be consistent with Adobe's Creative Cloud distribution model, which is clearly not going anywhere. Right now Lr can still be purchased outside of Creative Cloud but I'm wondering how much longer that will last. Sometime after Lr goes the way of the Cloud, I see it merging with PS giving Adobe uses a simple (if singular) path for ALL types of graphic editing, not just raster based graphics for photographers but both raster and vector: Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator; all controlled via Creative Cloud. Photoshop, in this plan, would fulfill the pivotal role between the two graphical image "worlds". It's a clean, logical path as I see it. The relevant question for Lightroom users, I think, is... Just how committed is Adobe to Lightroom and its current distribution model?
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