LR 4 and Photoshop CS3?

Anyone have an idea how to get these two to work together? The help file specifically mentions CS3 working with it and even mentions that CS3 will use ACR 4.6. When I tell LR4 to open a RAW file from my XSi in Photoshop, it opens up Photoshop but nothing else happens. I can make LR4 render it to a .psd file and that works fine. I can also open the .raw file manually with Photoshop and it seems to see the changes made by LR4.

'Send' it to PS from LR. LR will render it (and not use ACR) and it will open in PS. - Terry

Thanks, I posted also over on the Adobe forum and it looks like when I do a Photo > Edit In > Photoshop CS3 I have to choose "render in lightroom" to turn it into a .psd file to send to CS3. I'm assuming this is the same "send it" function you're talking about? Basically when I tell it to edit in photoshop I get a dialog first about ACR incompatibility and that when I could choose "open anyway" which was doing nothing or "render using lightroom".

I guess it just means I end up with two files for the same picture now and I'll have to figure out how I want to deal with that. I haven't done anything serious yet so in my old way of bridge > ACR > Photoshop the final product was just saved off as a .jpeg when I was done editing and that was it. I never saved a .psd of whatever I'd been doing in Photoshop.

You have to choose 'render in Lightroom' because you do not have (or it cannot find) a version of ACR that will render your RAW image. (Which doesn’t really make sense since you were evidently opening them with ACR into PS before.)

You haven't changed you workflow as far as files are concerned. You are just using PR to render the image instead of ACR. You do not need to Save it as a PSD now any more than you did before.

Just as a point, tiff, psd, jpg or whatever (including RAW) are file storage formats so your image is none of these until you Save it. When you open the RAW (in anything) it renders the RAW into a bitmap that can be displayed and worked on. It is not a jpg, PSD, etc. until you save it as such.

Terry

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by OldClicker

You have to choose 'render in Lightroom' because you do not have (or it cannot find) a version of ACR that will render your RAW image. (Which doesn’t really make sense since you were evidently opening them with ACR into PS before.)

You haven't changed you workflow as far as files are concerned. You are just using PR to render the image instead of ACR. You do not need to Save it as a PSD now any more than you did before.

Just as a point, tiff, psd, jpg or whatever (including RAW) are file storage formats so your image is none of these until you Save it. When you open the RAW (in anything) it renders the RAW into a bitmap that can be displayed and worked on. It is not a jpg, PSD, etc. until you save it as such.

Terry

---

What I got from the Adobe forums it that CS3's ACR version 4.6 just plain can't work with LR 4. Basically I have to render my .raw file to a .psd (or some other format like a .tiff) and send that to CS3.

What I was trying to say about my previous workflow is that I would open up into ACR 4.6 through Bridge, do some tweaks, push that into CS3 and do more tweaks. Then I would save that elsewhere (typically my desktop) as a .jpg for uploading to my website for whatever I was going to use it for. I would then delete the .jpg after it was uploaded.

With LR4 it looks like any time I need to do some work in CS3 I will end up with a "duplicate" photo in .psd format. I guess that's really fine since from what I understand I should only need CS3 minimally now for things like more advanced re-touching or if I need to do some layer work. In that case I should probably have a saved .psd anyway just so I have a permanent record of the work if the photo is really that important to me.

Anyway, even though I'd planned on buying LR4, I'm actually using it as a trial right now. So I guess if I decide things aren't working out for me I can always just abandon it. My other thought was maybe to "upgrade" to Elements 10 or something like that. I'm not doing any kind of pro work and Elements 10 apparently supports layers now (though I don't know how in depth compared to full blown PS).

I got CS3 via purchasing Web Design Suite as a student so I can't just upgrade PS itself to 5.x. If I want full blown PS my options are upgrade to Web Design Suite 5.x at about $1000 or buy PS outright at $700 (kinda why I went with LR4 to upgrade my photo editing capabilities a bit for much less $$$).

Oh, hmm from a little reading I've been doing, it almost sounds like I might be able to avoid the whole problem if I switch from .raw to Adobe's DNG format. I might have to test that out. I know I can tell my camera to directly create dng's, I just don't know if there are any downsides to switching to an adobe format as far as what might happen in the future with software.

edit: nevermind, DNG behaved just like trying to send a raw file. Oh well. Weird because I'd read on an Adobe blog that converting to DNG eliminated raw version issues but apparently that must just be for between camera manufacturers proprietary raw formats.

If you send the image (Photo > Edit In > Photoshop CS3), and use 'Render with Lightroom', does it open in PS? If the answer is yes, then you have no problem and are doing the exact same thing as you were doing before except using LR in place of Bridge/ACR.

BTW - What camera and do the RAW files currently open in PS with ACR 4.6?

Terry

EDIT - DNG is just an Adobe RAW file format. It still has to be rendered. - Terry

EDIT-EDIT - I have done some more reading and you were right; it will save the PSD to your hard drive and then open it in PS. I guess that they thought that was a better way to handle the memory required. To maintain the same workflow, you would have to also delete the PSD. - Terry

Yeah I guess I could delete the PSD after doing edits and saving off a .jpg. I guess for some reason that just didn't occur to me I don't know why lol. Yes, the render in lightroom opens in PS after it creates the psd file. Oh and yeah the raw files open just fine on their own in PS/ACR 4.6 because I'm using a Canon XSi not a newer model. Either way, I'd be covered if I fully go to LR4 since it will run the latest ACR internally and then can just send a psd to photoshop for more advanced work. I guess it just took me a couple days for me to figure this all out.

I might have to get the old girl out and try some of these. Need to get photoshop on the new computer too which might be easier as I seem to have lost the power cord for my old laptop.

I have that problem with PS and LR3 when I try to move RAW. Going to test out a few of these methods. Right now I have to jump through hoops.

Just saw the upgrade for LR4 for $69 with an online coupon and think I'm going to do it.