Adobe Lightroom

The White Balance Difference

One of the first things to keep in mind when working with rendered files—JPG, TIF or PSD files—is that they already had a white balance setting applied to them at some point in their history. It was the first time that rendered version was created, which may have been from a camera shooting in JPG mode or it may have been when a copy was created from a raw file for editing. It doesn’t really matter when it happened, only that it did, and this means all future adjustments to white balance will be made relative to that original setting.

What does that mean on a practical level? Well, let’s look at a raw file in the Develop module. If I want to make adjustments to the white balance of this raw file I have the option of clicking the White Balance (WB) drop-down menu and choosing from a range of white balance presets that actually set the Temperature slider to a specific color temperature.

I can switch between any combination of Temp and Tint slider settings to my hearts content and each setting changes the interpretation of the raw image data accordingly.

Now let’s take a JPG copy rendered from that same raw file (the same would be true of either a TIF or PSD copy). When I click the WB drop-down menu I only have 3 options to choose from—As Shot, Auto and Custom.

As Shot just means as is with no additional settings. The Auto setting tells Lightroom to analyze the file and take a stab at neutralizing the color balance. The Custom option appears as soon as you make your own adjustment with the Temp and Tint sliders or use the White Balance Selector tool to do your own relative adjustment.

So in the case of working with a rendered file the white balance was already set before, so all we can do is tweak the color balance relative to that original setting.

The Camera Calibration Difference

Another benefit of shooting raw is that you are in the driver seat when it comes to choosing the default rendering of that raw data. If you take a raw file into the Develop module and expand the Camera Calibration panel you will see a number of different options to choose from under the Profile drop-down menu. Switching between each of these profiles will result in a different interpretation of that raw data, which is quite cool.

Take any rendered file into Develop and expand that same menu and all you will only see Embedded displayed.

This is simply due to the fact that you are looking at a rendered file with an embedded color profile and Lightroom can’t change that. Yes, you can convert exported copies to a different color space, but you can’t change the color space of the original file inside of Lightroom.

The Edit in Photoshop Difference

After making a set of adjustments to your raw photo you may want to move over to Photoshop to do more. If you go to the Photo > Edit In > Edit in Photoshop menu the only option Lightroom has is to create a copy of that raw file, apply all Lightroom adjustments to that copy and open it in Photoshop. Since this is the only option available to raw files the Edit Photo dialog box does not appear with raw files in Lightroom 2, which is a change in behavior from Lightroom 1. Don’t let that throw you.

After that copy opens in Photoshop it will appear to still have the raw file extension, but you can simply go to File > Save and that copy will be saved to the same folder as the raw file and it will be added to the Lightroom catalog automatically. The file format, color space and bit depth of this new copy will be determined by the settings you choose in the External Editing Preferences.

Let’s compare this to a rendered file. Select a JPG, TIF or PSD file and go to Photo > Edit In > Edit in Photoshop and you will be greeted with the Edit Photo dialog box.

Now you have choices. If you want to apply new adjustments you’ve done in Lightroom to a copy of that file you’d want to choose the Edit a Copy with Lightroom Adjustments option. This will create a new copy of the selected photo, apply adjustments and open the copy in Photoshop. Lightroom only applies adjustments to copies so there is no way around this.

However, say you selected a TIF or PSD file that you have already edited in Photoshop, and as a result this file has multiple layers that you want to resume editing in Photoshop. In this case you would want to choose either the Edit Original or Edit a Copy. Why? Because with either of these options you can open your file with the layers intact since Lightroom is not applying any additional adjustments to that file. The only difference in these two options is that one creates a copy of the original layered file and the other simply opens the original.

The key to point to keep in mind is that in order to apply Lightroom adjustments to any file a copy has to be created. If you want to apply adjustments to a layered TIF or PSD source file a flattened copy is created.