Chapter 10. Jumping To Photoshop: How and When to Do It

Even though this book was written so you can jump in anywhere, I can tell you right now that if this is the first chapter intro you’re reading, you probably should turn back to the Chapter 1 intro and start by reading that first, then work your way back to here, just reading chapter intros (not the whole chapters). Actually, go back a page or two further (to the part where I tell you not to read these chapter intros if you’re a Mr. Fussypants), and then you can determine if you should take the mental break imposed by these chapter intros or not. Now, the chapter you’re about to embark upon is about using Adobe Photoshop with Lightroom, and there are still a bunch of reasons why we still need to use Photoshop (or Photoshop Elements) to get the job done. For example, Lightroom doesn’t have things like layers, or filters, or blend modes, or pro-level type control, or the Quick Selection tool, or HDR Pro, or serious portrait retouching (I could go on and on), so we still need it. We don’t need Photoshop for every image, but you’ll know when you need it, because you’ll hit that moment when you realize what you want to do can’t be done in Lightroom. Let’s take creating counterfeit currency, for example. Lightroom kind of stinks for that, but if you’re going to buy the full version of Photoshop (which runs around $700 U.S.), you’re just about going to need to be printing your own money. The Catch-22 is that you need counterfeit money to buy Photoshop, but you need Photoshop first to create realistic counterfeit money. It’s this conundrum that has kept so many of us out of the Federal prison system.

Step One:

Press Command-, (comma; PC: Ctrl-,) to bring up Lightroom’s preferences, and click on the External Editing tab up top (seen here). If you have Photoshop on your computer, it chooses it as your External Editor, so in the top section, choose the file format you want for photos that get sent to Photoshop (I set mine to PSD, because the files are much smaller than TIFFs), then from the Color Space pop-up menu, choose your file’s color space (Adobe recommends ProPhoto RGB. If you keep it at that, I’d change Photoshop’s color space to ProPhoto RGB, as well—whatever you choose, just use the same color space in Photoshop). Adobe also recommends choosing a 16-bit depth for the best results (although, I personally use an 8-bit depth most of the time). You also get to choose the resolution (I leave mine set at the default of 240 ppi). If you want to use a second program to edit your photos, you can choose that in the Additional External Editor section.

Step Two:

Next, there’s a Stack With Original checkbox. I recommend leaving this on, because it puts the edited copy of your image right beside your original file (more on this in the next project), so it’s easy to find when you return to Lightroom. Lastly, you can choose the name applied to photos sent over to Photoshop. You choose this from the Edit Externally File Naming section at the bottom of the dialog, and you have pretty much the same naming choices as you do in the regular Import window.

20-Second Tutorial:

To take the image you’re working on over to Photoshop, go under the Photo menu, under Edit In, and choose Edit in Adobe Photoshop (as shown here), or just press Command-E (PC: Ctrl-E), and Lightroom sends a copy of your image over to Photoshop. Do anything you want to it in Photoshop and then simply save the image, close the window, and it comes right back to Lightroom. However, if you want to follow along with project here, I’ll take you through the process (plus, you’ll get to learn a few Photoshop things along the way). Here’s our original image in Lightroom.

Step One:

Now, press Command-E (PC: Ctrl-E) to open the image in Photoshop. If you took the shot in RAW, it just “loans” Photoshop a copy of the image and opens it. However, if you shot in JPEG or TIFF mode, this brings up the Edit Photo with Adobe Photoshop dialog, where you choose (1) to have a copy of your original photo sent to Photoshop, with all the changes and edits you made in Lightroom applied to it, (2) to have Lightroom make a copy of your original untouched photo and send that to Photoshop, or (3) to edit your original JPEG or TIFF in Photoshop without any of the changes you’ve made thus far in Lightroom. Since we’re working with a JPEG here, we’ll choose the first option, and work on a copy that has our Lightroom adjustments.

Step Two:

Here’s a copy of our image open in Photoshop CC. We’re going to make a splash screen for a slide show (or it could also be used for a book cover in Lightroom’s Book module) from a backstage photo shoot at an old theater.

Step Three:

We’ll start by converting the image to black and white (of course, we could’ve done this black and white conversion in Lightroom, but since we didn’t, we’ll do it here in Photoshop). Press Command-Shift-U (PC: Ctrl-Shift-U) to remove the color and create a black-and-white image (like you see here).

Step Four:

We’re going to darken part of the image, so we can put text over it, blur the outside edges, backscreen the image, and then add some custom type (all things Lightroom either doesn’t do at all or it takes a workaround to kinda do it). We’ll start by getting the Retangular Marquee tool (M) from the Toolbox (along the left side of Photoshop) and dragging out a large rectangular selection like the one you see here.

Step Five:

Now, anything we do in Photoshop will just affect the area inside that selection. However, at this moment, we need to just affect the stuff outside the rectangle. So, go up to the Select menu and choose Inverse (as seen here) to select everything outside that rectangular area.

Step Six:

With your inversed selection in place, go under the Filter menu, under Blur, and choose Gaussian Blur. When the filter dialog appears, enter around 26 pixels (as seen here) and click OK to blur the entire area outside the rectangle.

Step Seven:

Let’s now switch our selection back to where we started, so go back up under the Select menu up top and choose Inverse (or just press Command-Shift-I [PC: Ctrl-Shift-I]). Now, we’re back to where we started with just affecting what’s inside our rectangular selection. Next, go to the Layers panel and click on the Create a New Layer icon at the bottom of the panel (it’s the sixth icon from the left) to create a new blank layer (as seen here). We’re going to add a white stroke around this selection, so go under the Edit menu and choose Stroke. When the dialog appears, enter 5 pixels, click on the Color swatch and change the color to white, choose Center for the Location (so the stroke is split half on one side of the selection, half on the other side), then click OK. Now, you can remove your selection by pressing Command-D (PC: Ctrl-D), which is the shortcut for Deselect.

Step Eight:

Add another new blank layer (click on that Create a New Layer icon again), and then fill this new layer with black by first pressing the letter D on your keyboard to set your Foreground color to black, and then pressing Option-Delete (PC: Alt-Backspace). To create our backscreen effect, lower the Opacity of this black-filled layer by clicking the little down-facing arrow to the right of the Opacity field at the top-right corner of the Layers panel, and dragging the little Opacity slider to the left to 40% (as seen here). You’ve now put a dark backscreen effect over the image.

Step Nine:

Now, let’s add some type. Get the Horizontal Type tool from the Toolbox (T; its icon looks like a capital “T”) and type “ALL ACCESS” in all caps using a very bold typeface (I used Futura Bold, 50 pt., here). Once you’ve created your type, we’re going to tighten up the space between the letters to give it a more professional look at that size. You do this by highlighting the words “ALL ACCESS,” and then pressing Option-Left Arrow key (PC: Alt-Left Arrow key) on your keyboard. Each time you press that, it tightens the space between the letters. Get it nice and snug like you see here.

Step 10:

Next, we’ll create a second line of type. Click the Horizontal Type tool somewhere away from your original type to create a new Type layer. This time, type (in all caps) “Behind the scenes photos from Mark Moore in concert” (as seen here). For the sake of contrast, choose a thinner, lighter typeface for this second line (here, I chose a lighter weight of the same font—Futura Medium, 16 pt.), and this time we’re going to add space between the letters (instead of tightening them). So, highlight the letters, but this time press Option-Right Arrow key (PC: Alt-Right Arrow key). Each time you press that, it puts more space between the letters. Make it nice and airy like you see here. If you need to reposition your type, just switch to the Move tool (click on it in the Toolbox), then drag it where you want it.

Step 11:

Okay, now that I look at where we are with our image, I think it needs a little something more to offset the area in the middle visually, like brightening that blurry area around the outside. So, let’s start by doing what we did in Step Four all over again. Click on the Background layer in the Layers panel, take the Rectangular Marquee tool and put a selection around that center area, then Inverse the selection just like we did in Step Five. But, now, instead of blurring that outside area, we’re going to brighten it. So, go under the Image menu, under Adjustments, and choose Levels. When the Levels dialog appears (seen here), drag the highlights (white) slider (the one on the right, under the histogram) to the left, as seen here (it’s kind of like dragging the Whites slider in Lightroom to the right) to brighten the selected area. Click OK, then press Command-D (PC: Ctrl-D) to Deselect.

Step 12:

We’re done tweaking the image here in Photoshop, so at this point, you can choose to flatten the image (by choosing Flatten Image from the Layers panel’s flyout menu, as shown here), which removes all the layers and leaves you with a single-layer regular image like we normally have in Lightroom. Or, you can keep all the layers intact and send them over to Lightroom (more on this choice in a moment). But, no matter which you choose to do (flattening the image, or skipping that step), what you do next is the same. Just press Command-S (PC: Ctrl-S) to Save the changes, then press Command-W (PC: Ctrl-W) to Close the image window. Save and Close. That’s it. That’s the magic combination that sends your image back to Lightroom and closes your image here in Photoshop.

Step 13:

Now, lets switch back to Lightroom. If you look in the collection where your original image is, you’ll see the image you just edited in Photoshop right beside it (as seen here, where you can see the black-and-white image with text added next to the original color image we started with). It works this way whether you started with a RAW image, TIFF, JPEG, whatever. Okay, that’s it. So, to recap: you press Command-E (PC: Ctrl-E) to take the selected image over to Photoshop, do all the tweaking and adjusting you want there, and when you’re done, simply save and close, and your edited image now appears in Lightroom. Be sure to read the next step, though, because it’s something you’ll want to know about saving a layered file back to Lightroom.

Step 14: Working with Layered Files

If you have multiple layers (like we did with this image), and you save and close the document without flattening it first, Lightroom keeps all those layers intact in the background. So, in Lightroom, what you’ll see appears to be a flattened image, but the layers are still there (you can’t see them because Lightroom doesn’t have a layers feature). If you want to see the layers, or work with them, you have to go back to Photoshop. However, to do that, when you click on the layered image in Lightroom and press Command-E (PC: Ctrl-E) to open it in Photoshop, when the dialog appears asking you if you want to edit a copy with your Lightroom changes, you must choose Edit Original (as seen here). When you do that, all the layers appear. Otherwise, it sends Photoshop a flattened version of the image. By the way, this is the only time I ever choose to open the original file—when I want to see a layered file.

Step One:

We start this process in Photoshop, so go ahead and press Command-E (PC: Ctrl-E) to open an image in Photoshop (don’t forget, you can follow along with the same photo I’m using here, if you like, by downloading it from the site I gave you back in the book’s introduction). What we’re going to do here is create a Photoshop action that adds a nice, simple softening effect to the image, and you can use it on everything from landscapes to portraits. (When I post a photo using this technique on my blog, I always get emails asking: “How is it that the image looks soft, but it still looks sharp?”) Because this technique is repetitive (it uses the same steps in the same order every time), it makes it an ideal candidate for turning into an action, which you can apply to a different photo (or group of photos) much faster.

Step Two:

To create an action, go to the Window menu and choose Actions to make the Actions panel visible. Click on the Create New Action icon at the bottom of the panel (it looks just like the Create a New Layer icon in the Layers panel and is circled here). This brings up the New Action dialog (shown here). Go ahead and give your action a name (I named mine “Soften Finishing Effect”) and click the Record button (notice the button doesn’t say OK or Save, it says Record, because it’s now recording your steps).

Step Three:

Make two duplicates of the Background layer by pressing Command-J (PC: Ctrl-J) twice. Then go to the Layers panel and click on the center layer (shown highlighted here). Now go under the Filter menu, under Sharpen, and choose Unsharp Mask. This is a low-resolution image we’re working on, so apply an Unsharp Mask with the Amount set to 85%, the Radius set to 1 pixel, and the Threshold set to 4 levels, and click OK to apply the sharpening. (Note: If this had been a full-resolution image from a digital camera, I would have used Unsharp Mask settings of Amount: 120, Radius: 1, and Threshold: 3.)

Step Four:

Now, after the sharpening, you’re going to apply a huge blur to this image. So, click on the top layer in the Layers panel (Layer 1 copy). Go under the Filter menu, under Blur, choose Gaussian Blur, and enter 25 pixels as the Radius, so it’s really blurry (like you see here).

Step Five:

In the Layers panel, lower the Opacity of this blurry layer to 20%, which gives us our final look (as seen here). Now, go to the Layers panel’s flyout menu (near the top-right corner of the panel) and choose Flatten Image to flatten the layers down to just the Background layer. Next, save the file by pressing Command-S (PC: Ctrl-S) and close it by pressing Command-W (PC: Ctrl-W).

Step Six:

You may have forgotten by now, but we’ve been recording this process the whole time (remember that action we created a while back? Well, it’s been recording our steps all along). So, go back to the Actions panel and click the Stop icon at the bottom left of the panel (as shown here). What you’ve recorded is an action that will apply the effect, then save the file, and then close that file. Now, I generally like to test my action at this point to make sure I wrote it correctly, so open a different photo, click on the Soften Finishing Effect action in the Actions panel, then click the Play Selection icon at the bottom of the panel. It should apply the effect, then save and close the document.

Step Seven:

Now we’re going to turn that action into what’s called a droplet. Here’s what a droplet does: If you leave Photoshop and find a photo on your computer, and you drag-and-drop the photo right onto this droplet, the droplet automatically launches Photoshop, opens that photo, and applies that Soften Finishing Effect action to the photo you dropped on there. Then it saves and closes the photo automatically, because you recorded those two steps as part of the action. Pretty sweet. So, to make a droplet, go under Photoshop’s File menu, under Automate, and choose Create Droplet (as shown here).

Step Eight:

This brings up the Create Droplet dialog (shown here). At the top left of the dialog, click the Choose button, choose your desktop as the destination for saving your droplet, and then name your droplet “Soften.” Now, in the Play section of this dialog, make sure to choose Soften Finishing Effect (that’s what we named our action earlier) from the Action pop-up menu (as shown here). That’s it—you can ignore the rest of the dialog, and just click OK.

Step Nine:

If you look on your computer’s desktop, you’ll see an icon that is a large arrow, and the arrow is aiming at the name of the droplet (as shown here).

Step 10:

Now that we’ve built our Soften droplet in Photoshop, we’re going to add that to our Lightroom workflow. Back in Lightroom, go under the File menu and choose Export. When the Export dialog appears, go down to the Post-Processing section, and from the After Export pop-up menu, choose Go to Export Actions Folder Now (as shown here).

Step 11:

This takes you to the folder on your computer where Lightroom stores Export Actions (and more importantly, where you can store any you create). All you have to do is click-and-drag that Soften droplet right into that Export Actions folder to add it into Lightroom. Now you can close this folder, head back to Lightroom, and click Cancel to close the Export dialog (you only needed it open at this point to get you to that Export Actions folder, so you could drag that droplet in there).

Step 12:

Okay, now let’s put it to work: In Lightroom’s Grid view, select the photo (or photos) you want to have that effect applied to, then press Command-Shift-E (PC: Ctrl-Shift-E) to bring back the Export dialog. From the Preset section on the left, click on the right-facing triangle to the left of User Presets, and then click on the Export JPEGs for Web preset we talked about creating at the beginning of Chapter 9 (if you didn’t create that one, go ahead and do it now). In the Export Location section, click on the Choose button and select the destination folder for your saved JPEG(s) (if you want to change it). Then, in the File Naming section, you can give your photo(s) a new name, if you like. Now, in the Post-Processing section at the bottom, from the After Export pop-up menu, you’ll see Soften (your droplet) has been added, so choose it (as shown here). When you click Export, your photo(s) will be saved as a JPEG, then Photoshop will automatically launch, open your photo(s), apply your Soften Finishing Effect, then save and close the photo(s). Pretty slick stuff!

Back in Lightroom 1, it automatically added “Edit in CS3” to end of any photo you edited over there, but now you get to choose exactly what these edited files are named. Just go to Lightroom’s preferences (press Command-, [comma; PC: Ctrl-,]), and then click on the External Editing tab, and at the bottom of the dialog, you’ll see the Edit Externally File Naming section, where you can choose your own custom name or one of the preset file naming templates.

Cutting Files’ Ties to Lightroom

When you move a file over to Photoshop for editing, and you save that file, the saved file comes right back to Lightroom. So, how do you break this chain? When you’re done editing in Photoshop, just go under Photoshop’s File menu and choose Save As, then give the file a new name. That’s it, the chain is broken and the file won’t go back to Lightroom.

Get Rid of Those Old PSD Files

If you upgraded from Lightroom 1, each time you jumped over to Photoshop, it created a copy of your photo and saved it alongside the original in PSD format, even if you never made a change to it in Photoshop. If you’re like me, you probably had a hundred or more PSDs with no visible changes, just taking up space on your drive and in Lightroom. If you still haven’t gotten rid of them, go to the Library module, and in the Catalog panel, click on All Photographs. Then, up in the Library Filter, click on Metadata. In the first field on the left, click on the header and choose File Type from the pop-up menu, then click on Photoshop Document (PSD). Choose Date for the second field and click on the oldest dates, so you can see which ones you never used or don’t need, and you can delete them so you get that space back.

How to Get Photos Back Into Lightroom After Running an Export Action

If you created an action in Photoshop and saved it as an export action in Lightroom (earlier this chapter), when your photos leave Lightroom and go to Photoshop to run the action, that’s the “end of the line” (the photos don’t come back to Lightroom). If you want those processed photos to be automatically imported back into Lightroom, you can use Lightroom’s Auto Import feature (under the File menu) to watch a folder, and when you write your Photoshop action, have it save your processed files to that folder. That way, as soon as the action is run, and the file is saved out of Photoshop, it will automatically be re-imported into Lightroom.

Getting Consistent Color Between Lightroom and Photoshop

If you’re going to be going back and forth between Lightroom and Photoshop, I’m sure you want consistency in your color between the two programs, which is why you might want to change your color space in Photoshop to match Lightroom’s default color space of ProPhoto RGB. You do this under Photoshop’s Edit menu: choose Color Settings, then under Working Spaces, for RGB, choose ProPhoto RGB. If you prefer to work in the Adobe RGB (1998) color space in Photoshop, then just make sure you send your photo over to Photoshop in that color space: go to Lightroom’s Preferences dialog, click on the External Editing tab up top, then under Edit in Photoshop, for Color Space, choose AdobeRGB (1998).