Can Lightroom avoid creating large TIFF/PSD files when using “Edit in Photoshop”?
Asked 11/1/2010
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2 answers
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When using Lightroom’s “Edit in Photoshop” command, Lightroom creates a very large intermediate TIFF/PSD file for some photos. These can be over 100MB each and are taking up a lot of storage. Is there any way to stop Lightroom from creating these files, or at least reduce their size?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
15y ago
2 Answers
8
This is how things work when the Adobe "RAW Engines" don't match. Different versions of lightroom and photoshop have different internal engines, and when they match you should be able to seamlessly transfer the image back and forth.
When the engines are incompatible, it saves the in-memory version of the image to a tiff (in order to avoid losing data) and then loads it back in the other program.
You should be able to use the direct transfer by updating both Lightroom and Photoshop to the latest versions.
There is a little more information about this at digital-photography-school.com
Originally by user67. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user67
15y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Usually, Lightroom creates that rendered TIFF/PSD when Lightroom and Photoshop/Adobe Camera Raw aren’t using matching raw-processing engines. In that case, Lightroom must render the image first so Photoshop can open it without losing edits.
What to do:
- Update both Lightroom and Photoshop (and Camera Raw) so their raw engines match. When they’re in sync, transfer is more seamless.
- In Lightroom, check Preferences > External Editing. You can change:
- file format (TIFF or PSD)
- bit depth
- color space
- To reduce file size, use 8-bit instead of 16-bit if acceptable for her workflow.
- If using TIFF, enable ZIP compression. It’s lossless and saves space, though opening/saving may be a bit slower.
- If prompted because of Camera Raw mismatch, “Open Anyway” may open the original raw in Photoshop without Lightroom rendering first, but Lightroom-specific adjustments may not carry over exactly.
So: you often can’t eliminate the intermediate file entirely when Photoshop needs a rendered version, but matching software versions and adjusting external-editing settings can greatly reduce the storage impact.
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