Welcome back to another very exciting tutorial here at the PhotoshopTrainingChannel.com.
My name is Jesus Ramirez and you can find me on Instagram @JRfromPTC.
In this video, I'm going to show you how to link a file in Photoshop from Lightroom.
That way, any changes made in Lightroom reflect in the Photoshop version.
Here we are in Adobe Lightroom and this is the image that we're going to work with in
this tutorial.
And I already know what you're thinking.
You're thinking, taking a file from Lightroom to Photoshop is quite easy.
All you have to do is go into Photo, Edit, and then, choose either Edit in Adobe Photoshop
or Open as a Smart Object in Photoshop, and that will work.
That will take the file into Photoshop in one of two ways.
You can open it up as a TIFF file so you won't have all the advantages of using RAW or you
can open it up as a smart object, which will keep it as a raw file, and that's what we'll
do.
And here we are in Photoshop and if you'll look into the Layers panel, you'll see that
this is a smart object, which means that we can apply a number of non-destructive effects.
If you'll look at the Layer thumbnail at the bottom right, you'll see this icon here representing
that this layer is indeed a smart object.
Now, the problem is that if I want to make any adjustments to this file, I can use Lightroom.
If I double click on the Layer thumbnail or in the Properties panel, click on Edit Contents,
I will not bring up Lightroom, I will, instead, bring up Camera Raw.
Now this is not necessarily bad, Camera Raw has pretty much every capability as Lightroom
does in terms of developing the image, but you may want to use Lightroom instead for
various reasons.
So, what I'm going to do now is press the Cancel button and just to show you, I'm going
to make some adjustments in Lightroom and show you that this smart object is not going
to change, so I'm going to go back into Lightroom and I'm going to go into the Develop module.
Currently, I'm in the Library module.
If I press Ctrl Alt 2, I will move on to the Develop module, then I can press Ctrl 1, Command
1 on the Mac, to open the Basic panel and from here, I can make tonal adjustments and
I can make temperature adjustments, as well as adjust the Clarity, Vibrance, and Saturation.
I can, of course, come into the panel and click and drag on the sliders to make adjustments,
but you might find it a little bit useful to know these keyboard shortcuts I'm about
to show you.
You can use the Period key or the comma key to select the different sliders, so for example,
I'm going to press the Period key right now, and notice that the Tint label is selected.
If I press the period key again, Exposure gets selected, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows.
I'm going down the list every time I hit the Period key.
If I hit the Comma key, I go back up the list, then, I can press the minus or plus signs
to adjust the slider.
So, currently, I have exposure selected.
If I press the Minus key, it's going to reduce the Exposure, making the image darker.
Then I can press the Period key and go to Clarity and increase the Clarity to add more
contrast in the midtones.
And I'm going to go back up to temperature and I'm just going to make this blue by reducing
the temperature, so I'm tapping the minus key on the keyboard, and there it is.
Now, actually, now that I'm thinking, I want to show you a couple of other shortcuts that
you might find useful when working with the Tonal Adjustments in Lightroom.
This is the Photoshop Training Channel so I'm assuming a lot of you don't know the keyboard
shortcuts and all the little tricks that you can do in Lightroom, so if I hover over a
slider in Lightroom, I can also use the Up and Down keys on the keyboard to make the
adjustment.
All I have to do is hover right over it, so it's actually really useful if you're, maybe,
working on a laptop on a plane or something like that to make adjustments to your image.
Another way in which you can adjust the Tonal Values of your image in Lightroom is by opening
up the Histogram, so press Ctrl 0 (zero), Command 0 on the Mac.
The Histogram is here and you can just hover over any area, and notice the label here,
right here where it says ISO 160, that's going to be the label of the tonal areas that we're
working on.
So, for example, right here, that's the highlights.
Also notice the Highlight label here on the slider is highlighted when I hover over that
area, so Highlights, Exposure, Shadows, Blacks.
So right now, I'm hovering over the blacks.
If I click and drag, I make adjustments to the blacks as well.
So that's another way in which you can adjust the image.
Obviously, when you're first starting out, just clicking and dragging on those sliders
is perhaps the easiest way to open up the panels having using keyboard shortcuts, but
you can just click on the label and it opens.
The easiest way to remember is just think of the key Control, that's Command on the
Mac, and then numbers.
Histogram is 0 (zero), Basic 1, Tone and Curve 2, and so on and so forth, all the way to
the number 9.
Camera Calibration is number 9, so Ctrl 9 opens up that panel and Lens Correction is,
of course, number 6, so Ctrl 6, Command 6 Enable Profile Corrections and Remove Chromatic
Aberration.
Usually, I like to turn those on.
But, anyway, we're just going to now go back into Photoshop.
So you will see that after making those adjustments, nothing has changed in this image, and that
is because this image is not linked to Lightroom.
We need to link it.
Let me show you how to do that.
I want to go into File, New, and the file size for this example doesn't matter, so I'm
just going to press OK, then I'm going to go into File, Place Linked.
And this is where the magic happens.
I'm going to select the raw file and I want to link that into Photoshop.
So, just as a side note, we also have the XMP file.
That is the sidecar file, where all the Lightroom instructions are set.
What that means is that Lightroom doesn't actually edit the raw file.
It only creates instructions for how that file is displayed.
This sidecar file here contains those instructions.
I'm going to click on the raw file, which is a .ndf file, but you may have a different
type of raw file.
You may have something like a CR2 or maybe even a DNG file.
And, by the way, we're using the DNG file, then you will not have a sidecar.
The instructions are kept within the DNG file.
So I'm going to click on Place and it's going to open up Camera Raw and that's okay.
Just click on the OK button and there's my image here.
I'm just going to hold Shift Alt, click and drag on the corner handles just to make it
large enough so that it covers the entire canvas.
Then, I'm going to go into Image, Reveal All, so that we reveal the entire image within
the canvas.
So what happened here is, essentially, we increased the size of the canvas so that it
showed every pixel of the image.
We don't need the background layers so I'm just going to click on it and hit the Delete
key to delete it.
Notice that the layer now has a little chain link icon here on the layer thumbnail, right
here.
That is telling us that this file is linked to an external file, which is the Lightroom
file.
So if I'd go back into Lightroom and make an adjustment, so I'm going to go back into
the Basic panel by pressing Ctrl 1, Command 1, and this time, I'm just going to make the
image hotter, and I'm just going to bring the exposure back.
And, actually, what I'll do is I'll just leave it at default.
You can double click on this little handle here, on any handle, and it will reset it.
So, for example, blacks, double click on it, it resets it.
So I'm going to reset those handles and, you know what?
I'll just reset everything.
I'm just going to click on the Reset button here and I'm going to press Ctrl U, Command
U, to do the Auto Tone, which is the same as clicking on this Auto button, and then,
Ctrl Shift U, Command Shift U on the Mac, to do an Auto White Balance, which is the
same as clicking here and selecting Auto.
So, those are the changes and, now, I'm going to tell you to press a keyboard shortcut that
you probably have never pressed before, in Lightroom that is, and that is Ctrl S, Command
S on the Mac.
And, usually, that keyboard shortcut is reserved for saving and it is for Lightroom as well,
but not the way that you're thinking.
I'm going to press Ctrl S, Command S, and this is to save the metadata file, that sidecar
file that I was talking about earlier.
So I'm going to press Continue and click on Override Settings.
Lightroom saves that file.
And if I go back into Photoshop, you will see that this file is going to change, and
it applied the changes we just made in Lightroom.
So I'm going to go back into Lightroom and I'm going to make another dramatic change,
so that you could see it.
I'm going to make the image really hot, increase the Clarity all the way, and Vibrance all
the way, so now it's really hot.
I'm going to press Ctrl S, Command S on the Mac again, to save my XMP metadata file, then
I'm going to go back into Photoshop.
It's going to take a second, but Photoshop will read that XMP file and the changes will
be applied in Photoshop.
And you might be thinking, what is the advantage of doing all this work just to get this file
to work in Lightroom?
Why not just make the adjustments in Camera Raw?
Well there are a lot of reasons.
You just might be used to Lightroom better, even though Camera Raw gives you essentially
the same capabilities on developing, you might just have more muscle memory with Lightroom
and you can work faster.
You may also have Presets, so I'm going to go back into Lightroom and show you how to
apply a preset.
You can press Ctrl Shift 1 to open up your presets and these are the presets that I have
here.
Notice that when I hover over the presets, the Navigator window here shows me a preview
of what the preset will look like, so let me just choose one of these black and white
presets, maybe this one here, so I can click on it, it applies that preset.
I can press Ctrl S, Command S on the Mac, to save my metadata file, and then, go back
into Photoshop, and there it is.
Now, you don't have to be a photographer to take advantage of this.
If you're a designer, you can take an image, apply it to your design, but make all the
adjustments in Lightroom, so it's not just for photographers.
And, also, Lightroom was designed to develop your raw files, so there's a lot of little
shortcuts and things like that that really make it easy for you to look at your files
as you're working, so, for example, if you're developing the file, making tonal adjustments,
things like that, you can do things to see your file better.
And what I'm going to do now is actually I'm just going to click and color here just to
remove that black and white.
We have black and white here.
I'm just going to click and color.
And what you can do is you can hit the Tab key just to remove the panels, F6 to remove
the filmstrip, and Shift Tab to remove even more panels.
So I'm just going to bring those back by tapping Shift Tab on the keyboard.
You also have the Lights Out mode if you press L on the keyboard, you dim the interface.
If you tap L one more time, you completely block it out.
And from here, you can hit Shift Tab to remove all the panels, and then, you see a large
version of your image undisrupted by any of the user interface.
So I'm going to hit L one more time, and then, Shift Tab to bring the panels back.
And that's it for this tutorial.
I hope that you enjoyed it and that you learned something new.
Make sure that you leave all your comments or questions down below.
If you create an image using this tutorial or any other of my tutorials, feel free to
share it on Instagram with the hashtag #ptcvids.
I often do a search for this hashtag to see what you're all up to.
If I find your image, I would leave you a comment.
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Thank you for watching and I'll talk to you again soon.