[Tom and Marj Green Silver Member Posts: 1]

Adobe Photoshop & Pixel Editing Applications

on: August 29, 2019 at 1:55 pm

[Response to a question about our article: ‘Seeing in Black & White‘. Tom and Marj Green]  We have two reasons for cropping in Photoshop and not Lightroom.

The first reason is it’s reversible. Let’s say we cropped in Photoshop and then created all the layers to ‘develop’ the image (cloning and adjustment layers with masks that limited the adjustment to certain areas). If we decide that we’ve cropped out a portion that should have been left in, it’s easy to change. Go to Image > Reveal All to redo the crop. Then go back and change whichever masks need it to fit the new area.

We could have brought the image out of Lightroom as a smart object which allow us to go back into LR to change the crop. We don’t use smart object background layers in 99% of our images. We find we almost never need to change the basic adjustments that were made in LR, so why create such large image files using smart objects? And, if we’re already done some cloning in Photoshop, any new adjustments made while back in LR may need changing.

The second reason is that we many times want to transform an image in more complicated ways than can be done in Lightroom. Skewing, warping, distorting, scaling one part more than another — whatever adjustments are needed can only be made in Photoshop Transform. If you’ve already cropped the image in Lightroom, transforming in Photoshop may degrade the image quality. Or you may have cropped out areas that you want to leave in after transforming.

[Kevin Raber Silver Member Posts: 1217]

Re: Why Crop in Photoshop instead of Lightroom?

Reply #1 on: August 29, 2019 at 6:24 pm

Interesting. Thanks for the reply.

[Daniel Smith Participant Posts: 98]

Re: Why Crop in Photoshop instead of Lightroom?

Reply #2 on: September 6, 2019 at 9:10 am

A good reason is that some of us don’t use Lightroom. Tried it, but after years of Photoshop from the first version that works on IBM computers the work space was so confusing I took it off the computer. Photoshop has changed through the years but the basic working space is consistent. CS6 still works fine th0ugh putting it on a new computer is a pain in the backside and took calls to Adobe Tech folks to get it done.

 

"A good still photograph, studied by an inquiring mind, frequently yields more information than a mile of moving images". Walter Cronkite, New York, June 1989

[Author]

Posts