Changes Made in PS5 not Always Recognized in LR3

Question

I use LR 3.0, PS5 on a Mac Pro 2.66 16GB Ram running OS X10.6.4
Lately I noticed that when I process an image from LR using Photoshop, sometimes when I close and save and go back to LR, some of the changes I applied to the PSD file are not showing in LR. But if I export the file the changes are there. Or if I open the file again and choose "Edit a copy with LR adjustments" the changes are there and if I save that second copy, the changes show even in LR. It is as if LR fails to update the image preview after I work on the file in PS.
Please note:
• I have been editing files from LR to PS for years now. It is anormal part of my worflow and I naver had such problem.
• This strange beahvior does not happen with every file.
• My file naming is very consistent and does not include spaces or strange characters. An example of my file names is: "20100723_egg_001.CR2"
I was able to recreate the problem by doing the following:
I imported a file from Canon 1Ds MKIII
- applied basic LR settings
- open in PS5 from LR (command -E)
- it opens in a 16bit PSD file in Profoto RGB
- I applied curves adjustment layer
- I applied hue/saturation adjustment layer
- I hit save (command-S) and watched the thumbnail get updated in LR. So far so good.
- Then I changed the mask in the Hue/Saturation layer to black (to undo the effect)
- Hit save again. No update happening in LR.
- Created a new layer and painted a blue line across.
- Hit save again. No update happening in LR.
- Close the file in PS.
- Thumbnail in LR is stuck to the look in the first save I did.
BUT
- If I open the file from LR to PS5 again, the changes and layers are all there.
OR
- If I export the file, it exports correctly with the latest updates and changes I did in PS5.
Does anybody know what might be going wrong?
Thank you,
Francesco Tonelli

Answer 1

FYI I did clear the cache and did not solve the problem.
The ACR cache, which you can clear from the preferences in Lightroom is not the same cache that Dorin is talking about. He is talking about the previews that are stored in a filefolder right along your catalog file. If you delete that, Lightroom will be forced to rebuild previews for all your images.
However, I noticed that you were using psd. There have been some reports of strange behavior in LR 3 with psd files. I would try setting the preference in Lightroom for external edit in photoshop to tiff (the default now). This gives you better compatibility anyway.