Original or DNG

What is better to leave imported files as original raw files or connvert them to DNG files on import? Or does it realy matter as far as working with them in lightroom or in photoshop?

S4ENO wrote:
clvrmnky wrote:
This question might be moot in the future, as a little bird told me that some well-known vendors that only offer proprietary formats today are going to be making DNG a native option in their cameras in the near future.
I hope your right...
What is the source for this info?
This is 100% hearsay, but it comes from a guy I know who works directly with representatives from Some Camera Companies. These reps are the ones that travel to all the photog shops making sure their marques are positioned properly.
And all the ******** that goes on privately is also going on in these shops, and the writing is on the wall WRT to proprietary formats. Few people take advantage of them the way the vendors imagined they would, and a growing and educated segment of their pro/semi-pro user base never liked it when the manufacturers abandoned TIFF back in the day.
So, there are strong hints that at least one vendor is going to change back to an open format.

Similar Messages

Why no 'Edit Original' with raw or dng files?

Is there a reason Lightroom does not allow the ability to use an external editor on the original raw/dng file? Why force people to use the Capture NX raw converter if they would like to use their camera specific converter instead?

This is a great point. There are many instances where I need to use a camera manufacturer's conversion software because I am unable to get similar results in Lightroom (Still a problem in LR3 - many posts about this in these forums).
I was going to write about a tip for a workaround, but instead I actually uncovered a very unfortunate behavior in LR3.
Previously, in LR2.x, you could drag any thumbnail from the Grid view onto the app of your choice in the dock. It would immediately open the original file (including RAW images) in that editor, and you could then save a Tiff to be re-imported into LR, or whatever you wanted to do. It was great flexibility, and got around having the formal ability to assign an external editor for RAW files (which by the way I agree, is necessary functionality, and should be included).
NOW, in LR3, this behavior has been shut down. You can no longer drag thumbnails from the grid view onto an external editor.
Adobe Lightroom team - this is a huge mistake. Please restore the old functionality. You should know - trying as hard as you do, your RAW rendering is still not the only game in town. I own your product, along with five other RAW editing applications. Sometimes I need to try each one to see how a particular image works out. I still prefer to use Lightroom as my cataloging software. This will change if you start to close things down to force users to stay in your ecosystem.
Apple Aperture takes a similar approach - when you drag an image onto an application, you only open a jpeg preview of that image, not the original RAW file. This is one of the reasons I ditched Aperture and moved to Lightroom. I liked the flexibility. Now that this has been taken away, it gives me another reason to consider passing on this upgrade. Please give this some thought. You do not have all the answers for RAW rendering, and realistically, unless camera manufacturers standardize, you probably never will. Give us back our flexibility, or better yet, build it in formally as the original poster suggested.

Is it possible to edit a DNG file in Photoshop and get back to Lightroom?

Hi,
The question title probably doesn't explain much what I'm looking for...
I shot in RAW and then converted to DNG, I like DNG and I can't understand what so many people have against it, anyway that's not the point...
I know have the DNG as my digital negative instead of the original RAW file and I start to do some editing in Lightroom. But then I realized that Lightroom is not enough for something I want to do. For instance, just today I had this picture I needed to remove some people and I had to use heal/clone but as you know, Lightroom's clone and heal features are not as flexible as Photoshop ones.
So now I needed to go into Photoshop, fix the photo and get back to Lightroom and continue my editing. However, I couldn't find a way to do it how I wanted to do... What I did was open the original (unedited) DNG in Photoshop, Adobe Camera Raw pops up and I ignore it, remove the people from the photo and save as TIFF. Then, back in Lightroom I open the new edited TIFF and copy Lightroom's settings from one photo (the DNG) to the other (the edited TIFF).
This workflow sucks and I know there are some options in Lightroom to automate it, but still, I don't think it would solve my problem. At least I couldn't find a way to do it...
What I wanted to do instead was to indeed remove that people from the photo with Photoshop but keep those changes in DNG. But take a note here that those changes could very much be destructive, I'm not talking about ACR or Lightroom's non-destructive editing, the removed people would be gone forever unless I draw some new ones. I really wanted to edit and save some changes on the DNG in Photoshop and keep editing the DNG in Lightroom without using a TIFF in between, do everything in the DNG.
Is this possible or not at all?

Ricardo.Amaral wrote:
What I wanted to do instead was to indeed remove that people from the photo with Photoshop but keep those changes in DNG.
sorry, no can do...ain't gonna happen.
What you've done is hit the wall on is the basic difference between lite duty spot healing and photo level tone and color correction (Lightroom and Camera Raw) and heavy duty pixel retouching in Photoshop.
When you need to substantially manipulate the "pixels" you need Photoshop and you'll be forced to render the raw file into a TIFF or PSD file either through Camera Raw or more better, via Lightroom.
You can do the basic tone and color correction directly in Lightroom and edit in Photoshop from Lightroom. But you will NEED to create and save out a "rendered" image that is no longer raw...then retouch to your heart's desire, save it and it'll be available in Lightroom along side your original raw if you choose.
But no, there's no way to open a raw in Photoshop, manipulate the heck out of it with massive retouching then save that back out as a raw file...ain't gonna happen.

How to edit DNG in Photoshop after adjustments but without them?

Ok, this might seem a stupid question but let me properly explain...
Just to make it clear, I now know I cannot edit a DNG directly in Photoshop, this must be converted to TIFF and that one can be edited and imported back into Lightroom.
I've read many posts where people tend to all LR adjustments and then go to PS for the final touches, but I prefer the other way around, PS first for any pixel editing and LR to finish the image. But I have two problems this simply because I forgot to edit some image in PS before making my LR adjustments. The only thing I wanted to do in PS was to remove some sensor dust I didn't notice before.
The problem is that I have now finished all my LR adjustments and I can't find a proper way to edit the original (without LR adjustments). When I open the context menu in LR and select Edit » Photoshop, all LR adjustments will be processed and the TIFF file generated will have them.
Q1: Isn't there a way to edit a DNG file in Photoshop without LR adjustments just like we can do it for any other type of file that is not some sort of RAW file?
To answer my own question, the only way I found to do this was to preset the Reset button in the Develop module in LR and then to Edit » Photoshop. This will work but it's a little bit clumsy, anyway to avoid this or is it my only option?
Let's say I do it like that anyway. I'm now with the original untouched DNG file converted to TIFF opened in Photoshop, I do all my pixel editing and save the file. This TIFF file will be automatically imported into Lightroom so I can do any final touches. Since I did a "reset" and the image edited in Photoshop was the original untouched by LR, I now need to do all my editing in LR all over again.
I though of simply copying all develop settings from the old original DNG into the new converted TIFF. But this doesn't work, the files are different, the same settings do not work for these 2 different fle types. The image looks completetly different.
Q2: How can I fix this without playing with all the sliders again to achieve the same look?
I've been done this road before and it was a painful process, in the end, I was not able to get the same exact result.
EDIT: I did not mention the spot removal tool because I wasn't getting very good results with it, it doesn't work as good as Photoshop's tools. The sensor dust was in the sky and very close to some clouds, selecting the whole thing was not working. After some time, I added 5 spot removals and was able to properly clean the sky of that dust. Still would love to hear opinions on my questions above.

Not it's not, it's my workflow, why don't you understand that? If I want to edit in PS first, well, that's my decision, you are assuming I want to keep the RAW data intact and if I wanted yes, my workflow would be wrong because I couldn't do it like that, but I don't want to keep it. Actually, in a perfect world, I would want to be able to keep RAW data and do som pixel editing in the same file, but this is not a perfect world so I'm fine in losing the RAW data. I never stated that but I though it was implicit the way I described my workflow.
I already knew everything you said in your post, nothing new there.
"You really can't move back and forth it one direction only..."
Like I said, I'm not looking moving back and forth, I don't think yous guys are understanding my question properly. Let's take another approach to see if you guys understand it better. I shot some photo in RAW and converted it to JPG (yes JPG), I've now lost any RAW data. However, I like to keep my files in DNG (DNG is a container so I can do that) and convert the JPG file into a DNG. I know have my "master" file as a JPG file in a DNG container.
I start to do some editing in LR in my master file but I forgot to remove the dust on Photoshop and now I need someway to open the original in Photoshop to remove it, because I don't want to lose all my LR adjustments, I want to edit the original and keep my LR adjustments. But even if the file inside the DNG container is a JPG file, since the file format is DNG, I don't have the option to Edit without LR adjustments when I chose Edit » Photoshop. As soon as I do that, the DNG file will be opened in PS with all LR adjustments, but this file is actually a JPG, there's no RAW data anymore. The only way to edit the original file like this is to "reset" all LR adjustments before going pressing the edit context menu option and then copy back all settings from a to b.
Now, this will work just fine because the original file is no longer RAW data, but linear data (I think it's called like this? what I mean, is a JPG, not RAW; i'll call it like this from now on, sorry if this is wrong) and so the settings can be copied at will from one file to ther other without any problems. After a bit of research I read around this forums that LR settings differ slightly if the original file is RAW data or linear data. For instance, the middle point for Temperature is actually 0 for JPG files but if it's a RAW file, it's something like 6500K (not necessarily this, just an example), and that means I can't copy the settings back and forth with a copy/paste.
So, to recapitulate...
My original image is now linear data (JPG) not RAW and saved into a DNG container and since it's a DNG container I cannot open the context menu Edit » Photoshop » Without LR Adjustments. Why? Is there any other any way around it or there's nothing I can besides making a reset or saving a snapshot in LR with the original settings so I can open them at will in PS and then copy the settings from a to b. I just don't understand why there isn't an option, for DNG files, to open it without all LR adjustments like all other files. It's actually a JPG file inside, not RAW data, so, why not? But even if it was RAW data, there could be such an option to. I mean, when you have RAW data and press Edit » Photoshop, the file will be demosaiced (or whatever it's called) and opened in PS, when you save it, it will be saved as TIFF. So why isn't there an option to demosaic the original file without LR adjustments.
As to my second question, I guess there's no way to solve it either. The data on each file is different and the sliders behave differently so there's not way to copy the settings from a file to another if the saved data is not of the same type. And there's also no way to "convert" the settings from one file to the other, or is there? That was actually my question, if there was a way to copy/convert the settings from a RAW file into a linear file so I don't have to move all the sliders all over again and try to achieve the same goal. But after a quick search around the forums, I found a related question and I guess there's no way to do it.

LR 4.1 RC 2 opening DNGs in Photoshop

I am getting really frustrated as all of a sudden Lightroom has started opening the original DNG files for editing in Photoshop (CS5) instead of creating a TIFF file and editing that. I have checked all my settings and it still specifies TIFF as the edited file, it just doesn't work. I have tried restarting everything (computer, LR, PS) and every once in a while it will use a TIFF file, but 99 times out of a 100 it opens the DNG itself. The only think that has changed recently is that I updated to LR 4.1 RC 2 (previously had RC 1) - although I think it still worked after this update. Then I updated Adobe Camera Raw to 6.7... does anyone know if this is causing the problem and if so, how I can fix it?

Is the DNG opened in PS as a normal picture (not in the ACR dialoge!) with the title "xyz.DNG"? If that is the case, it is actually correct. When LR detects a compatible ACR (which happened after you installed ACR 6.7), it will pass the raw/DNG directly to PS without rendering a TIFF on its own. The file name indicated by photoshop is the original raw/DNG file then.
When you save the picture in photoshop, it will create the actual image file using the file type and other options (color space, bit depth...) you configured in Lightroom. So the outcome of the whole "edit in..." action is exactly what you want, with Photoshop creating the image file at the time you save it.
P.S. What happened before updating to ACR 6.7 was that probably sometimes before, the ACR compatibility warning dialog appeared and you chose "render using lightroom", causing LR to produce the TIFF file on its own and Photoshop to load that TIFF file, and consequently also displaying "xyz.TIFF". Now that LR considers ACR 6.7 as compatible, that behaviour is replaced with the new behaviour as described above - and the warning dialog no longer appears.

RWL to DNG in Lightroom Win7 not working

Hello, I just got my MBP yesterday and I am trying out aperture and I have to say that I´m loving it, however I am having a small problem, though the .DNG converted in lightroom from my Nikon D200 and the .RWLs from my Leica D-Lux 5 are showing perfectly the .DNGs converted in lightroom from my .RWLs are not working, I have Aperture 3.1.1 and CameraRAW 3.5.0
I tried using the Adobe DNG Converter with all possible settings with no luck at all.
Any ideas?
Thank you very much!

philberndt wrote:
Yes, i have already decided to skip the DNG step.. BUT.. the 400 or so files that i have are only on DNG, now im converting to tiff and i will forget about it, in the future i will just keep them as RWL...
Aha. So it is a matter of "saving" the files you already have? If you created the DNG with the option to embed the original, you should be able to retrieve the original with DNG converter.
If you did not, I think conversion to tiff is the best option. You may want to keep the DNG as well, however, at least for critical photos. The DNG will contain much more image data than your converted tiff files. In many cases, that will not matter at all, as the tiff anyhow contains all the info that is needed. However, with overexposed or underexposed photos, or photos where the white balance is off, the DNG may contain data you may actually need.

Quicklook - DNG previews are not honored. Doesn't display properly.

10.5.1, Aperture 1.5.6
Is there workaround to get the Finder's Cover Flow or Quicklook views to honor and display JPEG previews from DNG images?
As it is now, the Finder displays only a preview from the original, untouched DNG image.
To recreate this, open a DMG image in Aperture. Make image adjustments. Crop the photo. Close out of Aperture, and view the image in the Finder using Cover Flow and Quicklook. The image will appear as if it was never adjusted.
(The sole exception seems to be image rotation. The Finder preview show the image properly rotated.)

There are a few differences between (A.) letting the AIR runtime load content into the initial window and (B.) loading content into a new NativeWindow.
1. In case A, the stage property is available in the class constructor for the main sprite. In case B, this is not the case. You may have to use an ADDED_TO_STAGE event handler to do some class initialization.
2. In case A, the initial scale is based on the metadata present in the SWF -- this results in the behavior you would expect. In case B, there is no SWF to base the scale on when the window is created, so a default scale is used -- this is rarely results in behavior you would expect (unless the window happens to be created with a size of 72x72 pixels).
If you aren't setting the stage to noScale, then this could account for some of the visual issues. (See http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/flex/quickstart/launching_windows.html for an explanation of the scaling issues.) The easiest thing to do is to set the Stage scaleMode to noScale and the align property to the top left setting. I'm guessing your drawing code isn't expecting the scaling so things are getting put in the wrong place.
3. In case A, the content is automatically put in the application sandbox. In case B, it depends on the URL.
As for the Keyboard input, this may depend on how you are loading the SWF and from where. This could be related to #3 above, although I would expect to see security errors. How are you adding your keyboard event handlers?

Advice for fitting DNG into my workflow...

I know that a similar question has certainly been asked by someone else prior to this, and believe me I have searched these forums to try to find the answer to my question, but didn't have much luck
I have been tossing and turning with the idea of converting all of my RAW images (.CR2 Canon RAW images) into the DNG format for some time now, but I never really had the guts to batch through tens of thousands of images before...but with the addition of Adobe Lightroom to my digital darkroom toolkit, I think that now might be the time.
One of the main reasons that I feel is a good enough one for me to convert all of my images to DNG is simply the fact that having an .xmp sidecar file to go along with each and every RAW image in my collection (hundreds of thousands), seems like it just leaves the door open for twice as many possibilities for something to go wrong...I mean, I have to simply sit back and just hope that they:
- always stay in the same folder as the original RAW file
- don't get inadvertently deleted by a client who thought they were some random .DS_Store or .thumbs file that the OS put there
- don't somehow get renamed and no longer match the name of the original
- or that they simply don't get corrupt somehow
Seems like a lot more to worry about to me...plus, having twice as many files on a drives, at least to some degree, has got to take its toll on the fragmentation of the drive, right?
Are there any other potential drawbacks to DNG? Are there any added capabilities that one has with proprietary RAW formats that they don't have with DNG (when used in any mainstream professional software applications out there - such as Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop, iView Media Pro, Photo Mechanic, etc.)?
I guess I am just tired of going out of my way to explain to clients all about the importance of the .xmp file, and that they should never delete it, relocate it, or rename it...I am posting this question right now in response to the fact that I just finished a 3 month assignment, and I have to hand over 45,000 RAW files to a client for their archives, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they, nor the person that will replace them in their positions, 1, 5, or 10 years from now, will have the first clue what they heck those .xmp files are for...It just seems a whole lot easier to have one file for every one picture, doesn't it?
I know that the big concern that a lot of people have regarding the .DNG extension is that there is no guarantee that it will be around in 5, 10 or 20 years from now, or that it may very well never get adopted by the industry...but the fact is, its almost certainly a possibility (and likely a probability) that 5, 10, or 20 years from now the proprietary RAW image formats developed by some (if not most) of today's camera manufacturers are going to be lost themselves, right? I mean come on...the .TIF format chosen by Canon and used by the EOS-1Ds is bound to get the boot sooner than later...
So can it really be that the biggest negative about DNG involves its shelf-life (versus that of the proprietary formats)? Does anyone really believe that Adobe is simply going to drop support for the format in the years to come, or that they won't be around as a company 20 years from now? ...and, even if they did drop support for it, or if they fade into non-existence as a company in the distant future, the DNG format has a completely open and well documented source coding, so someone else could (and would) definitely come out with some new software tool to convert DNG to whatever the heck the future hypothetical RAW format would be 20 years from now, right?
I wanted to hear what people's thoughts were on the issue...Should I make the mass conversion? Am I creating any limitations for myself and for my images by doing so (specifically, such as any limitations when using DNG versus .CR2 with Lightroom or Photoshop)? Are there any other concerns I should have?
If there are any pro

> "Are there any other potential drawbacks to DNG?"
The main drawback is that some software products don't (yet) support DNG. The basic list of those that don't is "the large majority of products supplied by camera manufacturers, plus a few others, of which Bibble and Capture One are probably the only important ones". (Capture One is planned to support DNG in v4 later this year).
http://www.barrypearson.co.uk/articles/dng/not_yet.htm
There are probably still cases where the Adobe doesn't know enough about the metadata within the raw file that it can't copy it all across. It is said that this is NOT a problem with NEF and CR2 - but I've read about problems with ORF.
> "I know that the big concern that a lot of people have regarding the .DNG extension is that there is no guarantee that it will be around in 5, 10 or 20 years from now, or that it may very well never get adopted by the industry".
DNG is openly-documented and has a freely-available source-based SDK. It is also supported by non-Adobe freely-available source code such as dcraw. Given the number of DNGs there will be in the world in future, hence the motivation of many people to exploit those resources, there is no chance that they will become orphaned whatever happens to Adobe.
It has already been accepted by much of the industry - a number of cameras and digital backs use it in camera, and more than 160 products from more than 150 sources support it. Canon and Nikon stand out as the main exceptions, and may remain so for years, but they are not the whole industry. Probably most photographers with a DNG-based workflow use Canon or Nikon, and probably most DNGs in the world contain raw image data that started in Canon or Nikon cameras.
> "... any limitations when using DNG versus .CR2 with Lightroom or Photoshop".
In every case I've tried, (for raws from several camera makes & models), the following routes give pixel-identical results as long as the product versions are the same:
Original raw > ACR > Photoshop
Original raw > DNG Converter > DNG > ACR > Photoshop
I try to provide answers to this sort of question at the following, which attempts to identify disadvantages as well as advantages, so that people can make their own informed decisions:
http://www.barrypearson.co.uk/articles/dng/
> "I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they, nor the person that will replace them in their positions, 1, 5, or 10 years from now, will have the first clue what they heck those .xmp files are for...It just seems a whole lot easier to have one file for every one picture, doesn't it?"
This is part of the whole topic of "archiving". DNG is designed to be good for archiving - I believe it is the only raw file format that is. In fact, as far as I know, a DNG will contain a superset of the data that was in the original CR2 or NEF. (But it is hard to get precise statements on this).

DNG question: Exporting develop histoppry in LR 2.2

I want to be able to send the original imported .dng along with the edit history to another person.
Is there any way to edit a .dng and transfer the image and the edit history to another computer image by image?
Jay Gould

Hi, In the Catalog that was created is a copy of the image.
The process created a parent folder and put into the parent folder/root folder a folder with the original catalog name and the single image contained therein, a second folder entitled "catalog name" Previews.Irdata, and a file named "catalog name".ircat.
Since the image is in the parent folder do you believe I need to send another copy of the image along with the parent folder?
Thanks, Jay

DNG maybe not

Having recently adobted DNG as my archive format, and having converted thousands of personal project camera raw files to DNG and deleted the original camera raw files I read this post and the related posts about problems with DNG in complete horror. http://forums.adobe.com/thread/482053?tstart=0
I read many of the pros and cons of the DNG debate and felt confident in the DNG format and support for it and I was swayed by it's practical benefits.
However, this issue seems to be an excellent reason to not use DNG. If DNG may not correctly convert files one runs the risk of winding up with unusable files or having to retaing the original camera raw files as insurance and the latter seems to sort of defeat the point of having this supposed better universal format.
At the risk of rehashing this debate about DNG I'd be interested to hear the thoughts of others on this matter and particularly directly from Adobe about better QC before releasing DNG updates.
Thanks.

Hi jkboston,
Understood. Please keep in mind that regardless of which format you choose
to use, bugs/glitches in our reader may cause the resulting image quality to
suffer. Mistakes are simply that -- oversights, typos, etc. Of course, we
attempt to fix these issues over time, which is partly what our dot releases
are for.
As an analogy: If we had a bug in our JPEG reader that caused a small number
of JPEG files to be read improperly, that would not be the fault of JPEG
itself, but the fault of our reader. As long as the issue got fixed in a
timely manner, it should not be a legitimate reason to abandon or question
the utility of using JPEGs, or a JPEG-based workflow.
As for the utility of DNG itself: my personal view is that DNG was not
created by its primary architect in the hopes that users would convert all
their original non-DNG files to DNG and adopt a DNG-only workflow. Of
course, many users do in fact do exactly that, for various reasons. But the
real, original motivation behind DNG was to encourage the use of a common
and publicly documented format for the purposes of describing raw
(unrendered) image data and their associated metadata, which earlier public
formats (such as TIFF and JPEG) could not. Rather similar to how camera
designers have all adopted JPEG as a common format for storing rendered
image data.
Eric
My real concern is actually that I have adopted a DNG work flow to simplify my
workflow and it looks like, to be safe, if I continue with DNG I should retain
backups of the RAW files, which from my perspective, does not simplify my
workflow and makes me question the utility of DNG.
All that said, I've converted Canon RAW files (TIF from 1Ds and CR from 10D,
CR2 from G10 and 5DII and feel reasonably confident that those files are ok
and will not be adequate in the future) though I am now reconsidering DNG.

Sony RX100: quality of RAW conversions in LR 4.2 RC

Hi,
I've just purchased a Sony RX100 as a replacement for an aging Canon S90. Before that I've tried the fantastic Olympus OM-D (but returned it because of a - for me - serious issue with the Sony-sourced sensor, see here http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1008&message=42126356 and because the support for camera calibration profiles in LR was non-existing). I'm happy to concede that I'm spoiled by the fantastic support LR provides for my D700 and even, S90 RAW images...
So with that background I've approached the RX100 images with a healty portion of scepticism. What I've found surprised me:
1) the standard Adobe Standard camera calibration setting gave the best results, the other profiles gave strange (magenta) color casts, especially with direct sun light.
2) I've found that images taken in parallel with my old S90 to give much nicer colors (though of course with a lot less resolution and more noise) - but again the colors looked much nicer, especially skies, greenery etc. I've also noted (and this was also present with the OM-D images) that the Sony image conversions has a touch too much red tint, which I had to correct manually (this doesn't happen with D700 and S90 images).
So, I'd like to post my first impressions here for comments ;-)
Did anybody else have similar results? Maybe I did something wrong?

Is the DNG opened in PS as a normal picture (not in the ACR dialoge!) with the title "xyz.DNG"? If that is the case, it is actually correct. When LR detects a compatible ACR (which happened after you installed ACR 6.7), it will pass the raw/DNG directly to PS without rendering a TIFF on its own. The file name indicated by photoshop is the original raw/DNG file then.
When you save the picture in photoshop, it will create the actual image file using the file type and other options (color space, bit depth...) you configured in Lightroom. So the outcome of the whole "edit in..." action is exactly what you want, with Photoshop creating the image file at the time you save it.
P.S. What happened before updating to ACR 6.7 was that probably sometimes before, the ACR compatibility warning dialog appeared and you chose "render using lightroom", causing LR to produce the TIFF file on its own and Photoshop to load that TIFF file, and consequently also displaying "xyz.TIFF". Now that LR considers ACR 6.7 as compatible, that behaviour is replaced with the new behaviour as described above - and the warning dialog no longer appears.

Open as Smart Object as Layers in Photoshop?

I apologize if this has been addressed already, but I am looking for a way to open Smart Objects as LAYERS. I do compositing work and would like to retain as much information as possible by using Smart Objects PRIOR to going into Photoshop. My current workflow is to highlight the photos in Lightroom CC > Open as Smart Object in Photoshop CC > Manually Drag layers from each open file in Photoshop to main PSD.
Edit - Opening as Layers in Photoshop then applying the Camera Raw Filter is not a good work around, information is lost.

davepinminn wrote:
I must still be doing something wrong here..............
You have the wrong expectation—namely because you don't grasp the concept. A smart object is not a linked file. It's a new file all on its own (in PSB format) with no connection to the original file at all.
davepinminn wrote:
…I can open my raw (.dng) into Photoshop as a smart object. And in PS, I can open the smart object into ACR. Works fine. And I can change stuff. For example, if I change the exposure from -.25 to +.20, it changes perfectly in PS, as I'd expect. But, I'm still not getting the changes back to the original raw (.dng) file…
There is no reason why the changes made to a Smart Object oject should be refleftef to a totally unrelated file.
davepinminn wrote:
…Do I need to do something different to get the changes back to the original file…
Yes. you have to go back to that original file and apply the changes directly to it. In a previous post, Jeff Schewe told you of a shortcut to achieve that:
Jeff Schewe wrote:
When you are in the Camera Raw SO with ACR open, go to the main flyout menu and select Export settings to XMP. This will write the new image settings from the SO to the xmp metadata. Then in Lightroom, select Read metadata from file in the main Metadata menu. That will bring in all the settings of the raw SO back into Lightroom. So, while not automatic, it's not as bad as writing down the settings and entering them by hand.

Editing in external editor: Save back as JPG and (auto-) add to library

I want to use external edit (in my case: Adobe Photoshop Elements) for editing features not available in LR3 (for example: skew) and easily save back as JPG. The source in LR3 is a DNG-image.
LR3 offers easy workflows out-to-external-editor>back-to-LR3 if you save back as TIFF or PSD.
But, I didn't find any easy or not extremely clumsy way to saving the edited photo back as JPG to LR3 and having it organized "close" to the original/source-DNG (preferably stacked).
Any ideas out there?

Thanks for the suggestion! If have taken your answer to dig into my problem for just another time - with positive result.
The 'save as TIFF file' option in PSE after image export from LR opens a detailed dialogue box offering amongst others 'jpg compression' within a TIFF-container (never realized this before, never heard about this concept, my fault). So my goals are met: Having an efficient process to finetune some images in PSE, having the results automatically stacked in the LR library module and having a considerable lower file-size footprint as compared to e.g. Photoshops native or TIFF with zip compression.

Lightroom 5.6 won't apply watermarks to my images when I export; Nikon D610 RAW files exporting in .jpg

I am working with .NEF files from a Nikon D610 in Lightroom 5.6. When I go to export and choose add text watermark, the files are exported but the text watermark is not added. Occasionally some of the images from the batch will have the watermark, but it will only be some, not all. Anyone else run into this problem?

What is the file format you choose to export as? If it is ORIGINAL or DNG, you will not get watermarks.

LR3 to CS5 metadata changing

I start with a DNG in LR3. Take the photo into CS5 using Stack with Original turned on. Make changes and save the file. LR3 tells me the metadata has been changed by another software.
Does anybody know why the metadata is being updated? Do I need to change a setting in LR3 or CS5?
Thanks for any info.

Are you using filtering (e.g. using the number of stars)?
If so the problem is that LR3 is not updating the metadata when the file is passed to PS.
Save the metadata on the original RAW/DNG before triggering the edit in PS and the rating info will show up in the TIF/PSD and you'll see it since it will match your filter.
I had exactly the same problem, only with CS3.
Hope this helps,
Selby

Original or DNG

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